Colonel Hunter, if he were to be taken as a type of his regiment, might have rebutted a good deal of this floating criticism; he had a fine honest countenance, a rich mellow voice, and a sort of easy jollity in manner, that spoke well both for his spirits and his temper. He did, it is true, occasionally chafe against some susceptible spot or other of those around him, but there was no malice prepense in it, any more than there is intentional offence in the passage of a strong man through a crowd; so he elbowed his way, and pushed on in conversation, never so much as suspecting that he jostled any one in his path.
Both Barrington and Hunter were inveterate sportsmen, and they ranged over hunting-fields and grouse mountains and partridge stubble and trout streams with all the zest of men who feel a sort of mesmeric brotherhood in the interchange of their experiences. Long after the Major and the doctor had taken their leave, they sat there recounting stories of their several adventures, and recalling incidents of flood and field.
In return for a cordial invitation to Hunter to stay and fish the river for some days, Barrington pledged himself to visit the Colonel the first time he should go up to Kilkenny.
“And I 'll mount you. You shall have a horse I never lent in my life. I 'll put you on Trumpeter,—sire Sir Hercules,—no mistake there; would carry sixteen stone with the fastest hounds in England.”
Barrington shook his head, and smiled, as he said, “It's two-and-twenty years since I sat a fence. I 'm afraid I 'll not revive the fame of my horsemanship by appearing again in the saddle.”
“Why, what age do you call yourself?”
“Eighty-three, if I live to August next.”
“I 'd not have guessed you within ten years of it. I 've just passed fifty, and already I begin to look for a horse with more bone beneath the knee, and more substance across the loins.”
“These are only premonitory symptoms, after all,” said Barrington, laughing. “You've many a day before you come to a fourteen-hand cob and a kitchen chair to mount him.”
Hunter laughed at the picture, and dashed away, in his own half-reckless way, to other topics. He talked of his regiment proudly, and told Barrington what a splendid set of young fellows were his officers. “I 'll show you such a mess,” said he, “as no corps in the service can match.” While he talked of their high-hearted and generous natures, and with enthusiasm of the life of a soldier, Barrington could scarcely refrain from speaking of his own “boy,” the son from whom he had hoped so much, and whose loss had been the death-blow to all his ambitions. There were, however, circumstances in that story which sealed his lips; and though the father never believed one syllable of the allegations against his son, though he had paid the penalty of a King's Bench mandamus and imprisonment for horsewhipping the editor who had aspersed his “boy,” the world and the world's verdict were against him, and he did not dare to revive the memory of a name against which all the severities of the press had been directed, and public opinion had condemned with all its weight and power.