"I wonder at that now; I wonder you mean to keep him; for I never
heard of a man who didn't want to sell his horse getting a bid of
half as much again as the horse was worth. You'll be lucky if you
get a hundred."

Keating rode up now, and the transaction became more complicated.
It ended in the purchase of the horse by Bryce for a hundred and
twenty, to be paid on the delivery of Wildfire, safe and sound, at
the Batherley stables. It did occur to Dunsey that it might be wise
for him to give up the day's hunting, proceed at once to Batherley,
and, having waited for Bryce's return, hire a horse to carry him
home with the money in his pocket. But the inclination for a run,
encouraged by confidence in his luck, and by a draught of brandy
from his pocket-pistol at the conclusion of the bargain, was not
easy to overcome, especially with a horse under him that would take
the fences to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took
one fence too many, and got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake.
His own ill-favoured person, which was quite unmarketable, escaped
without injury; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price, turned
on his flank and painfully panted his last. It happened that
Dunstan, a short time before, having had to get down to arrange his
stirrup, had muttered a good many curses at this interruption, which
had thrown him in the rear of the hunt near the moment of glory, and
under this exasperation had taken the fences more blindly. He would
soon have been up with the hounds again, when the fatal accident
happened; and hence he was between eager riders in advance, not
troubling themselves about what happened behind them, and far-off
stragglers, who were as likely as not to pass quite aloof from the
line of road in which Wildfire had fallen. Dunstan, whose nature it