stand quiet for a while, would
try to settle himself to leeward of one of the larger trees.

But the fates were against all attempts at repose. He had
scarcely time to produce a cheroot from his case and light it
under many difficulties, when the horses would begin fidgeting,
and pulling at their bridles, and shifting round to get their
tails to the wind. They clearly did not understand the necessity
of the position, and were inclined to be moving stable-wards. So
he had to get up again, sling the bridles over his arm, and take
to his march up and down the plot of turf; now stopping for a
moment or two to try to get his cheroot to burn straight, and
pishing and pshawing over its perverseness; now going again and
again to the brow, and looking along the road which led to the
village, holding his hat on tight with one hand,--for by this
time it was blowing half a gale of wind.

Though it was not yet quite the hour for his setting, the sun had
disappeared behind a heavy bank of wicked slate-coloured cloud,
which looked as though it were rising straight up into the
western heavens, while the wind whirled along and twisted into
quaint shapes a ragged rift of white vapor, which went hurrying
by, almost touching the tops of the moaning firs,--altogether an
uncanny evening to be keeping tryst at the top of a wild knoll;
and so thought our friend with the horses, and showed it, too,
clearly enough, had anyone been there to put a construction on
his impatient movements.

There was no one nearer than the village, of which the nearest
house was half a mile and more away; so, by way of passing the
time, we must exercise our privilege of putting into words what
he is half thinking, half muttering to himself:--

"A pleasant night I call this, to be out on a wild goose chase.
If ever I saw a screaming storm brewing, there it comes. I'll be
hanged if I stop up here to be caught in it for all the
crack-brained friends I ever had in the world; and I seem to have
a faculty for picking up none but crack-brained ones. I wonder
what the plague can keep him so long; he must have been gone an
hour. There, steady, steady, old horse. Confound this weed! What
rascals these tobacconists are! You never can get a cheroot now
worth smoking. Every one of them goes sputtering up the side, or
charring up the middle, and tasting like tow soaked in saltpetre
and tobacco juice. Well, I suppose I shall get the real thing in
India."

"India! In a mon