How it came to pass that the price of the splendid animal was mentioned between them, I need not describe with exactness. But it did come to pass that Mr. Sowerby told the parson that the horse should be his for £130.
“And I really wish you’d take him,” said Sowerby. “It would be the means of partially relieving my mind of a great weight.”
Mark looked up into his friend’s face with an air of surprise, for he did not at the moment understand how this should be the case.
“I am afraid, you know, that you will have to put your hand into your pocket sooner or later about that accursed bill—” Mark shrank as the profane word struck his ears—“and I should be glad to think that you had got something in hand in the way of value.”
“Do you mean that I shall have to pay the whole sum of £500?”
“Oh! dear, no; nothing of the kind. But something I dare say you will have to pay: if you like to take Dandy for a hundred and thirty, you can be prepared for that amount when Tozer comes to you. The horse is dog cheap, and you will have a long day for your money.”
Mark at first declared, in a quiet, determined tone, that he did not want the horse; but it afterwards appeared to him that if it were so fated that he must pay a portion of Mr. Sowerby’s debts, he might as well repay himself to any extent within his power. It would be as well perhaps that he should take the horse and sell him. It did not occur to him that by so doing he would put it in Mr. Sowerby’s power to say that some valuable consideration had passed between them with reference to this bill, and that he would be aiding that gentleman in preparing an inextricable confusion of money-matters between them. Mr. Sowerby well knew the value of this. It would enable him to make a plausible story, as he had done in that other case of Lord Lufton.
“Are you going to have Dandy?” Sowerby said to him again.
“I can’t say that I will just at present,” said the parson. “What should I want of him now the season’s over?”
“Exactly, my dear fellow; and what do I want of him now the season’s over? If it were the beginning of October instead of the end of March, Dandy would be up at two hundred and thirty instead of one: in six months’ time that horse will be worth anything you like to ask for him. Look at his bone.”