"The devil!" quoth Dick, "I venture that's easier said than done—for two plain country gentlemen."
"Never fear; there will be others there lacking fine clothes, and so the throng be great enough, we may pass current in it."
Richard pushed his plate back with a grimace of disgust.
"Let us be at it, then. Another grapple with this pig-bait will finish me outright."
A half-hour later we were tethering our cobs at the already crowded hitching-rail in front of a goodly mansion some mile or more beyond the camp limits on the northward road; a rambling manor house to the full as large as Appleby Hundred, with a shaven lawn in front, and within, lights and music and sounds of revelry.
"By the Lord Harry! but this Master Harndon would seem to be a man of substance," says Dick. And then: "Can you pick out a good horse in the dark, Jack? It may come to a race for our necks, by and by, and these cobs of ours are too broad-backed for speed."
I said I could, and so we went deeper into the cavalcade at the hitch-rail and marked out two clean-limbed chargers, a gray and a sorrel; this before we gave the final touches to our plan of action and passed up the broad avenue to the manor house.