After several hours of patient attention, Mr. Moneypenny had succeeded in introducing to the notice of seven little expectant brothers and sisters a "remarkably fine child," and was now hurrying home in the sweet hope of a comfortable "snooze" for a couple of hours before the announcement of tea and muffins should arouse him to fresh exertion. The road at this particular spot had, even then, been cut deep below the surface of the soil, for the purpose of diminishing the abruptness of the descent, and, as either side of the superincumbent banks was clothed with a thick mantle of tangled copsewood, the passage, even by day, was sufficiently obscure, the level beams of the rising or setting sun, as they happened to enfilade the gorge, alone illuminating its recesses. A long stream of rosy light was just beginning to make its way through the vista, and Mr. Moneypenny's nose had scarcely caught and reflected its kindred ray, when the sturdiest and most active cob that ever rejoiced in the appellation of a "Suffolk punch," brought herself up in mid career upon her haunches, and that with a suddenness which had almost induced her rider to describe that beautiful mathematical figure, the parabola, between her ears. Peggy—her name was Peggy—stood stock-still, snorting like a stranded grampus, and alike insensible to the gentle hints afforded her by hand and heel.
"Tch!—tch!—get along, Peggy!" half exclaimed, half whistled the equestrian. If ever steed said in its heart, "I'll be shot if I do!" it was Peggy at that moment. She planted her forelegs deep in the sandy soil, raised her stump of a tail to an elevation approaching the horizontal, protruded her nose like a pointer at a covey, and with expanded nostril continued to snuffle most egregiously.
Mr. Geoffrey Gambado, the illustrious "Master of the Horse to the Doge of Venice," tells us, in his far-famed treatise on the Art Equestrian, that the most embarrassing position in which a rider can be placed is, when he wishes to go one way, and his horse is determined to go another. There is, to be sure, a tertium quid, which, though it "splits the difference," scarcely obviates the inconvenience; this is when the parties compromise the matter by not going any way at all—to this compromise Peggy, and her (soi-disant) master were now reduced; they had fairly joined issue. "Budge!" quoth the doctor.—"Budge not!" quoth the fiend,—for nothing short of a fiend could, of a surety, inspire Peggy at such a time with such unwonted obstinacy.—Moneypenny whipped and spurred—Peggy plunged, and reared, and kicked, and for several minutes to a superficial observer the termination of the contest might have appeared uncertain; but your profound thinker sees at a glance that, however the scales may appear to vibrate, when the question between the sexes is one of perseverance, it is quite a lost case for the masculine gender. Peggy beat the doctor "all to sticks," and when he was fairly tired of goading and thumping, maintained her position as firmly as ever.
It is of no great use, and not particularly agreeable, to sit still, on a cold frosty morning in January, upon the outside of a brute that will neither go forwards nor backwards—so Mr. Moneypenny got off, and muttering curses both "loud" and "deep" between his chattering teeth, "progressed," as near as the utmost extremity of the extended bridle would allow him, to peep among the weeds and brushwood that flanked the road, in order to discover, if possible, what it was that so exclusively attracted the instinctive attention of his Bucephalus.
His curiosity was not long at fault; the sunbeam glanced partially upon some object ruddier even than itself—it was a scarlet waist-coat, the wearer of which, overcome perchance by Christmas compotation, seemed to have selected for his "thrice driven bed of down," the thickest clump of the tallest and most-imposing nettles, thereon to doze away the narcotic effects of superabundant juniper.
This, at least, was Mr. Moneypenny's belief, or he would scarcely have uttered, at the highest pitch of his contralto, "What are you doing there, you drunken rascal? frightening my horse!"—We have already hinted, if not absolutely asserted, that Peggy was a mare; but this was no time for verbal criticism.—"Get up, I say,—get up, and go home, you scoundrel!"—But the "scoundrel" and "drunken rascal" answered not; he moved not, nor could the prolonged shouting of the appellant, aided by significant explosions from a double-thonged whip, succeed in eliciting a reply. No motion indicated that the recumbent figure, whose outline alone was visible, was a living and a breathing man!
The clear, shrill tones of a ploughboy's whistle sounded at this moment from the bottom of the hill, where the broad and green expanse of Romney Marsh stretches away from its foot for many a mile, and now gleamed through the mists of morning, dotted and enamelled with its thousand flocks. In a few minutes his tiny figure was seen "slouching" up the ascent, casting a most disproportionate and ogre-like shadow before him.
"Come here, Jack," quoth the doctor,—"come here, boy, lay hold of this bridle, and mind that my horse does not run away."
Peggy threw up her head, and snorted disdain of the insinuation,—she had not the slightest intention of doing any such thing.
Mr. Moneypenny meanwhile, disencumbered of his restive nag, proceeded by manual application to arouse the sleeper. Alas! the Seven of Ephesus might sooner have been awakened from their century of somnolency. His was that "dreamless sleep that knows no walking;" his cares in this world were over. Vainly did Moneypenny practise his own constant precept, "To be well shaken!"—there lay before him the lifeless body of a MURDERED MAN!