"Yes," said the girl. "He's like Billy Bluff—only less rowdy."
CHAPTER XXIII
The Duke's Hounds
Silver's Leicestershire friends were under the delusion that he was keeping his hunters at Lewes. And so indeed he did till the hunting season began; and then he brought them over to Putnam's.
The Duke's north-country stud-groom, who was in The Beehive at Folkington, as they came along the road from Lewes, ran out of the bar to have a look at them.
"Ma wud!" he whistled. "Champion!"
And Mike Rigg was right. Silver's horses indeed were the one item of his personal expenditure on which the young man never spared his purse. He used to say with perfect truth that except for his stud he could live with joy on £3 a week. But there was no man in England who had a rarer stud of weight-carriers.
"Big as blood elefunks," said Monkey Brand in the awed voice of a worshipper. "Flip a couple o' ton across country singin' hallelooyah all the way."
The Duke, when first they appeared with his hounds at the covertside, shook his head over them: for Jim Silver came south with a formidable reputation as a thruster.
"Too classy for my country, Silver," he said. "What d'you want with that sort of stuff down here?"