Sponge, having had a glass of brandy, just mounted with the air of a man thoroughly at home with his horse, and drawing the rein, with a slight feel of the spur, passed on from the door to make way for the redoubtable Hercules. Hercules was evidently not in a good humour. His ears were laid back, and the rolling white eye showed mischief. Sponge saw all this, and turned to see whether Thornton’s clumsy, wash-ball seat, would be able to control the fractious spirit of the horse.

‘Whoay!’ roared Thornton, as his first dive at the stirrup missed, and was answered by a hearty kick out from the horse, the ‘whoay’ being given in a very different tone to the gentle, coaxing style of Mr Buckram and his men. Had it not been for the brandy within and the lookers-on without, there is no saying but Caingey would have declined the horse’s further acquaintance. As it was, he quickly repeated his attempt at the stirrup with the same sort of domineering ‘whoay,’ adding, as he landed in the saddle and snatched at the reins, ‘Do you think I stole you?’

Whatever the horse’s opinion might be on that point, he didn’t seem to care to express it, for finding kicking alone wouldn’t do, he immediately commenced rearing too, and by a desperate plunge, broke away from the groom, before Thornton had either got him by the head or his feet in the stirrups. Three most desperate bounds he gave, rising at the bit as though he would come back over if the hold was not relaxed, and the fourth effort bringing him to the opposite kerbstone, he up again with such a bound and impetus that he crashed right through Messrs Frippery and Flummery’s fine plate-glass window, to the terror and astonishment of their elegant young counter-skippers, who were busy arranging their ribbons and finery for the day. Right through the window Hercules went, switching through book muslins and baràeges as he would through a bullfinch, and attempting to make his exit by a large plate-glass mirror against the wall of the cloakroom beyond, which he dashed all to pieces with his head. Worse remains to be told. Multum in Parvo, seeing his old comrade’s hindquarters disappearing through the window, just took the bit between his teeth, and followed, in spite of Mr Sponge’s every effort to turn him; and when at length he got him hauled round, the horse was found to have decorated himself with a sky-blue visite trimmed with Honiton lace, which he wore like a charger on his way to the Crusades, or a steed bearing a knight to the Eglinton tournament.

Quick as it happened, and soon as it was over, all Laverick Wells seemed to have congregated in the street as our heroes rode out of the folding glass-doors.