Moonbeam with two horses,--and from that
day to this hunting had been the chief aim of his life. During the
last winter he had hunted six days a week,--assuring Sir Thomas,
however, that at the end of that season his wild oats would have
been sown as regarded that amusement, and that henceforth he should
confine himself to two days a week. Since that he had justified the
four horses which still remained at the Moonbeam by the alleged fact
that horses were drugs in April, but would be pearls of price in
November. Sir Thomas could only expostulate, and when he did so, his
late ward and present friend, though he was always courteous, would
always argue. Then he fell, as was natural, into intimacies with such
men as Cox and Fooks. There was no special harm either in Cox or
Fooks; but no one knew better than did Ralph Newton himself that they
were not such friends as he had promised himself when he was younger.

Fathers, guardians, and the race of old friends generally, hardly
ever give sufficient credit to the remorse which young men themselves
feel when they gradually go astray. They see the better as plainly
as do their elders, though they so often follow the worse,--as not
unfrequently do the elders also. Ralph Newton passed hardly a day
of his life without a certain amount of remorse in that he had not
managed himself better than he had done, and was now doing. He knew
that Fortune had been very good to him, and that he had hitherto
wasted all her gifts. And now there came the question whether it
was as yet too late to retrieve the injury which he had done. He
did believe,--not even as yet doubting his power to do well,--that
everything might be made right, only that his money difficulties
pressed him so hardly. He took pen and paper, and made out a list of
his debts, heading the catalogue with Mr. Horsball of the Moonbeam.
The amount, when added together, came to something over four thousand
pounds, including a debt of three hundred to his brother the parson.
Then he endeavoured to value his property, and calculated that if he
sold all that was remaining to him he might pay what he owed, and
have something about fifty pounds per annum left to live upon till he
should inherit his uncle's property. But he doubted the accuracy even
of this, knowing that new and unexpected debts will always crop up
when the day of settlement arrives. Of course he could not live upon
fifty pounds a year. It would have seemed to him to be al