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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Boy Woodburn, by Alfred Ollivant
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Boy Woodburn
+       A Story of the Sussex Downs
+
+Author: Alfred Ollivant
+
+Release Date: March 11, 2006 [EBook #17965]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOY WOODBURN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Graeme Mackreth and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOY WOODBURN
+
+
+
+
+  By the same Author:
+
+BOB, SON OF BATTLE
+THE GENTLEMAN
+REDCOAT CAPTAIN
+THE ROYAL ROAD
+THE BROWN MARE
+
+[Illustration: FOUR-POUND-THE-SECOND
+
+"Look at that head-piece. He's all the while a-thinkin', that hoss is.
+That's the way he's bred."]
+
+
+
+
+BOY
+WOODBURN
+
+A STORY OF THE
+SUSSEX DOWNS
+
+By
+ALFRED OLLIVANT
+
+
+GARDEN CITY      NEW YORK
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+1918
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1918, by
+
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+
+All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
+languages including the Scandinavian
+
+
+
+
+TO
+THE MOTHER
+OF
+LAUGHTER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PART I
+THE GIRL AND THE FOAL
+
+
+BOOK I
+OLD MAT
+
+CHAPTER                                      PAGE
+
+I. The Trainer                                 3
+
+II. Boy Shows Her Metal                        8
+
+III. Goosey Gander                            13
+
+IV. The Gypsy's Mare                          19
+
+V. Across the Downs                           23
+
+VI. Putnam's                                  32
+
+VII. Ally Sloper                              39
+
+VIII. The Great Beast                         44
+
+
+BOOK II
+THE WATCHER
+
+IX. Patience Longstaffe                       55
+
+X. Her Daughter                               60
+
+XI. Brazil Silver                             69
+
+XII. The Eton Man                             76
+
+XIII. Boy in Her Eyrie                        81
+
+XIV. Old Man Badger                           90
+
+XV. The Three J's                             95
+
+XVI. The Fat Man                             100
+
+XVII. Boy Sees a Vision                      105
+
+XVIII. Two on the Downs                      114
+
+XIX. Cannibal's National                     120
+
+XX. The Paddock Close                        128
+
+
+BOOK III
+SILVER MUG
+
+XXI. The Berserker Colt                      137
+
+XXII. Ragamuffin                             147
+
+XXIII. The Duke's Hounds                     153
+
+XXIV. The Man With the Gamp                  160
+
+XXV. The Black Bird                          170
+
+XXVI. Jim Silver Goes To War                 179
+
+XXVII. The Fire in the Dusk                  185
+
+XXVIII. The Fat Man Goes Under               191
+
+Battle                                       193
+
+
+PART II
+THE WOMAN AND THE HORSE
+
+
+BOOK IV
+THE TRIAL
+
+XXIX. Albert Edward                           201
+
+XXX. The Bible Class                          208
+
+XXXI. God Almighty's Mustang                  221
+
+XXXII. The Fat Man Emerges                    229
+
+XXXIII. The Gallop                            234
+
+XXXIV. The Lover's Quarrel                    245
+
+
+BOOK V
+MONKEY BRAND
+
+XXXV. The Dancer's Son                        255
+
+XXXVI. Monkey Sulks                           262
+
+XXXVII. The Early Bird                        268
+
+XXXVIII. Ikey's Own                           272
+
+XXXIX. The Queen of Kentucky                  278
+
+XL. Man and Woman                             285
+
+XLI. The Spider's Web                         290
+
+XLII. The Doper                               294
+
+XLIII. The Loose-box                          299
+
+XLIV. Monkey Brand Gets the Sack              306
+
+
+BOOK VI
+MOCASSIN
+
+XLV. Aintree                                  313
+
+XLVI. The Sefton Arms                         317
+
+XLVII. On the Course                          324
+
+XLVIII. The Star-spangled Jacket              336
+
+XLIX. The Last Card                           356
+
+L. The Fat Man Takes His Ticket               365
+
+LI. Old Mat on Heaven and Earth               374
+
+LII. Putnam's Once More                       376
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+THE GIRL AND THE FOAL
+
+BOOK I
+
+OLD MAT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The Trainer
+
+
+The Spring Meeting at Polefax was always Old Mat's day out. And it was
+part of the accepted order of things that he should come to the Meeting
+driving in his American buggy behind the horse with which later in the
+day he meant to win the Hunters' Steeplechase.
+
+There were very few sporting men who remembered the day when Mat had not
+been a leading figure in the racing world. For sixty years he had been
+training jumpers, and he looked as if he would continue to train them
+till the end of time. Once it may be supposed he had been Young Mat, but
+he had been Old Mat now as long as most could recall. In all these
+years, indeed, he had changed very little. He trained his horses to-day
+at Putnam's, the farm in the village of Cuckmere, over the green billow
+of the Downs, just as he had done in the beginning; and he trained the
+same kind of horses in the same kind of way, which was entirely
+different from that of other trainers.
+
+Mat rarely had a good horse in his stable, and never a bad one. He kept
+his horses in old barns and farm-stables, turning them out on to the
+chalk Downs in all seasons of the year with little shelter but the lee
+of a haystack or an occasional shed.
+
+"I don't keep my hosses in no 'ot-house," he would say. "A hoss wants a
+heart, not a hot-water bottle. He'll get it on the chalk, let him be."
+
+But if his horses were rough, they stood up and they stayed.
+
+And that was all he wanted: for Mat never trained anything but jumpers.
+
+"Flat racin' for flats," was a favourite saying of his. "'Chasin' for
+class."
+
+And many of his wins have become historic; notably the Grand National in
+the year of Sedan--when Merry Andrew, who had three legs and one lung,
+so the story went, won for him by two lengths; and thirty years later
+Cannibal's still more astounding victory in the same race, when Monkey
+Brand out-jockeyed Chukkers Childers, the American crack, in one of the
+most desperate set-to's in the annals of Aintree.
+
+There is a famous caricature of Mat leading in the winner on the first
+of these occasions. He looked then much as he does to-day--like
+Humpty-Dumpty of the nursery ballad; but he grew always more
+Humpty-Dumptyish with the years. His round red head, bald and shining,
+sat like a poached egg between the enormous spread of his shoulders. His
+neck, always short, grew shorter and finally disappeared; and his crisp,
+pink face had the air of one who finds breathing a perpetually
+increasing difficulty.
+
+In build Mat was very short, and very broad; and his legs were so thin
+that it was no wonder they were somewhat bowed beneath their load. Far
+back in the Dark Ages, when his body was more on a par with his legs,
+it was rumoured that Mat had himself won hunt-races.
+
+"Then my body went on, or rayther spread out," he would tell his
+intimates, "while me legs stayed where they was. So Mat become a trainer
+'stead of a jockey."
+
+And Mat's legs were not the only part of him that had stayed as they
+were in those remote days. He wore the same clothes now as then; or if
+not the identical clothes, as many averred, clothes of the identical
+cut. Younger trainers, who were fond of having their joke with the old
+man, would often inquire of him,
+
+"Who's your tailor, Mat?"
+
+To which the invariable answer in the familiar wheeze was,
+
+"He died reign o' William the Fo'th, my son. Don't you wish he'd lived
+to show _your_ Snips how to cut a coat?"
+
+Mat indeed was distinctly early Victorian in his dress. He always wore a
+stock instead of a tie, and the felt hat with a flat top and
+broad-curled brim, which a rising young Radical statesman, for whom Mat
+had once trained, had imitated. He walked with a curious and
+characteristic lilt, as of a boy, rising on his toes as though reaching
+after heaven. And his eye underlined, as it were, the mischievous gaiety
+of his walk. It was a baffling eye: bright, blue, merry as a robin's and
+very shrewd; "the eye of a cherubim," Mat once described it himself.
+When it turned on you, grave yet twinkling, you knew that it summed you
+up, saw through you, was aware of your wickedness, condoned it, pitied
+you, comforted you, and bade you rejoice in the world and its crooked
+ways. It was an innocent eye, a dewy eye, and yet a mighty knowing one.
+Whether the owner of the eye was a saint or a sinner you could not
+affirm. Therefore it bade you beware what you said, what you did, and
+not least, what you thought, while its mild yet radiant beams were
+turned upon you. One thing was quite certain: that blue eye had seen a
+great deal. More, it had enjoyed the seeing. And its owner had a way of
+wiping it as he ended some tale of rascality, successful or exposed,
+with his habitual cliche--"I wep a tear. I did reelly," which made you
+realize that the only tears it had in fact ever wept were in truth tears
+of suppressed laughter over the foolishness of mortals. It had never
+mourned over a lost sinner, though it had often winked over one. And it
+had profound and impenetrable reserves.
+
+And the trainer's ups and downs in life, if all the stories were true,
+had been amazing. At one time it was said that he was worth a cool
+L100,000, and at another a minus quantity. But rich or poor, he never
+changed his life by an iota, jogging soberly along his appointed if
+somewhat tortuous way.
+
+Old Mat was nothing if not a character. And if he was by no means more
+scrupulous than the rest of his profession, he had certain steadfast
+virtues not always to be found in his brethren of the Turf. He never
+drank, he never smoked, and, win or lose, he never swore. A great
+raconteur, his stories were most amusing and never obscene. And when
+late in life he married Patience Longstaffe, the daughter of the
+well-known preacher of _God-First_ farm on the North of the Downs
+between Lewes and Cuckmere, nobody was much surprised. As Mr. Haggard,
+the Vicar of Cuckmere, said,
+
+"Mat could always be expected to do the unexpected."
+
+That Patience Longstaffe, the Puritan daughter of Preacher Joe, should
+marry the old trainer was a matter of amazement to all. But she did; and
+nobody had reason to think that she ever regretted it.
+
+Patience Longstaffe became in time Ma Woodburn, though she remained
+Patience Longstaffe still.
