Mr.Garth mumbled something beneath his breath.
He was beginning to wish himself well out of an ungracious business.
Not even revenge sweetened by profit could sustain his spirits under the battery of the combined ridicule and contempt of the men he had undertaken to serve.
"A fine wild-goose chase this," said one of the constables.

He had not spoken before, but had toiled along on his horse at the obvious expenditure of much physical energy and more temper.
"Grumbling again, Jonathan; when will you be content ?" The speaker was a little man with keen eyes, a supercilious smile, a shrill sharp voice, and peevish manners.
"Not while I'm in danger of breaking my neck every step, or being lost on a moor nearly as trackless as an ocean, or swallowed up in mists like the clouds of steam in a century of washing days, or drowned in the soapsuds of ugly, gaping pits,--tarns you call them, I believe.
And all for nothing, too,--not so much as the glint of a bad guinea will we get out of this fine job." "Don't be too sure of that," said the little man.

"If this blockhead here," with a lurch of the head backwards to where the blacksmith rode behind, "hasn't blundered in his 'reckonings,' we'll bag the game yet." "That you never will, mark my words.

I've taken the measure of our man before to-day.

He's enough for fifty such as our precious guide.