He had carried it up from the valley, expecting hospitality, and she had sent him forth half naked to weather a frosty November night! She called in the groom, whose derision of a great-coat for any gentleman upon Bertha, meaning work for the mare, appeased her remorsefulness.

Brisby, the groom, reckoned how long the mare would take to do the distance to Storling, with a rider like Mr.Redworth on her back.

By seven, Brisby calculated, Mr.Redworth would be knocking at the door of the Three Ravens Inn, at Storling, when the mare would have a decent grooming, and Mr.Redworth was not the gentleman to let her be fed out of his eye.

More than that, Brisby had some acquaintance with the people of the inn.

He begged to inform her ladyship that he was half a Sussex man, though not exactly born in the county; his parents had removed to Sussex after the great event; and the Downs were his first field of horse-exercise, and no place in the world was like them, fair weather or foul, Summer or Winter, and snow ten feet deep in the gullies.