+
+Mat and his Ma had one daughter between them, known to all and sundry in
+the racing world as Boy Woodburn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Boy Shows Her Metal
+
+
+The Polefax Meeting was small and friendly; never taken very seriously
+by the fraternity, and left almost entirely to local talent. Old Mat
+described it always as reg'lar old-fashioned. The countryside made of it
+an annual holiday and flocked to the fields under Polefax Beacon to see
+the horses and to enjoy Old Mat, who was the accepted centre-piece.
+
+The Grand Stand was formed of Sussex wains drawn up end to end; and the
+Paddock was just roped off.
+
+Outside the ropes, at the foot of the huge green wave of the Downs, were
+the merry-go-rounds, the cocoanut-shies and wagons of the gypsies; while
+under a group of elms the carts and carriages of the local farmers and
+gentry were drawn up.
+
+There, too, of course, was Mat's American buggy, a spidery concern, made
+to the old man's design, seated like a double dog-cart, and looking
+amongst the solid carts and carriages that flanked it like a ghost
+amongst mortals. It was the most observed vehicle of them all, partly
+because of its unusual make and shape, and partly because that was the
+famous shay in which year after year Mat drove over the Downs from
+Putnam's behind the horse with which he meant to win the Hunters'
+Steeplechase.
+
+That race, always the last item on the programme, and the most
+looked-for, was about to begin.
+
+The quality in the Paddock were climbing to their places in the wagons.
+The voices of the bookies were raised vociferously. The crowd jostled
+about them, eager to back Old Mat's old horse, Goosey Gander. They
+believed in the old man's luck, they believed in the old man's horse,
+they believed in the old man's jockey, Monkey Brand, almost as famous
+locally as his master.
+
+A boy slipped into the Paddock and began to bet surreptitiously behind
+the dressing-tent.
+
+He was fair, slight, and horsey. His stiff, tight choker, his horse-shoe
+pin, the cut of his breeches, his alert and wary air of a man of the
+world, all betrayed the racing-lad. From the corner of his mouth hung a
+cigarette waggishly a-rake; and his billycock had just the correct and
+knowing cock. He kept well under the lee of the tent; and if he was
+brazen, it was clear that he was sinning and fearful of discovery: for
+he had one eye always on the watch for the Avenging Angel who might
+swoop down on him at any moment.
+
+"What price, Goosey Gander?" he asked in a voice harsh and cracking.
+
+"Give you threes," replied the bookie.
+
+"Do it in dollars," replied the boy, with the magnificent sang-froid of
+one who goes to ruin as a man of blood should go.
+
+"And again?" asked the bookie.
+
+The answer was never forth-coming; for the Avenging Angel, not
+unexpected, swept down upon the sinner with flaming sword.
+
+She was in the shape of a girl about the lad's own age and size, fair as
+was he and slight, a flapper with a short thick straw-coloured plait.
+She came round the tent swift and terrible as a rapier, her steel-gray
+eyes flashing and fierce. Such determination on so young a face the
+bookie thought he had never seen. For a moment he expected to see her
+strike her victim. And the boy apparently expected the same, for he
+cowered back, putting up his hands as though to ward off a blow.
+
+"Got you, sonny," said the bookie, and bolted with a half-hearted grin.
+
+The girl never hesitated. She leapt upon her victim, keen and direct as
+a tigress.
+
+"Give me that ticket!" she ordered in a deep bass voice whose
+earnestness was almost awful.
+
+The boy had recovered from his first shock.
+
+"It were only----"
+
+"Give me that ticket!"
+
+Reluctantly the lad obeyed.
+
+"Spit out that cigarette!"
+
+Again he obeyed. The girl put her broad flat heel on the chewed remnant
+and churned it into the mud.
+
+"Any others?"
+
+"No, Miss."
+
+"You have!--I'll search you."
+
+"Only a packet o' woodbines, Miss."
+
+She pocketed them remorselessly.
+
+"Leave the paddock!"
+
+The boy went, slow and sullen. Then he became aware of people watching
+beyond the ropes and recovered himself with a jerk.
+
+"Yes, Miss. Very good, Miss," he cried cheerfully, touched his hat, and
+began to run as on an errand.
+
+It was a pretty piece of bluff. Boy Woodburn, in spite of her anger,
+marked it down to the credit side of the lad's account. When he was
+collared, Albert Edward kept his head. That would help him one day when
+he was caught in a squeeze in a big race and had to jockey to get
+through.
+
+The roar from the crowd told her the race had started. She flashed back
+to the ropes, a slight figure, in simple blue serge, the radiant plait
+of her hair flapping as she ran.
+
+Old Mat, standing a little behind the crowd at the ropes, had watched
+the scene.
+
+"One o' my lads," he said in his mysterious wheeze to the big young man
+at his side. "'No smokin', swearin', or bettin' in _my_ stable!'--that's
+Miss Boy's rule. Gets it from Mar." The girl passed them swiftly and the
+old man hid his betting-book behind him. "Well, Boy, sossed him?" he
+asked innocently.
+
+"He's not the only one," retorted the girl.
+
+"O, I'm not bettin', Boy," pleaded the old man in the whimsical whine
+which he adopted when addressing his daughter. "Don't go and tell your
+mother that now. It wouldn't be right. Reelly it wouldn't. I'm only
+makin' a note or two for Mr. Silver here."
+
+The girl was lost in the crowd by the ropes.
+
+"She'd ha' come and sossed me, too, only you was with me," wheezed the
+old man confidentially. "You stick close to me, there's a dear. You're
+like a putection to an old man. She won't do me no 'arm while you're by,
+de we."
+
+The other smiled. He was an upstanding young man, with the shoulders and
+the bearing of a soldier; and there was something large and slow and
+elemental about him. He wore white riding-breeches and tan-coloured
+boots. The blood polo-pony under the elms, with the little group of
+coachmen and grooms gathered in an admiring circle round him, was his:
+and those who had seen Mat drive on to the course in the morning knew
+that the young man had ridden over the Downs from Putnam's with him.
+
+Boy took her place at the ropes.
+
+The young man found himself standing at her side. He did not watch the
+race. That keen young face at his side, so self-contained and strong,
+absorbed him.
+
+Once the girl looked up swiftly, and he was aware of her gray eyes, that
+flashed in his and were instantly withdrawn, to follow the bob of the
+heads of the jockeys lifting over a fence on the far side of the course.
+
+"Lul-like my glasses?" he asked, with a slight stutter.
+
+"No," she said. "I can see."
+
+Later she climbed on to the top of an upturned hamper. As the horses
+made the turn for home, he heard her draw her breath.
+
+"Is he down?" he asked.
+
+"No," she said. "He's got 'em beat."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"He's begun to ride," replied the girl briefly.
+
+Old Mat was nibbling his pencil in the rear.
+
+"How's it going, Boy?" he wheezed.
+
+"All right," replied the girl. "He's through now."
+
+The dirty green of the Woodburn colours topped the last fence; and
+Goosey Gander came lolloping down the straight, his jockey, head on
+shoulder, wary to the end, easing him home.
+
+"That's a little bit o' better," said Old Mat comfortably, totting up
+his accounts.
+
+"By Jove, he's a fine horseman!" cried the young man with boyish
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Monkey Brand!" said the girl, without emotion. "One of the has-beens, I
+should say."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Goosey Gander
+
+
+Boy Woodburn came leading the winner through the cheering crowd.
+
+It was Old Mat's horse, Old Mat's race; and they had all got a bit on.
+They were pleased with themselves, pleased with the horse, pleased with
+the jockey, who, perched up aloft on the great sweating bay, his hands
+still mechanically at work, his little dark face shining, chaffed his
+chaffers in the voice of a Punchinello.
+
+"Get off him, Monkey," called a joker; "get off quick afore he falls to
+pieces. _Do!_"
+
+"Same as you do when I get talkin' to ye!" retorted the little jockey.
+
+There was a roar of laughter at the expense of the joker, who turned
+suddenly nasty.
+
+"Who said Chukkers?" he cried.
+
+There was an instant of silence, and then some groans.
+
+"Not me," replied the little jockey grimly.
+
+A snigger rippled through the crowd.
+
+"What you done with your old friend this time, Monkey?" somebody asked.
+"Laid him out again lately?"
+
+"No such luck," the other answered. "He's beat it."
+
+"Where is he then?"
+
+The little jockey tossed his head backward.
+
+"Gone back to God's Own Country to find his birf certificate. No flowers
+by request."
+
+The reference was to the fact that Monkey's old-time enemy, the
+vanquished of Cannibal's National fifteen years before, Chukkers, the
+greatest of cross-country riders, was an American citizen of uncertain
+origin.
+
+The thrust was received with a fresh outburst from the hilarious crowd.
+Monkey Brand's relations with his "old friend" were well known to all.
+
+The little jockey prepared to dismount.
+
+Amid a burst of jeers and cheers, he threw his leg over his horse's
+withers, slipped to the ground, stripped off the saddle, and limped off
+to the weighing machine.
+
+Old Mat watched him go.
+
+"On his hoss, on his day," he muttered confidentially to the young man,
+"Monkey Brand can show his heels to most of 'em yet."
+
+"How old is he?" asked the other.
+
+The old trainer frowned and shook his head mysteriously.
+
+"You must never ask a jockey his age, no more than a woman," he said.
+"He come to me the year I was married, and that's twenty year since come
+Michaelmas. And when he come he looked much just the very same as he do
+now. Might ha' been any age atween ten and a hundred." He dropped his
+voice. "Only way he shows his years--he ain't so fond of fallin' as he
+was. And I don't blame him. Round about forty a man begins to get a bit
+brittle like."
+
+He lilted off after his jockey.
+
+Goosey Gander stood stripped of everything but his bridle, with dark
+flanks and lowered head reaching at his bit.
