was to care more for immediate annoyances than for remote
consequences, no sooner recovered his legs, and saw that it was all
over with Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction at the absence of
witnesses to a position which no swaggering could make enviable.
Reinforcing himself, after his shake, with a little brandy and much
swearing, he walked as fast as he could to a coppice on his right
hand, through which it occurred to him that he could make his way to
Batherley without danger of encountering any member of the hunt.
His first intention was to hire a horse there and ride home
forthwith, for to walk many miles without a gun in his hand, and
along an ordinary road, was as much out of the question to him as to
other spirited young men of his kind. He did not much mind about
taking the bad news to Godfrey, for he had to offer him at the same
time the resource of Marner's money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he
always did, at the notion of making a fresh debt from which he
himself got the smallest share of advantage, why, he wouldn't kick
long: Dunstan felt sure he could worry Godfrey into anything. The
idea of Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now the want of it
had become immediate; the prospect of having to make his appearance
with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter
the grinning queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of
his impatience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous
plan; and a casual visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was
ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the two or three
small coins his forefinger encountered there were of too pale a
colour to cover that small debt, without payment of which the
stable-keeper had declared he would never do any more business with
Dunsey Cass. After all, according to the direction in which the run
had brought him, he was not so very much farther from home than he
was from Batherley; but Dunsey, not being remarkable for clearness