“Well, some years ago I was hard up—not the first, perhaps not the last time I have been in that state—and I knew not how to get my team fed for a week or two. So, believing that money had a considerable influence with our friend here, I got a chap to run off with my ponies, bring them here, and throw out some hints that it would be all right in a pecuniary point of view if they could be kept in the stable for a few days until the affair blew over. All went merry as a marriage bell. I advertised for horses lost, stolen, or strayed, and after some three weeks happened here and quite accidentally, you know, found my span. Of course mine host wanted pretty good pay, but I talked to him like a father; told him that I knew that if a traveler brings to an inn the horse of a third person, the innkeeper has a perfect right to detain it for its keep; that of course he was not bound to inquire whose horse it was;[343] that that highly estimable and worthy occupant of the bench in days that are no more, I mean Judge Coleridge, said that with reference to an innkeeper’s lien there was no difference between the goods of a guest and those of a third person brought by a guest.[344] This pleased the old rascal. Then I pleaded poverty, but Shylock was unmoved; then I assumed an appearance of anger at his keeping my horses and went away.”

“But how did that help you?” I asked impatiently, growing weary of a story that was long enough for the ears of an antediluvian patriarch.

“Oh, I had not left the worthy’s house five minutes before I happened, quite accidentally, you know, to meet the man who had taken the horses. Back we came. Boniface admitted that he was the one who had brought my ponies to the inn. Then said I: ‘Sir, this man has confessed that he told you that he did not own the horses, that he had stolen them; you, therefore, became a party to his crime and have no right to keep my horses any longer for their charges. See—here is the law;’ and I showed him Oliphant on Horses, page 129;[345] and the fellow at once caved in. Ta-ta, Mr. Lawyer.”

And so off went the man to practice his knaveries and trickeries on some other unfortunate members of the genus homo. The only consolation of a virtuous man is that

“Doubtless the pleasure is as great
Of being cheated as to cheat.”

“Well,” said my friend, who had all this time been standing by, a silent but not an unbenefited listener, “Well, it strikes me that the law concerning innkeepers and horses needs what Lord Dundreary thought the country did, that is to say, namely, to wit, improving!”

“True for you,” I replied. “For instance, until recently it was doubtful whether an innkeeper who detains a horse as a pledge for its keep, can detain also the saddle and bridle, or even the halter which fastens it to the stall.[346] And where a man stopped with his horse at an inn under suspicious circumstances, and the police ordered the innkeeper to retain the animal, it was held that the poor landlord had no lien.[347] And if a neighbor leaves his nag with an innkeeper to be fed and kept, allowing him to use it at his pleasure, and a creditor of the owner seize it for a debt, the poor publican has no lien for the animal’s keep;[348] nor would he have, where he boards the horses of a stage line, under a special agreement.”[349]

“What about a livery-stable keeper?” asked De Gex.

“Down in Georgia, it was held that he had a right of lien on horses and buggies left in his keeping;[350] but everywhere else, it is considered that he has no such lien, for the contract with him is that the owner is to have the horse whenever required;[351] and the claim of a lien would be inconsistent with the necessary enjoyment of the property.”[352]

“Suppose the livery man pays out money to a vet. for advice?”