+
+He was a typical Woodburn horse: a great upstanding bay, full of bone
+and quality. But he showed wear. A tube was in his throat, a
+leather-boot on each fore-leg, and he was bandaged to the hocks, both of
+which showed the serrated lines of the firing iron.
+
+The girl in front of him pulled his sweating ears. Jim Silver watched
+with admiration not untinged with awe her stern young face. She was
+entirely unconscious of his gaze, and unaware of the people thronging
+her. Her whole spirit was concentrated on the dark and sweating head,
+trying to rub against her knees. The crowd pressed in upon her
+inconveniently.
+
+"Give the lady a chance to breathe," cried the young man in his large
+and lazy voice.
+
+The crowd withdrew a little.
+
+"Say, Guv'nor!--do they call you Tinee?" called one.
+
+"No; his name's Silver," said another. "They calls you Silver Mug, don't
+they, mister?"
+
+"I believe so," replied the young man, unmoved.
+
+He was fair game: for he was very big, clearly good-humoured, spick and
+span to a fault, and a member of another class.
+
+They gathered with glee to the baiting.
+
+"That ain't because of his name, stoopid. That's because he's got a
+silver linin' to his mug, ain't it, sir?"
+
+"Silver!--gold, you mean. 'E breathes gold, that bloke do, and then it
+settles on the roof of his jaw. Say, Blokey, open your mug and let's
+'ave a peep. I'll put a penny in."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little red ball was run up an improvised pole. Old Mat was waving.
+
+"All right," he called.
+
+The girl led Goosey Gander out of the Paddock into the field at the
+back. Women in parti-coloured shawls selling oranges, labourers,
+riff-raff, and children were gathered about the merry-go-rounds and
+cocoanut-shies, listening apathetically to the hoarse exhortations of
+the owners to come and try their luck.
+
+Silver followed the girl thoughtfully.
+
+She led the winner past the side-shows toward the group of stately elms
+under which the carriages and carts were gathered.
+
+The ejected stable-lad, Albert Edward, now in his shirt-sleeves, came
+toward her, carrying a bucket. The girl rinsed out the old horse's
+mouth. Then with swift, accustomed fingers she unlaced the
+leather-boots, and set to work to unwind a bandage.
+
+Jim Silver watched her attentively and then began clumsily on the other
+bandage.
+
+"No," she said. "Like so," and taking it from him unwound it in a trice.
+
+The old horse shook himself.
+
+"Go and fetch his rug from the buggy," ordered the girl, addressing
+Albert.
+
+The lad went off.
+
+The young man took off his long-waisted gray coat and flung it over the
+horse's loins, lining down.
+
+Boy's gray eyes softened. Then she let go the horse's head, took the
+coat off swiftly, and as swiftly replaced it, lining upward.
+
+"Thank-you," she said.
+
+She glanced over her shoulder.
+
+"Will you lead him up and down, while I go and fetch his rug?" she said.
+"That kid'll be all day."
+
+"Rather!" replied the young man, with the fervour of a child to whom a
+pony has been entrusted for the first time.
+
+The girl's neat slight blue-serge figure made off for the elms and the
+carriages. Her back turned to the young man, the sternness left her
+face, and she smiled.
+
+A blue-and-black sheep-dog, shaggy as a bear, and as big, leashed to the
+wheel of the buggy, began to whimper and to whine with furious ecstasy.
+The big dog's big soul seemed to burst within him as the Angel of the
+Keys drew near. He had no tail to wag, so he wagged his whole body,
+putting back his ears, and laughing with his heart as he lifted his
+joyous face to his mistress.
+
+She rested her hand a moment on his head.
+
+"Billy Bluff," she said. "Steady, you ass!--How can I loose
+you?--There!"
+
+She eased the spring of his leash. He was off with a bound, gambolling
+about her like a wave of the sea.
+
+Albert was messing about the buggy in leisurely fashion.
+
+"Hurry, Albert!" came the deep voice.
+
+"Yes, Miss," replied the other, more leisurely than ever.
+
+"Bring that clothes-brush along and brush Mr. Silver's coat when you've
+finished fooling," she said.
+
+Then she took the rug from the buggy and went back to Goosey Gander.
+
+The young man in his pink shirt-sleeves, his baggy white breeches, and
+polo boots, was walking the old horse gravely up and down, talking to
+him.
+
+His back was to the girl, and she watched him with kind eyes.
+
+She was thinking how like he and Goosey Gander were: good big uns both,
+as her father would say; clean-bred, large-boned, great-hearted,
+quiet-mannered. But the man was just coming into his prime, while the
+horse was well past his.
+
+"Hullo, Bill, old boy," said the young man in his quiet voice.
+
+Billy answered deeply.
+
+Silver had only come to Putnam's the night before for the first time,
+but he and Billy Bluff were friends already. Boy Woodburn noticed it
+with swift appreciation. In her young and entirely fallacious judgment
+there were few shrewder judges of character than Big Dog Billy.
+
+She paused a moment, pretending to shift the rug on her arm.
+
+The group of three before her held her eye and pleased her mind. Her
+face was full of beauty as she watched, the spirit peeping shyly forth.
+
+That horse, that man, that dog, so physically remote from each other,
+yet spiritually akin, filled her young heart with the same sense of
+satisfaction as did her familiar and well-beloved Downs. She felt the
+goodness of them and rejoiced in it. All three were sound in body and in
+spirit, honest, healthy, and therefore happy as the good red earth from
+which they came.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The Gypsy's Mare
+
+
+Monkey Brand in a long drab coat came limping toward them, his saddle
+over his arm.
+
+"Best put in, Miss," he said. "Mr. Woodburn's comin'."
+
+The old man indeed was rolling slowly toward them, followed by the
+chaffing and expectant crowd to whom he paid no heed. His mouth was
+stuffed full of bank-notes, and he was absorbed in calculations made in
+a little book, and muttering to himself.
+
+"We'd best be moving," said the girl to her companion.
+
+She led the old horse away before the oncoming crowd.
+
+Silver followed, with grave amusement in his face. He did not know
+whether he dared to laugh or not, and was too much afraid to try. The
+girl was aware of his embarrassment and became shy in her turn.
+
+She led the old horse up to the buggy.
+
+This was the tit-bit of the meeting, the last and by far the greatest
+event. Everybody always waited for it. For was it not the Grand Finale
+of the Jumping Season?
+
+Monkey Brand stuffed his saddle away in the buggy, and pulled the
+harness out from beneath the seat. Then he and Albert began to harness
+Goosey Gander, while Boy stood at the old horse's head.
+
+The crowd gathered round and began to chaff.
+
+"Say, Monkey, when you get that 'orse 'ome, shall you 'ave 'im for
+supper?--to finish the day like?"
+
+"They'll never get 'im 'ome. He's goin' to lay down and die when 'e
+strikes the road--ain't you, beauty? And I don't blame 'im neether."
+
+"He ain't though. They won't let him. That old 'orse has got to take the
+washin' round when he gets back to Cuckmere this evenin'."
+
+Goosey Gander was harnessed now.
+
+Old Mat made slowly toward the buggy.
+
+The crowd, which had been popping off its feu-de-joie of jokes, steadied
+into silence to watch the old man climb to his seat.
+
+"Someone to see you, Mr. Woodburn," came a voice in the silence.
+
+"Indeed," panted the old man, his heavy shoulders rising and falling.
+"Who's that?"
+
+There was a movement in the crowd, which parted. At the farther end of
+the lane thus made, a flashy young gypsy was seen, with a somnolent old
+mare on a halter.
+
+"There, Mr. Woodburn!" called the gypsy in a hoarse staccato voice.
+"There she is--your sort to the tick. Black Death blood. Throw you a
+National winner and all."
+
+The old man cast his shrewd blue eye over the mare.
+
+She was old and rough as the halter that adorned her drooping head; but
+there was no mistaking her quality any more than that her one aim in
+life was to go to sleep.
+
+"Yes, she's a lady all right," said the old man.
+
+"Black Death mare, sir," reiterated the gypsy. "Out o' Vendetta. Carry
+the young lady a dream."
+
+"Might ha' done twenty year ago," muttered the trainer. He took off his
+hat and made a floundering rush at the mare. She never so much as winked
+an eye, pursuing her undeviating purpose with a steadfastness worthy of
+a greater cause. Old Mat grunted.
+
+"Look her over, Boy," he said.
+
+The girl, who loved a bargain dearly as she loved a horse, was already
+walking round the mare. Her father was in a complacent mood; and when he
+was happy he would do the romantic and foolish things the girl's soul
+loved.
+
+"Like her, Boy?" the old man asked.
+
+The girl pursued her critical survey, felt the mare's legs, looked into
+her mouth, lifted an eye-lid. The crowd, deeply interested, watched in
+silence. Utterly absorbed in the work in hand, Boy, as always, was
+unaware of them because she was entirely forgetful of herself.
+
+"Yes," she said simply.
+
+The old man turned to the gypsy.
+
+"What ye want?" he asked.
+
+"She's yours for a tenner, sir."
+
+He stiffened his lips.
+
+Boy walked sedately past her father.
+
+"Pound a leg," she said quietly in his ear.
+
+"Four pound," said the old man, firmly. "Cash down--and accommodation."
+
+He rustled the bank-notes in his pocket.
+
+The gypsy frowned, and appeared to be engaged in a portentous spiritual
+struggle. Then the clouds cleared suddenly.
+
+"Done with you, sir!" he called, and hauled the old mare down the
+widening lane through the crowd. She came reluctantly, every inch of her
+resenting the necessity for motion.
+
+Old Mat paid out five sovereigns into the other's outstretched paw.
+
+"Four sovereigns for the mare--and a half for the halter, and a little
+bit o' beer-money."
+
+The crowd cheered and the gypsy danced a jig.
