and myself, and we gained on the book-maker, who had probably trained on
gin and bad tobacco, hand over hand. As we drew near him he turned round
and inquired, with many expletives, made half inarticulate by want
of breath, what we wanted with a gentleman engaged on his own private
affairs.

"Well," I said,--for as I could trust my agricultural friend with the
more practical measures that were likely to follow I thought it only
fair that I should do the talking,--"we want first the five-pound note
which that young gentleman, whom you have just knocked down, intrusted
to your care, and then the fifty pounds you have lost to him."

He called Heaven to witness that he had never made a bet in his life
with any young gentleman, but that, having been molested, he believed by
a footpad, as he was returning home to his family, he had been compelled
to defend himself.

"I heard you make the bet and saw you take the money," I remarked, with
confidence.

"That's good enough," said the farmer. "Now if you don't shell out that
money this instant, I'll have you back in the ring in a brace of shakes
and tell them what has happened. Last year they tore a welsher pretty
nigh to pieces, and this year, if you don't 'part,' they'll do it
quite."

The book-maker turned livid,--I never saw a man in such a funk in my
life,--and produced a greasy pocket-book, out of which he took Richard's
bank-note, and ten quite new ones; and I noticed there were more left,
so that poverty was not his excuse for fraud.