In the public room there was a great deal said about Goarly, to all of which the Senator listened with eager ears,--for the Senator preferred the public breakfast as offering another institution to his notice.

"He'll swing on a gallows afore he's dead," said one energetic farmer who was sitting next to Mr.
Gotobed,--a fat man with a round head, and a bullock's neck, dressed in a black coat with breeches and top-boots.

John Runce was not a riding man.

He was too heavy and short-winded;--too fond of his beer and port wine; but he was a hunting man all over, one who always had a fox in the springs at the bottom of his big meadows, one to whom it was the very breath of his nostrils to shake hands with the hunting gentry and to be known as a staunch friend to the U.R.U.A man did not live in the county more respected than John Runce, or who was better able to pay his way.

To his thinking an animal more injurious than Goarly to the best interests of civilisation could not have been produced by all the evil influences of the world combined.