+
+"You're a gentleman, Mr. Woodburn," he cried. "Now I'll tell you somefin
+for yourself." He drew the old man aside and whispered in his ear,
+ending with an emphatic: "S'truth, sir!"
+
+The trainer grunted sceptically.
+
+"Now, Boy," he said. "There she is. Take charge o' your cripple."
+
+The girl, her face alight with pleasure, took the halter of the lagging
+mare.
+
+Old Mat gathered the reins and mounted to his seat. Monkey Brand took
+his place at his master's side. Boy got up behind, the halter in her
+hand.
+
+The trainer raised his whip.
+
+The buggy bumped over the grass, the old mare trailing behind with
+outstretched neck. The girl folded her arms and looked down her nose
+like a footman.
+
+Silver, following on his pony, saw her face and chuckled suddenly.
+
+This stern girl had a sense of humour after all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the chaff became a cheer; and the Polefax Meeting was over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Across the Downs
+
+
+What Old Mat called his little bit of theayter--which his irreverent
+daughter was wont to describe with characteristic brutality as sheer
+swank--was quickly over.
+
+As soon as the buggy left the fields and bumped down into the pack-horse
+track which led up the shoulder of the Downs, Old Mat halted. Boy
+slipped down from her seat, and the old man and Monkey Brand followed
+more leisurely. Silver dismounted, too.
+
+The little cavalcade wound slowly up the hill, skirting the steep side
+of a coombe that gathered the dusk in its huge green bowl until it
+brimmed with mystery.
+
+Boy looked down into it and longed, as often before, that she had wings
+on which to float upon that soft and undulating sea of shadow.
+
+Not seldom this desire was so strong upon her that she felt a certainty
+she _had_ wings, wings within her which she could not spread, but of the
+existence of which this insurgent desire was the irrefragable witness.
+
+The sides of the coombe were hung with beeches sheathed now in tenderest
+green; while from out of the emptiness beneath, the insistent and
+melancholy cry of lambs seemed to make the shadows quiver and touched a
+chord of wistfulness in the heart of the girl.
+
+The sun was already sinking behind the smooth ramparts of the hills and
+rose to meet them as they climbed, peering at them over the summit
+through the shaggy eyebrow of the gorse.
+
+Boy walked beside the old mare, throwing every now and then swift and
+surreptitious glances at her new treasure. She was fearful lest the
+young man leading his pony on the foot-track at her side should think
+her a baby and over-keen.
+
+Once only he spoke to her, and that clearly with the difficulty of the
+shy.
+
+"What shall you cuc-call her?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know," she answered.
+
+She longed to help him, but when the chance came she could only snub
+him. That was always the way with Boy, when she was in touch with
+somebody she liked.
+
+Old Mat came unconsciously to the rescue.
+
+"Why, Four Pound, o' course," he panted, labouring up the hill, his
+hands on his knees.
+
+"Is she Black Death blood?" asked the young man.
+
+"Yes, she's Black Death all right," answered the old man. "That's the
+old Pocahontas strain. Jumpers to a gee. You know. Look at them gray
+hairs at the root of her tail--and that lazy, too! sluttin' along with
+her nose out and her tongue a-waggin'. They're all like that, Black
+Deaths are. If you was to let off a bomb under her belly, she wouldn't
+so much as switch her tail. Couldn't be bothered. Constitutions like
+hoxes, too." He paused to pant. "If what that feller said was O.K., why
+then she's worth money, too. Only o' course it ain't. Else he wouldn't
+ha' said it."
+
+On the top of the Downs, facing the wind that blew straight from the sun
+sinking over Newhaven into the sea, they paused to breathe. Beneath
+them stretched the Weald, and the great saucer of Pevensey Bay ringed
+about with a line of brown sand fringed with foam. Northward was
+Crowborough Beacon, the Ashdown Forest Ridge, and the hills about Battle
+Abbey. Southward, and the way of the setting sun, the Downs ran out in
+huge spurs, line behind line of them, into the shining splendour of the
+sea, to break off abruptly in the white cliffs of the Seven Sisters. The
+hills were bare and bleak in their austere yet rounded strength,
+stripped of trees, clothed only in resplendent gorse, here a squat
+haystack dumped upon a ridge against the sky, there a great patch of
+plough let into the green.
+
+"By Jove!" cried the young man; and the girl thrilled to him because she
+felt he loved what was so much to her.
+
+"Some space," panted the old man, climbing back to his seat, and tucking
+the rug around him. "Room to stretch a hoss here; and somethin' for his
+windpipe better'n Owlbridge's lung-tonic."
+
+Boy said nothing but stood breathing deep and with quiet eyes. At her
+side was Billy Bluff, his shaggy hair blown back from his forehead and
+astrew across his face, lifting his nose as though to sniff the sunset.
+
+They jogged quietly along the crest of the hills, travelling always
+toward the sun, over the ancient Pilgrim's Way that runs from Pevensey,
+by the Holy Well in Cow Gap, and the Lamb on the hill at Eastbourne,
+past the Star at Alfiriston along the top of the Downs to that cathedral
+beyond the Arun, once a chapel of wood, whence St. Wilfrid set out to
+take the Gospel from the coast to the heathen dwelling in the dark and
+savage Andred's Weald.
+
+The slope was with them; and Goosey Gander made his own pace, slipping
+along with smooth and easy stride.
+
+They followed the line of the telegraph poles, skirting steep coombes
+shrouded at the foot with beech woods, past round-eyed dew-ponds, at
+which cloaked shepherds were watering their flocks. Once an encampment
+in the gorse caught their eyes. A yellow van, an ancient horse or two
+hobbled in the gorse-bushes, a patch of brown tent, and a whiff of blue
+smoke rising from an unseen fire, betrayed the nature of the squatters.
+
+The old man pointed them out with his whip.
+
+"There they are, the beauties," he said. "Thought they wouldn't be fur.
+Rogues and rasqueals, Mr. Silver!" he cried, twiddling his whip, and
+raising his voice to a sort of chant. "Rogues and rasqueals on h'every
+side, layin' in wait for to take a little bit off you--same as the
+Psalmist says. And it's no good talkin' to 'em. None whatebber." He
+dropped his voice to the old confidential note. "Pinch the hair off the
+back o' your head while you're sleepin', they would. Wonder who they
+sneaked _her_ off?"
+
+He turned his rogue-eye on the young man on the chestnut pony jogging at
+his side, winked, and made a movement with his elbow.
+
+"Course if they was to claim her, I got her off of an old friend o' mine
+down in the West Country," he said, raising his voice. "Better still
+Ireland as further away. Yes, South of Ireland--a'ter Punchestown. He'd
+better be dead, too, my old friend--so he can't tell no tales and deny
+no stories." He elaborated his idea with glee, clapping his sides with
+his elbows. "Yes, that's about it. I bought her in at the sale of the
+effects of an old friend o' mine, South of Ireland--to help his widie.
+That's got it. Good idee. Very good idee. Charity _and_ business--what
+they like. Micky Mahon, his name was. Died o'--I must have it all pat on
+the tongue. What _did_ he die of, Brand? You're an artful little feller,
+settin' there so smug and secret like a hen crocodile a-hatchin' h'out
+h'its h'egg."
+
+"Lung-trouble's best, sir," replied the little jockey gravely. "I reck'n
+you can't go far with lung-trouble. See, we all dies o' shortness o'
+breath in the latter end. That _is_ lung-trouble in a manner o'
+speakin'."
+
+"Lung-trouble's good," said the old man. "Vairy good. You're a good
+little lad, Brand. You help me in my hour o' need...."
+
+"Father!" came the stern voice from the back seat.
+
+The old man began to flap with his elbows.
+
+"There she goes, givin' tongue! Is that you, Miss?" he called, in his
+half-humorous whimper. "You wasn't meant to hear that. Your ears is
+altogether _too_ long--like that young Lollypop hoss o' mine."
+
+They swung away off the crest of the Downs and began to drop down the
+slope into the village of Cuckmere lying beneath them in the valley
+among trees.
+
+The sun dipped into the sea as they turned with a noise of grinding
+wheels into the village street. The news of Goosey Gander's victory had
+preceded them and they drove slowly through little crowds of cheering
+children, between old flint cottages with tiled roofs, and gardens white
+with arabis and overspread with fig-trees.
+
+As they turned a corner, Putnam's lay before them, a Queen Anne
+manor-house, homely, solid, snug, with low blue parapeted roof, standing
+a little back from the road, and buttressed by barns and
+stable-buildings.
+
+Directly they came in sight of the windows of the farm the old man took
+his hat off his shining head, put it on the end of his whip, and began
+to twiddle it.
+
+The signal was instantly answered.
+
+A handkerchief was waved at a lower window.
+
+"There's Mar!" Mat said comfortably, easing into a walk. "One thing, she
+ain't dead. _That's_ a little bit o' better."
+
+He gave his plump body a half-turn and began again to whimper over his
+shoulder to the occupant of the back seat.
+
+"You wouldn't get your old dad into trouble, would you then, Boy?--not
+by tellin' Mar I done a lot o' things I never dreamed o' doin'. If you
+was to say I betted now you'd say what wasn't true, wouldn't you?--and
+you've often told me what come to Annie Nyas and Sophia in the Book,
+haven't you? A lesson to us all that was--to be took to 'eart, as the
+sayin' is. All I done was just this: An old friend come up to me--had a
+drop in him, must have had!--and he says: 'Your old hoss won't win,
+Mat,' he says, very insultifyin'. 'My old hoss _will_ win then,' I
+answers, polite as you please. 'De we,' I says, mindful o' Mar. 'Will
+you back your opinion?' says he, sneery. 'No,' I says, very firm. 'No; I
+never bets--cause o' you know.' 'Oh, yes,' he says, 'I know you--and I
+know your master,' meaning Mar." He swung round and addressed the young
+man riding on his right. "That's 'ow they go on at me all the time, Mr.
