Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 | Page 6

times. We were very jolly afterwards, and
amazingly triumphant over the frost-bitten, snow-buried
soldier-banditti that had so long lorded it over continental Europe.
Dutton did not partake of the general hilarity. There was a sneer upon
his lip during the whole time, which, however, found no expression in
words.
'How quiet you are, James Dutton!' cried a loud voice from out the
dense smoke-cloud that by this time completely enveloped us. On
looking towards the spot from whence the ringing tones came, a jolly,
round face--like the sun as seen through a London fog--gleamed redly
dull from out the thick and choking atmosphere.
'Everybody,' rejoined Dutton, 'hasn't had the luck to sell two hundred
quarters of wheat at to-day's price, as you have, Tom Southall.'
'That's true, my boy,' returned Master Southall, sending, in the
plenitude of his satisfaction, a jet of smoke towards us with astonishing
force. 'And, I say, Jem, I'll tell ee what I'll do; I'll clap on ten guineas
more upon what I offered for the brown mare.'
'Done! She's yours, Tom, then, for ninety guineas!'

'Gie's your hand upon it!' cried Tom Southall, jumping up from his
chair, and stretching a fist as big as a leg of mutton--well, say
lamb--over the table. 'And here--here,' he added, with an exultant
chuckle, as he extricated a swollen canvas-bag from his pocket--'here's
the dibs at once.'
This transaction excited a great deal of surprise at our part of the table;
and Dutton was rigorously cross-questioned as to his reason for parting
with his favourite hunting mare.
'The truth is, friends,' said Dutton at last, 'I mean to give up farming,
and'----
'Gie up farmin'!' broke in half-a-dozen voices. 'Lord!'
'Yes; I don't like it. I shall buy a commission in the army. There'll be a
chance against Boney, now; and it's a life I'm fit for.'
The farmers looked completely agape at this announcement; but
making nothing of it, after silently staring at Dutton and each other,
with their pipes in their hands and not in their mouths, till they had
gone out, stretched their heads simultaneously across the table towards
the candles, relit their pipes, and smoked on as before.
'Then, perhaps, Mr Dutton,' said a young man in a smartly-cut
velveteen coat with mother-of-pearl buttons, who had hastily left his
seat further down the table--'perhaps you will sell the double Manton,
and Fanny and Slut?'
'Yes; at a price.'
Prices were named; I forget now the exact sums, but enormous prices, I
thought, for the gun and the dogs, Fanny and Slut. The bargain was
eagerly concluded, and the money paid at once. Possibly the buyer had
a vague notion, that a portion of the vender's skill might come to him
with his purchases.
'You be in 'arnest, then, in this fool's business, James Dutton,' observed

a farmer gravely. 'I be sorry for thee; but as I s'pose the lease of Ash
Farm will be parted with; why---- John, waiter, tell Master Hurst at the
top of the table yonder, to come this way.'
Master Hurst, a well-to-do, highly respectable-looking, and rather
elderly man, came in obedience to the summons, and after a few words
in an under-tone with the friend that had sent for him, said: 'Is this true,
James Dutton?'
'It is true that the lease and stock of Ash Farm are to be sold--at a price.
You, I believe, are in want of such a concern for the young couple, just
married.'
'Well, I don't say I might not be a customer, if the price were
reasonable.'
'Let us step into a private room, then,' said Dutton rising. 'This is not a
place for business of that kind. Sharp,' he added, sotto voce, 'come with
us; I may want you.'
I had listened to all this with a kind of stupid wonderment, and I now,
mechanically as it were, got up and accompanied the party to another
room.
The matter was soon settled. Five hundred pounds for the lease--ten
years unexpired--of Ash Farm, about eleven hundred acres, and the
stock, implements; the ploughing, sowing, &c. already performed, to be
paid for at a valuation based on present prices. I drew out the
agreement in form, it was signed in duplicate, a large sum was paid
down as deposit, and Mr Hurst with his friend withdrew.
'Well,' I said, taking a glass of port from a bottle Dutton had just
ordered in--'here's fortune in your new career; but as I am a living man,
I can't understand what you can be thinking about.'
'You haven't read the newspapers?'
'O yes, I have! Victory! Glory! March to Paris! and all that sort of thing.

Very fine, I daresay; but rubbish, moonshine, I call it, if purchased by
the abandonment of the useful, comfortable, joyous life of a