ve a laugh, going on his own ways
with the "team" as before, to the despair of his fidus Achates; the
Seraph being a quarry so incessantly pursued by dowager-beaters,
chaperone-keepers, and the whole hunt of the Matrimonial Pack, with
those clever hounds Belle and Fashion ever leading in full cry after
him, that he dreaded the sight of a ballroom meet; and, shunning the
rich preserves of the Salons, ran to earth persistently in the shady
Wood of St. John's, and got--at some little cost and some risk of
trapping, it is true, but still efficiently--preserved from all other
hunters or poachers by the lawless Robin Hoods aux yeux noirs of those
welcome and familiar coverts.

CHAPTER V.

UNDER THE KEEPER'S TREE.

"You're a lad o' wax, my beauty!" cried Mr. Rake enthusiastically,
surveying the hero of the Grand Military with adoring eyes as that
celebrity, without a hair turned or a muscle swollen from his exploit,
was having a dressing down after a gentle exercise. "You've pulled it
off, haven't you? You've cut the work out for 'em! You've shown 'em what
a luster is! Strike me a loser, but what a deal there is in blood. The
littlest pippin that ever threw a leg across the pigskin knows that in
the stables; then why the dickens do the world run against such a plain
fact out of it?"

And Rake gazed with worship at the symmetrical limbs of the champion
of the "First Life," and plunged into speculation on the democratic
tendencies of the age, as clearly contradicted by all the evidences of
the flat and furrow, while Forest King drank a dozen go-downs of
water, and was rewarded for the patience with which he had subdued
his inclination to kick, fret, spring, and break away throughout the
dressing by a full feed thrown into his crib, which Rake watched him,
with adoring gaze, eat to the very last grain.

"You precious one!" soliloquized that philosopher, who loved the horse
with a sort of passion since his victory over the Shires. "You've won
for the gentlemen, my lovely--for your own cracks, my boy!"

And Rake, rendered almost melancholy by his thoughts, went out of the
box to get into saddle and ride off on an errand of his master's to the
Zu-Zu at her tiny hunting-lodge, where the snow-white ponies made her
stud, and where she gave enchanting little hunting-dinners, at which she
sang equally enchanting little hunting-songs, and arrayed herself, in
the Fontainebleau hunting costume, gold-hilted knife and all, and spen