+Silver," he whined. "Persecute me somethin' shockin' because o' me
+religion--for all the world as if I could help it."
+
+"It's not your religion," came the deep voice from the back seat. "It's
+mother's."
+
+"What's it matter whose religion it is if they martyrizes you for it at
+the stake?" wheezed the old man. He took up his tale anew. "So as I was
+sayin' he says to me, Sam Buckland do: 'Man to man,' he says, 'I respeck
+you for stickin' to principles what you don't 'old, Mat,' he says. 'And
+far be it from me to undermine a man's faith what he learned acrost his
+mother's knee,' he says. 'But see here,' he says; 'if that 'ole
+rockin'-hoss o' yours gets round the course I'll give you fi' pun for
+yourself; if a miracle happens and he gets a place I'll make it a
+tenner; and if all the other hosses takes and lays down and dies so as
+he wins outright, it's a pony to you.' And I says to him: 'As to my
+champion, Mr. Buckland,' I says, 'you're jealous of him and I don't
+blame you, seein' as he can roll faster nor any hoss o' yours can
+gallip. But if he _don't_ win,' I says, 'I'll give you fi' pun to buy
+yourself some manners with, fi' pun for your missus to get her a better
+'usband, and fi' pun for that bald-faced, ewe-knecked, calf-kneed son of
+a laughin' jack-ass who calls you dad.' That's all that happened' Boy.
+That's not bettin', is it? That's fair give-and-take. Quite a different
+thing entirely. Ask the clergee."
+
+They pulled up in the road.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn came slowly down the steps of the old manor-house to meet
+them.
+
+She was a tall woman, gray, rather gaunt, and perhaps twenty years
+younger than her husband. She wore a plain black dress, and there was
+about her a wonderful atmosphere of peace and dignity.
+
+Nobody but Mat would have dreamed of calling such a woman Mar, and any
+other woman of the type but Patience Longstaffe would have resented the
+name.
+
+"I'm glad you won, dad," she said in a voice deep as her daughter's, but
+harsher, as though from wear. "And I hope you won fair."
+
+The old man, who had alighted, was passing the reins through the rings
+of the saddle.
+
+"There she goes!" he croaked in his protesting voice. "Might just as
+well be on the crook--straight, I might, for all the credit I gets."
+
+Mrs. Woodburn kissed him and the girl, and ran a practised eye and hand
+down Goosey Gander's fore-legs.
+
+His wife might be a Puritan, but Mat was the first to admit that there
+was little about a horse he could teach her.
+
+"He got round all right, then, Brand?" she said.
+
+"Oh, yes, 'm," chirruped the little jockey. "It was light goin', so his
+pipe didn't trouble him; and he fenced like he was in Paridise. I lay
+off a bit till they was all bust, then I come right away through 'em and
+spread-eagled the lot."
+
+The woman's hand, strong yet tender, passed down the old horse's flank.
+
+"I see you waled him," she said.
+
+"Well, 'm, just a couple of taps like--to settle it," deprecated the
+other. "Three fences from home I see I'd got the measure of 'em, and
+come away from the ruck with a rattle. Then I easied him home."
+
+"You'd no call to take up your whip, Brand," grumbled the old man. "He'd
+ha' won without that, and you'd a plenty in hand."
+
+"_I_ told him to come through and finish it if he got a chance,"
+interposed Boy from the back.
+
+The old man turned away with a grunt.
+
+"Oh, _you_ told him, did you? Course my instructions goes for nothin'
+if _you_ told him. There's _two_ masters in my stable, Mr. Silver, as
+you see--and neither of 'em's me."
+
+"Mother!" called the girl.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn went round and looked at the old mare.
+
+"What d'you think of her?" asked Boy, unable to disguise her keenness.
+
+"You've bought two," said the mother slowly.
+
+"D'you think so?" cried the girl.
+
+"Sure," muttered the old man. "One thing, if they claim her, they can't
+claim her foal, too." He grunted in his wife's ear: "Chap said she's in
+foal to Berserker. Likely tale, ain't it? Howsoebber, if 'tain't true,
+don't make no matter; if 'tis, all the better. Anyways, she might throw
+a winner, plea' Gob in his goodness."
+
+Mrs. Woodburn held up a warning finger at him.
+
+"Now, dad!" she said; then turned to her daughter.
+
+"Turn her out in the Paddock Close for the present," she said. "And send
+one of the lads for Mr. Silver's pony."
+
+The girl led the old mare away into the yard. Jim Silver followed
+slowly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Putnam's
+
+
+In the days when Putnam's had been a farm, the yard had always been deep
+in dung and litter. Now it was cobbled and clean as a kitchen floor. All
+round it on three sides were old barns and cattle-sheds, transformed
+into rough but roomy loose-boxes. And the most casual observer could not
+have mistaken the nature of the place. For a clock stood above the main
+building; a chestnut crib-biter, looking out into the yard, had the top
+of his half door between his teeth and was wind-sucking with arched
+neck; while a flock of fan-tails strutted to and fro, flirting and
+foraging.
+
+A tortoise-shell cat crossed the yard leisurely. The cat was known as
+Maudie. But it was a matter of dispute amongst those interested in the
+question whether she derived her name from Maud Allan, the dancer, or
+from Mordecai, the Jew. The dispute hung round the question whether Old
+Mat had christened her or Ma. If she owed her name to Old Mat, then it
+was clear that it came from the dancer; if to Ma, then from the Old
+Testament.
+
+Billy Bluff, entering the yard in an expectant bustle, made for Maudie
+with a joyful flourish. Maudie arched her back, spat, and passed on
+gingerly. Whenever the pair met, and that was frequently, they went
+through the same pantomime, to the satisfaction of one of them at
+least.
+
+The bob-tail next made a dash at the fan-tails. These rose with a mighty
+splashing of wings, fluttered a yard above his head, and settled again
+unconcernedly.
+
+Albert, who, true to his promise, had somehow got home before the rest
+of the party, was standing outside the door of the saddle-room. The
+other lads were gathered round him in respectful silence. Albert was
+busy, but he was not engaged as usual in telling his admirers tall
+stories of the Meeting and his own prowess in getting the blind side of
+mugs and dandy duds. He had a bit of chalk in his hand and was drawing
+on the door. There was no doubt the lad could draw. Monkey Brand indeed
+asserted that there were few things Albert Eddud could not do if he
+tried--"and the wusser the thing the better he does it." Now he was
+drawing the head of a man with a huge and bulbous nose. Boy caught a
+glimpse of it as she entered the yard, and recognised it in a flash. It
+was the face of the hero of a comic paper the lads took in: a paper of
+which she disapproved, although with her instinctive sense for
+government, she did not think it wise to suppress it. _Ally Sloper_ its
+name; its subject, ladies in bathing costume.
+
+Albert, rapt in his labour, was working with the fury of the artist. He
+finished with a flourish. The lads crowded round to look. Foremost
+amongst them were Jerry, a youth with corrugated brow and profoundly
+sagacious air; and Stanley, dark and sleek and heavy of face, in whom
+sloth and sleep and insolence seemed to war. Jerry clearly should have
+been a philosopher, and Stanley an emperor.
+
+Monkey Brand was in the habit of referring, not without bitterness, to
+the pair and Albert as "them three." He believed them capable of
+anything, and was not far out in his belief. Jerry, the thinker,
+planned the crimes; Albert, the man of action, committed them; and
+Stanley, the stupid, bore the blame and paid the price. When they were
+not at each other's throats, the three hung very close together.
+
+Albert Edward now thrust his friends aside.
+
+"Half a mo'!" he cried, and scrawled in dashing hand beneath the
+portrait the legend:
+
+          _Ally Slo's
+          Got a nose
+          Like our Jose'.
+                S._
+
+Albert stood back with folded arms to admire his masterpiece. The beauty
+of it over-awed his naturally irreverent spirit.
+
+"'Ush!" he said.
+
+But a rude voice burst in on his silent rapture.
+
+"Albert!" it called peremptorily.
+
+The artist turned round to see Boy leading the old mare into the yard.
+
+"Yes, Miss."
+
+"Take Mr. Silver's pony."
+
+"Yes, Miss."
+
+"Jerry, put Billy Bluff on the chain. Stanley, put that chestnut's
+muzzle on."
+
+She led the old mare to the gate that opened on the Paddock Close.
+
+Silver followed her, and looking back saw Monkey Brand limp into the
+yard from the road, leading Goosey Gander.
+
+Mat was on the other side of the old horse, walking thoughtfully, his
+whip over his shoulder, and muttering to himself, as was his way.
+
+Goosey Gander's head was framed fittingly between master and man. Now he
+rubbed it against one and now against the other. They led him to the
+water-trough and stood over him as he drank with nibbling lips, shaking
+the oppressive collar from his shoulders. Jim Silver at the gate watched
+the little group with quiet content. The three seemed so perfectly at
+home together that between them was no need for words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Monkey Brand was a cockney.
+
+He had been born in the River Ward of Hammersmith in that blind alley
+known to the police and the inhabitants as Tiger Bay.
+
+His father's ice-cream business never had any fascination for the lad;
+but from the first his spirit drew him to the long-eared shaggy mokes of
+certain of the neighbours. While the other urchins from the River Ward
+spent their days in and out of the river dodging the coppers, at the
+draw-docks on Chiswick Mall, or down by the coal-wharves under the
+bridge, Monkey's happiest hours were passed leading a coster's cart
+laden with green stuff up and down the alleys. When possible he slept
+with Mary, the donkey he had in charge. She was fond of him, too; and
+the Joes, who owned her, found that the long-eared lady, when in one of
+her stubborn moods, would give to the boy's persuasions what she refused
+to the big stick.
+
+To the Joes Monkey proved himself invaluable.
+
+He was industrious and reliable; and he had his reward when young Joe
+jaunted across London for fish at Billingsgate or greens at Covent
+Garden and took the lad with him.
