 at this
interruption, which had thrown him in the rear of the hunt near the moment of
glory, and under this exasperation had taken the fences more blindly. He would
soon have been up with the hounds again, when the fatal accident happened; and
hence he was between eager riders in advance, not troubling themselves about
what happened behind them, and far-off stragglers, who were as likely as not to
pass quite aloof from the line of road in which Wildfire had fallen. Dunstan,
whose nature it was to care more for immediate annoyances than for remote
consequences, no sooner recovered his legs, and saw that it was all over with
Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction at the absence of witnesses to a position
which no swaggering could make enviable. Reinforcing himself, after his shake,
with a little brandy and much swearing, he walked as fast as he could to a
coppice on his right hand, through which it occurred to him that he could make
his way to Batherley without danger of encountering any member of the hunt. His
first intention was to hire a horse there and ride home forthwith, for to walk
many miles without a gun in his hand and along an ordinary road, was as much out
of the question to him as to other spirited young men of his kind. He did not
much mind about taking the bad news to Godfrey, for he had to offer him at the
same time the resource of Marner's money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he always
did, at the notion of making a fresh debt from which he himself got the smallest
share of advantage, why, he wouldn't kick long: Dunstan felt sure he could worry
Godfrey into anything. The idea of Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now
the want of it had become immediate; the prospect of having to make his
appearance with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter
the grinning queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of his
impatience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and a casual
visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was ruminating, awakened his memory to
the fact that the two or three small coins his fore-finger encountered there,
were of too pale a colour to cover that small debt, without payment of which the
stable-keeper had declared he would never do any more business with Dunsey Cass.
After all, according to the direction in which the run had brought him, he was
not so very much farther from home than he was from Batherley; but Dunsey, not
