Supposing he should not be the unmanageable devil he was
represented,--supposing all his schemes came to grief, what then? Why,
then, there were other ways of getting rid of Lionel Dale, and he
should only be the poorer by the purchase of a horse. On the other
hand, "Wild Buffalo," plodding along a heavy country road, almost in
the dark, and after the probably not too honestly dispensed feeding of
a village inn, which Carrington had not personally superintended, was
no doubt a very different animal to what he might be expected to prove
himself in the hunting-field. Pondering upon these probabilities,
Victor Carrington rode slowly on towards Hallgrove. He had taken
accurate observations; he had nicely calculated time and place. All the
servants, tenants, and villagers were gathered together under Lionel
Dale's hospitable roof. To the feasting had succeeded games and
story-telling, and the absorbing gossip of such a reunion. That which
Victor Carrington had come to do, he did successfully; and when he
returned to his inn, and gave over his horse to the care of the ostler,
no one but he, not even the man who was there listening to every word
spoken among the servants at the rectory, and eagerly scanning every
face there, knew that "Niagara" was in the inn-stable, and "Wild
Buffalo" in the stall at Hallgrove.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXII.
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