+
+The great day of the boy's life came when the Joes took him to Epsom for
+the Derby week.
+
+Old Joe, young Joe's missus, and the kids, stowed away in the body of
+the cart; while young Joe balanced on one shaft and Monkey on the other.
+The party crossed Barnes Common in the small hours of the Monday
+morning, and dossed on Banstead Downs that night. Next day they joined
+the great stream of traffic rolling out of London Epsomward. Young Joe,
+whose strength lay in his powers of sympathetic intuition, let Monkey
+drive. And the urchin took his place with pride in that vast stream of
+char-a-bancs, 'buses, hansoms, and drags rolling southward; and no
+four-in-hand coachman of them all held up his hand to stay the following
+traffic, or twiddled his whip with lordlier dignity than the dark lad
+who sat on the shaft and drove Mary up the hill on to the course.
+
+There for the first time young Monkey saw thoroughbred horses. They were
+a revelation to the lad. He stood and gaped at their beauty.
+
+"Don't 'alf shine neever!" he gasped. "I reck'n our Mary couldn't 'old
+'em."
+
+At the end of the week the Joes returned to Tiger Bay without their
+coachman.
+
+"Where's my Monkey then?" cried his mother.
+
+"Stayed along o' the 'orses," young Joe answered, unharnessing.
+
+Indeed there was but one walk in life for which the boy was fitted; and
+the fates had guided him into it young.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was when he was nineteen that Mat Woodburn found him out.
+
+Monkey had been left at the post in a steeplechase. Old Mat didn't
+follow the race. Instead he watched the struggle between the lad and the
+young horse he was riding. Monkey gave a masterly exhibition of patience
+and tact; and Mat, then in his prime and always on the look-out for
+riding talent, watched it with grunts of pleasure. Monkey won the battle
+and went sailing after the field he could not hope to catch, cantering
+in long after the other horses had got home and gone to bed, as his
+indignant owner expressed it.
+
+"Fancy turn!" he said. "Very pretty at Islington. You don't ride for me
+no more."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Monkey, quite unperturbed.
+
+As he left the dressing-room Mat met him.
+
+"Lost your job, ain't you?" he said. "Care to come to me? I'm Mat
+Woodburn."
+
+Monkey grinned.
+
+"I know you, sir," he said. "Yes, sir. Thank you. I'm there."
+
+Thus began that curious partnership between the two men which had
+endured twenty-five years.
+
+Always master and man, the two had been singularly intimate from the
+start, and increasingly so. Both had that elemental quality, somewhat
+remote from civilization and its standards, which you find amongst those
+who consort greatly with horses and cattle. Both were simple and
+astonishingly shrewd. They loved a horse and understood him as did few:
+they loved a rogue and were the match for most.
+
+Both had a wide knowledge of human nature, especially on its seamy side,
+based on a profound experience of life.
+
+Monkey Brand had never been quite in the front rank of cross-country
+riders. At no time had he emerged from the position of head-lad, nor
+apparently had he wished to do so. It may be that he lacked ambition, or
+was aware of his limitations. For his critics said that, consummate
+horseman though he was, he lacked the strength to hold his own
+consistently in the first flight. Moreover, just at the one period of
+his career when it had seemed to the knowing that he might soar, the
+brilliant Chukkers, then but a lad, had crossed the Atlantic in the
+train of Ikey Aaronsohnn--to aid the cosmopolitan banker to achieve the
+end which was to become his consuming life-passion; and in a brief while
+had eclipsed absolutely and forever all his professional rivals.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Ally Sloper
+
+
+Silver opened the gate into the Paddock Close. Boy passed through,
+leading the old mare.
+
+"Shall I take her?" asked the young man.
+
+"No, thank you," she answered.
+
+In the depths of her eyes there lurked a fugitive twinkle. So far the
+intercourse between herself and Mr. Silver had consisted in his offering
+to do things for her and in her refusing his offers.
+
+The Paddock Close stretched away before the girl in the evening light.
+On the hill half-a-dozen young horses stampeded in the dusk.
+
+An early swift screeched and swept above her. A great white owl swooped
+out of the wood and waved away up the hillside, hovering over the gorse.
+Under the hedge a scattered troop of children were coming down the slope
+along the path that led past the little old church among the sycamores.
+
+Boy led the mare up the hillside, her eyes on the flowing green of the
+hill. The young man followed in her wake, lazy almost as the old mare,
+who trailed reluctantly behind with clicking shoes. The dreams seemed to
+have possessed him, too. He did not speak; his eyes were downward; but
+he was aware all the time of that slight, slow-moving figure walking
+just in front of him.
+
+Then something seemed to disturb the stillness and ruffle his brooding
+mind. It was a vague disease as of a coming sickness, and little more.
+He emerged from the land of quiet and looked about him, like a stag
+disturbed by a stalker while grazing.
+
+A man was blundering down the hillside toward them, an easel on his
+shoulder.
+
+As he came closer his face seemed strangely familiar to the young man.
+Where had he seen it? Then he recollected in a flash. It was the face
+Albert had drawn in caricature on the stable-door--the face of Ally
+Sloper.
+
+Silver found himself wondering whether the owner of the face was aware
+of his likeness, crude indeed though real, of his great protagonist.
+
+The fellow was incredibly slovenly. His hair was reddish and bushy about
+the jaw, and but for his eyes you might have mistaken him for a
+commonplace tramp. Those eyes held you. They were sensitive, suffering,
+terrible with the terror of a baffled spirit seeking escape and finding
+none. In that coarse and bloated face they seemed pitifully out of place
+and crying continually to be released. Indeed, there was something
+volcanic about the man, as of lava on the boil and ready at any moment
+to pour forth in destructive torrents. And surely there had been
+eruptions in the past with fatal consequences.
+
+Now he waddled toward them with an unsavoury grin.
+
+"What luck?" he called, in a somewhat honied voice.
+
+"We won," replied Boy briefly.
+
+She slipped the halter over the head of the old mare, who, too lazy to
+remove herself, began to graze where she stood.
+
+The artist stood above the girl, showing his broken and dirty teeth, his
+eyes devouring her.
+
+Silver resented the familiarity of his gaze.
+
+"Mr. Silver, this is Mr. Joses," said the girl.
+
+The difference between the two men amused her: the one clean, keen,
+beautifully appointed, like a horse got up for a show, the other shaggy
+and sloppy as a farmyard beast.
+
+"Very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir, I'm sure," grinned the
+artist, bowing elaborately.
+
+The other responded coldly.
+
+Joses had not made a favourable impression on the young man. Boy saw
+that at once; and it was not difficult to see. For Silver showed his
+likes and dislikes much as Billy Bluff did.
+
+The girl wished with all her heart that she was standing behind him that
+she might see if the hair on the back of his neck had risen.
+
+A spirit of mischief overcame her.
+
+"Mr. Joses'll paint your horses for you," she said demurely.
+
+"Delighted, I'm sure," laughed the artist.
+
+"Thank you," said the young man, with a brevity the girl herself could
+not have surpassed. His shyness had left him, and with it his tendency
+to stammer.
+
+Boy felt herself snubbed, and was nettled accordingly.
+
+"I'm going home by the wood," she said.
+
+"I'll come with you," said the artist.
+
+The two moved away down the hill together toward the wood that thrust
+like a spear into the heart of the Paddock Close.
+
+Silver watched them with steady eyes. As usual he had been left. That
+swift and slimy artist-chap had chipped in while he was thinking what
+he should do.
+
+Silver hated artists--not as the result of experience, for he had never
+met one in the flesh before, but from instinct, conviction, and
+knowledge of the race acquired from books. Artists and poets: they were
+all alike--dirty beggars, all manners and no morals, who could talk the
+hind-leg off a she-ass.
+
+And Silver, being dumb himself and very human, hated men who were
+articulate.
+
+He watched the pair walking away from him down the hillside. An
+ill-matched couple they seemed to him: the slight, strenuous girl, her
+plait of hair like a spear of gold between her shoulders, her slim black
+legs, and air of a cold flame; and that loose, fat thing who gave the
+young man the impression of a suet pudding that had taken to drink.
+
+The beast seemed disgustingly fatherly, too, rubbing shoulders with the
+girl, and fawning on her.
+
+Silver sat down on a log and took out the cigarette-case, which was his
+habitual comforter.
+
+The old mare grazed beside him in the dusk, and he began to laugh as he
+looked at her. Her laziness tickled and appealed to him. There was
+something great about it. She was indolent as was Nature, and for the
+same reason--that she was aware of immense reserves of power on which
+she could fall back at any moment.
+
+A rabbit came out of the gorse to feed near by. The owl whooped and
+swooped and hovered behind her. The sea wind, fresh and crisp, came
+blowing up the valley; and the young stock, bursting with the ecstasy of
+life, thundered by in the dusk with downward heads and arched backs and
+far-flung heels.
+
+Silver sat and smoked.
+
+There was a funny feeling at his heart.
+
+Some vast, deep, silent-running river of Life, of whose presence within
+him he had only become aware within the last few hours, had been
+thwarted for the moment, thrust back upon itself, and was tugging and
+tuzzling within him as it sought to pursue its majestic way toward the
+Open Sea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The Great Beast
+
+
+Joses had been haunting the village off and on for some time past.
+
+Boy Woodburn knew nothing of him except that Monkey Brand disliked him.
+
+Herself she had been given no chance of forming an opinion till lately,
+when Joses had asked permission of her father to paint some of the
+horses. Old Mat had given leave, and Joses had gained the entree to the
+stables. He had made the most of his chance, haunting the yard, dogged
+by Monkey Brand, who resented his presence, watched him jealously, and
+made things as uncomfortable and precarious for the artist as he could.
