GEORGE ELIOR , Silas Marner. Part- 14, Chapter 14 the story

 

GEORGE ELIOR , Silas Marner. Part- 14, Chapter 14 the story

replied, ironically 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 clables. 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 road in which Wildfire had fallen. Dunstan, whose were as likely as not to pass quite aloof from the line of  road in which wildfire had fallen . 

Dunstan, whose nature it was to care more for immediate annoyan than for remote consequences, no sooner recovered legs, and saw that it was all over with Wildfire, than felt a satisfaction at the absence of witnesses to position which no swaggering could make envia Reinforcing himself, after his shake, with a little brandy and much swearing, he walked as fast as he could to coppice on his right hand, through which it occurred him that he could make his way to Batherley withos danger of encountering any member of the hunt. 

Hfirst intention was to hire a horse there and ride home forthwith, for to walk many miles without a gun in kis 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 imp tience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and a casual visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, a he was ruminating, awakened his memory to the fac that the two or three small coins his fore-finger encoun tered there, were of too pale a colour to cover that small debt, without payment of which the stable-keeper declared he would never do any more business with Dunsey Cass. 

After all, according to the direction in which the funt had brought him, he was not so very wch farther from home than he was from Batherley: Dunsey, Hot being remarkable for clearness of head, we only led to this conclusion by the gradual percep- that there were other reasons for choosing the wedented course of walking home. It was now Hearly four o'clock, and a mist was gathering: the sooner be got into the road the better. 

He remembered having essed the road and seen the finger-post only a little white before Wildfire broke down; so, buttoning his visting the lash of his hunting-whip compactly round the handle, and rapping the tops of his boots with self-possessed air, as if to assure himself that he was hot at all taken by surprise, he set off with the sense that he was undertaking a remarkable feat of bodily exertion, which somehow and at some time he should be able to dress up and magnify to the admiration of a select circle at the Rainbow. 

When a young gentleman like Dunsey is reduced to so exceptional a mode of locomotion as walking, a whip in his hand is a desirable corrective to a too bewildering dreamy sense of unwontedness in his position; and Dunstan, as he went along through the gathering mist, was always rapping his whip some- where. 

It was Godfrey's whip, which he had chosen to take without leave because it had a gold handle; of course no one could see, when Dunstan held it, that the name Godfrey Cass was cut in deep letters on that gold handle they could only see that it was a very hand- some whip. 

Dunsey was not without fear that he might meet some acquaintance in whose eyes he would cut a pitiable figure, for mist is no screen when people get close to each other, but when he at last found himself in the well-known Raveloe lanes without having met a soul, he silently remarked that that was part of his usual