+Joses, to do him justice, stuck to his self-imposed task with
+astonishing pertinacity in spite of opposition. He did not give up
+indeed until Flaminetta, a lengthy mare with an astonishing reach,
+suddenly exploded without warning and missed his head with a steel-shod
+heel by a short foot.
+
+Joses tumbled backward off his stool and crawled out of danger on his
+hands and knees with astonishing alacrity for so gross a man.
+
+Monkey Brand, an interested witness of the catastrophe, came limping up
+full of the tenderest solicitude.
+
+"Oh, my, Mr. Joses!--my!" he cried. "I never knew her to do that afore.
+_Ah, yer! what ye up to?_"
+
+Joses, still on his hands and knees, looked up at the little jockey, his
+eyes aghast with anger and fear.
+
+"Ginger!" he snorted. "You put it there."
+
+Monkey Brand eyed him with bland interest.
+
+"You know a wunnerful deal about 'orses for a hartist, Mr. Joses," he
+remarked, not troubling to deny the soft impeachment.
+
+Joses got to his feet and began to talk volubly.
+
+Monkey Brand listened in respectful silence, waving to the lads to keep
+in the background.
+
+When the orator had finished, the little jockey went in to report to Old
+Mat.
+
+"He knows altogether too much that Mr. Joses do," he ended.
+
+The trainer nodded.
+
+"I guessed as much," he said. "I'll make inquiries."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two days later Old Mat called his head-lad into the office. He was in
+his socks and shut the door with precautions.
+
+Mystery was the breath of life to both men, who were at heart but
+children.
+
+"Seen Joses lately?" began the old man cautiously.
+
+"Not since then, sir," the other answered in the same tone.
+
+Old Mat went to the window and drew down the blind. There was nobody but
+Maudie in the yard outside, and no human being within fifty yards. But
+such considerations must not come between the principal actors and the
+correct ritual for such occasions.
+
+"I was over at Lewes yesterday," he panted huskily. "I see that tall
+inspector chap--him I put on to Flaminetta for the Sefton."
+
+Monkey was all alert.
+
+"What did he say, sir?"
+
+"Not much," muttered the other. "Enough, though."
+
+Monkey drooped his eyelids and tilted his chin. His face became a
+masterpiece of secrecy and cunning.
+
+Old Mat turned his lips inward.
+
+"I've warned him off," he said, "you might snout about a bit and rout
+out what he _is_ after."
+
+The other nodded.
+
+"Monkey's the man, sir," he said, and stole away on tip-toe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening the old trainer, driving through the village, came on the
+discomfited artist and drew up to have a word with him.
+
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" began the old man in his sympathetic
+wheeze. "This _is_ a bad job to be sure, Mr. Joses. So that long mare o'
+mine had a shot at your pore brain-box. When I heard, I wep' a tear, I
+did reelly." He shook a sorrowful head. "You mustn't come no more,
+though, Mr. Joses, you mustn't. If anything was to 'appen to you in my
+place I should never forgive meself. 'Tain't so much the compensation to
+your widows and such. It's _here_"--he thumped his heart--"I'd feel it."
+
+Joses began to make excuse, but the old man refused to be convinced.
+
+"Rogues and rasqueals, Mr. Joses," he cried. "Layin' pitchforks for yer
+feet--same as the Psalmist says. Hosses is much the very same as men.
+Kilted cattle, as the sayin' is. Once they turn agin' you your number's
+up. And they got _somefin'_ agin' you. No fault o' yours, I know--godly
+genelman like you. But where it is _there_ it is!" He sat in his buggy
+and wiped his dewy eye. "And there's the dorg, Mr. Joses. Big dorg,
+too!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joses, ejected from Putnam's, as Adam had been from Paradise, might be
+the loser; but Art certainly was not.
+
+For he painted abominably.
+
+Even the lads jeered at his efforts, while Old Mat said:
+
+"I reck'n my old pony could do better than that, if I filled her tail
+with paint and she sat on it."
+
+But Joses was not to be beaten so easily. Meeting Boy Woodburn in the
+village street, he asked her if he might paint Billy Bluff.
+
+The girl, knowing Billy's views on Mr. Joses, excused herself and her
+dog.
+
+Joses walked down the village street with her, expostulating.
+
+Mrs. Haggard, the vicar's wife, an austere woman, with a jealously
+guardian eye for all the village maidens, met the pair and eyed the girl
+severely.
+
+Later in the day she came on Boy alone and stopped her.
+
+"Do you know that man, Joyce?" she asked.
+
+Mrs. Haggard was the one person in the world who called Boy by her
+Christian name. And she did it, as she did everything else, on
+principle.
+
+"Not really," answered Boy.
+
+"I don't like him," said Mrs. Haggard.
+
+"Neither do I," answered the girl.
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," said the other. "He's _not_ a nice man."
+
+That evening Mrs. Haggard went to see Mrs. Woodburn and gave the
+trainer's wife some of her reasons--and they were good reasons,
+too--for thinking Mr. Joses _not_ a nice man.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn, who was in the judgment of the vicar's wife a good but
+curious woman, showed herself distressingly undistressed.
+
+"Boy can look after herself, I guess," she said, a thought grimly.
+
+She reported later to Mat what Mrs. Haggard had told her and what she
+had replied to Mrs. Haggard.
+
+Old Mat agreed.
+
+"She can bite all right," he said. "Trust Boy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And Boy, as she walked down the hillside on leaving Mr. Silver and the
+old mare, felt like biting.
+
+She was annoyed with Mr. Silver, annoyed with Joses, and, above all,
+annoyed with herself.
+
+She had been mischievous, and now she was being punished for it.
+
+She did not like Joses; and she _did_ like being alone in the wood at
+dusk.
+
+Her companion walked too close to her; he laughed too much; she was
+aware of that haunted and haunting eye of his rolling at her
+continually; and he smelt of alcohol.
+
+Also he would talk.
+
+"That's Silver, is it?" he said familiarly, as they walked down the
+hill.
+
+"That's _Mr._ Silver," she retorted.
+
+His eye sought hers, questioning; but found nothing save a proud, cold
+face.
+
+"Your dadda's training for him, isn't he?" continued the fat man.
+
+Her dadda!
+
+The cheek of it!
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"He's a Croesus, isn't he?"
+
+"He's _not_ a greaser," with warmth.
+
+Joses laughed his unpleasant laughter.
+
+"A Croesus, I said. Rolling. He's the Bank of Brazil and Uruguay."
+
+"I don't know," replied the girl. "I haven't asked."
+
+They had reached the stile into the wood.
+
+"Good-night," she said.
+
+"I'll see you through the wood," the other answered.
+
+A moment she hesitated. Should she after all go back by the field? If
+she did he would think she was afraid. And she was not, as she would
+show him. But she wished that Billy Bluff was with her. Reluctantly at
+length she climbed the stile and walked through the dusk. He shambled at
+her side.
+
+"Begun to bathe yet?" he asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"You let me know when you begin, and I'll come and paint you on the
+rocks."
+
+Her eyes flashed up at his.
+
+"You won't!" she said fiercely.
+
+He edged in upon her, laughing sleekly.
+
+"Saucy, is it?" he said.
+
+"Keep off!" she cried.
+
+"Wants taming, does it?"
+
+He wound his arm about her.
+
+"Let me go!"
+
+She kicked his shins with her square-toed shoes.
+
+She kicked hard and hurt him.
+
+"You little devil!" he snorted.
+
+He pressed her to him, seeming to smother her, like an offensive
+blanket.
+
+His red beard brushed her forehead; his hot face crowded down on hers;
+and above all his great red nose protruded above her like an inflamed
+banana.
+
+Mrs. Haggard was fond of saying that Joyce Woodburn was like a wild
+animal. And in a way the vicar's wife was right. Self-preservation was
+the first law of life for the girl as for every healthy young creature.
+And long and intimate contact with horses and dogs had made her swift
+and direct in action as were they.
+
+Now when she felt herself in the clutches of the Beast, and the Greater
+Death closing in upon her, she knew as little of doubts and scruples as
+any creature of the wilderness.
+
+That hateful breath was in her nostrils; those covetous eyes were close
+to hers; that inflamed and evil nose protruded over her in flaming
+invitation.
+
+She seized it in her gloved hand and wrenched it. The effect was
+immediate.
+
+Joses squealed and clapped both hands to his damaged organ.
+
+"My----, you----!" he squeaked in the voice of a Punch.
+
+The girl broke away and ran. She was swift and hard as a greyhound. For
+a moment the other stood, leaning over a bed of nettles, snorting and
+sniffing as the blood dripped from his nose. Then he pursued. She heard
+him thundering behind her. It was like the pursuit of a fawn by a
+grizzly. She had only a hundred yards to go to the open; and as she fled
+with her head on her shoulder, and her plait flapping, feeling the
+strength in her limbs and the courage in her heart, she mocked her
+pursuer silently.
+
+That drink-sodden grampus catch her!
+
+Her pride came toppling down about her. She tripped, wrenched her
+ankle, and knew that she was done.
+
+Before her was a familiar tree she had often climbed, with a branch some
+six feet from the ground.
+
+She swung herself up.
+
+The Great Beast came snorting up. He was a dreadful sight. His nose was
+bleeding profusely, and the blood had mingled with his beard and
+moustache. He had lost his cap, and his head shimmered bald at her feet
+beneath wisps of hair.
+
+He seemed like a great vat full of spirit into which she had tossed a
+lighted match.
+
+"I got you, my beauty!" he panted in smothered and unnatural voice.
+
+He put his hands on the branch.
+
+She stamped on them with her heels: and she stamped hard. He swore, and
+drew from a leather sheath a wooden-handled knife such as Danish
+fisher-folk use.
+
+She grasped the branch above her and swung in the air; but she could not
+swing forever thus.
+
+"I can wait," said the Great Beast beneath, laughing dreadfully.
+
+Then there came the sound of a man singing some kind of boating-song.
+
+The voice was deep and drawing nearer.
+
+          "_Then we'll all swing together,
+          Steady from stroke to bow._"
+
+It was Silver strolling home through the wood.
+
+Boy heard him; so did Joses, and withdrew into the dusk.
+
+The girl slipped down from the tree.
+
+The young man dawdled up, and looked at her with some surprise.
+
+"Anything up?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said Boy. "Up a tree."
+
+She limped coldly away.
+
+He followed her.
+
+"Are you lul-lame?" he asked, shy and anxious.
+
+"Sprained my off-hind fetlock," she replied.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE WATCHER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Patience Longstaffe
+
+
+Patience Longstaffe was the only child of Preacher Joe, of God-First
+Farm, on the way to Lewes; and she was very like her father.
+
+He had been brought up a Primitive Methodist and had first heard the
+Word at Rehoboth, the little red brick place of worship of the sect on
+the outskirts of Polefax; but being strong as he was original he had
+seceded from the church of his fathers early in life to the Foundation
+Methodists and started a little chapel of his own, which bore on its red
+side the inscription that gave the popular name to its founder's farm.
+
+The chapel was hidden away down a lane; but as you drove in to Lewes
+along the old coach-road, with the Downs bearing on your left shoulder,
+you could not mistake Mr. Longstaffe's farm: for a black barn on the
+roadside carried in huge letters the text,
+
+     _Seek ye first the Kingdom of God._
+
+To the cultivated and academic mind there might be something blatant and
+vulgar about so loud an invitation.
+
+But if its character estranged the carriage-folk, the man who had put it
+up had sought the Kingdom himself, and had, if all was true, found it.
+Joe Longstaffe was by common consent a Christian man, and not of that
+too general kind which excuses its foolishness and fatuity on the ground
+of its religion. The Duke's agent disliked him for political reasons,
+but he would admit that the dissenter was the best farmer in the
+countryside; and the labourers would have added that he was also the
+best employer.
+
+The curious who walked over from Lewes to attend the little chapel in
+which he held forth, found nothing remarkable in the big, gaunt man with
+the Newgate fringe and clean-shaven lips, who looked like a Scot but was
+Sussex born and bred. Joe Longstaffe was not intellectual; his theology
+was such that even the Salvation Army shook their heads over it; he had
+read nothing but the Bible and Wesley's Diary--and those with pain; he
+stuttered and stumbled grotesquely in his speech, and a clerical Oxford
+don, who pilgrimaged from Pevensey to hear him, remarked that the only
+thing he brought away from the meeting was the phrase, reiterated _ad
+nauseam_,
+
+"As I was sayin', as you might say."
+
+But there was one mark-worthy point about the congregation of the
+chapel; and the Duke in his shrewd way was the first to note it.
+
+"Nine out of ten of the people who attend are his own folk--his carters,
+shepherds, milk-maids, and the like. And they don't go for what they can
+get. Now if I started a chapel--as I'm thinkin' of doin'--d'you think my
+people'd come? Yes; if they thought they'd get the sack if they didn't."
+
+They went, indeed, these humble folk, because they couldn't help it. And
+they couldn't help it because there was a man in that chapel who drew
+them as surely as the North Pole draws the magnetic needle. And he drew
+them because there was Something in him that would not be denied,
+Something that called to their tired and thirsting spirits, called and
+comforted. It was not possible to say what that Something was; but this
+man had it, and it was very rare. And that tall daughter of his, who
+rarely smiled, and never grieved, who was always strong, quiet, and
+equable, going about her work regular as the seasons, possessed it, too.
+
+Everybody, indeed, respected Patience Longstaffe, if few loved her.
+
+She was long past thirty, and people were beginning to say that she had
+dedicated herself to virginity, when to the amazement of all it was
+announced that she would marry Mat Woodburn, the trainer, twenty years
+her senior.
+
+The Duke, of whose many failings lack of courage was not one, asked her
+boldly why she was doing it.
+
+Her answer was as simple as herself.
+
+"He's a good man," she said.
+
+It was a new and somewhat surprising light on the character of Old Mat,
+but the Duke accepted it without demur.
+
+"She's right," he said at the club at Lewes. "Mat's a rogue, but he's
+not a wrong 'un." And with his unequalled experience of both classes,
+the old peer had every right to speak.
+
+The vulgar-minded, who make the majority of every class in every
+country, thought that Preacher Joe would make trouble, and looked
+forward hopefully to a row. For at least a month after the announcement
+every drawing-room and public-house in South Sussex was rife with
+malicious and sometimes amusing stories. The authors of them were doomed
+to disappointment. Not only was Mr. Longstaffe quietly and obviously
+happy, but he and his son-in-law, who was but five years his junior,
+showed themselves to be unusually good friends.
+
+And there was no doubt the marriage was a success. The content on
+Patience Woodburn's face was evidence enough of that.
+
+How far the strange and apparently ill-assorted couple affected each
+other it was difficult to say. Outwardly, at least, Old Mat remained Old
+Mat still, and Patience, although she became Ma Woodburn, went her
+strong, still way much as before her marriage. Bred on the land and
+loving it, inheriting a wonderful natural way with stock of every kind,
+she was from the first her husband's right hand, none the less real
+because unsuspected and to a great extent unseen.
+
+She was never known to attend so much as a point-to-point, but when a
+colt wasn't furnishing a-right, or a horse entered for a big event was
+not coming on as he should, it was Ma who was sent for and Ma who took
+the matter in hand.
+
+"I've nothing against horses and racing," she would say. "God meant 'em
+to race and jump, I reck'n. But I don't think he meant us to bet and
+beer over 'em."
+
+From the first she was a power in the Putnam stable.
+
+Except in a crisis she interfered little with the lads, but when they
+went sick or smashed themselves, she took them into her house and nursed
+them as though they were her own. If they were grateful they did not
+show it; but in times of stress some spirit whose presence you would
+never have suspected made itself suddenly and sweetly apparent.
+
+The Bible Class for the lads in her husband's employ she had started on
+the first Sunday of her reign at Putnam's.
+
+It was voluntary for those over fifteen; but all the lads attended--"to
+oblige."
+
+That class at the start had been the subject of untold jokes in the
+racing world.
+
+There had even been witticisms about it in the _Pink Un_ and other
+sporting papers.
+
+And when Mat had been asked what he thought of it the story went that he
+had answered:
+
+"I winks at ut," adding, with a twinkle: "I winks at a lot--got to now."
+
+Ma Woodburn kept the class going for twenty years, until, indeed, her
+daughter was old enough to take it over from her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Her Daughter
+
+
+Boy Woodburn had been born to the apparently incongruous couple some
+years after their marriage.
+
+From the very beginning she had always been Boy. Mrs. Haggard, who
+didn't quite approve of the name--and there were many things Mrs.
+Haggard didn't quite approve of--once inquired the origin of it.
+
+"I think it came," answered Mrs. Woodburn.
+
+And certainly nobody but the vicar's wife ever thought or spoke of the
+girl as Joyce. She grew up in Mrs. Haggard's judgment quite uneducated.
+That lady, a good but somewhat officious creature, was genuinely
+distressed and made many protests.
+
+The protests were invariably met by Mrs. Woodburn imperturbably as
+always.
+
+"It's how my father was bred," she replied in that plain manner of hers,
+so plain indeed that conventional people sometimes complained of it as
+rude. "That's good enough for me."
+
+Mrs. Haggard carried her complaint to her husband, the vicar.
+
+"There was once a man called Wordsworth, I believe," was all the answer
+of that enigmatic creature.
+
+"You're much of a pair, you and Mrs. Woodburn," snapped his wife as she
+left the room.
+
+"My dear, you flatter me," replied the quiet vicar.
+
+On the face of it, indeed, Mrs. Haggard had some ground for her anxiety
+about the girl.
+
+Boy from the beginning was bred in the stables, lived in them, loved
+them.
+
+At four she began to ride astride and had never known a side-saddle or
+worn a habit all her life. She took to the pigskin as a duck to water;
+and at seven, Monkey Brand, then in his riding prime, gave her up.
+
+"She knows more'n me," he said, half in sorrow, half in pride, as his
+erstwhile pupil popped her pony over a Sussex heave-gate.
+
+"Got wings, she have."
+
+"Look-a-there!"
+
+But the girl did not desert her first master. She would sit on a table
+in the saddle-room, swinging her legs, and shaking her fair locks as she
+listened bright-eyed while Monkey, busy on leather with soap and sponge,
+told again the familiar story of Cannibal's National.
+
+It was on her ninth birthday that, at the conclusion of the oft-told
+tale, she put a solemn question:
+
+"Monkey Brand!"
+
+"Yes, Minie."
+
+"Do-you-think-I-could-win-with-the National?"
+
+"No sayin' but you might, Min."
+
+The child's eyes became steel. She set her lips, and nodded her flaxen
+head with fierce determination.
+
+She never recurred to the matter, or mentioned it to others. But from
+that time forth to ride the National winner became her secret ambition,
+dwelt upon by day, dreamed over by night, her constant companion in the
+saddle, nursed secretly in the heart of her heart, and growing always as
+she grew.
+
+Certainly she was a Centaur if ever child was.
+
+To the girl indeed her pony was like a dog. She groomed him, fed him,
+took him to be shod, and scampered over the wide-strewn Downs on him,
+sometimes bare-backed, sometimes on a numnah, hopping on and off him
+light as a bird and active as a kitten.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn let the child go largely her own way.
+
+"Plenty of liberty to enjoy themselves----" that was the principle she
+had found successful in the stockyard and the gardens, and she tried it
+on Boy without a tremor.
+
+Old Joe Longstaffe on his death-bed confirmed the faith of his daughter
+in this matter of the education or non-education of the child.
+
+"Don't meddle," he had said, "God'll grow in her--if you'll let him."
+
+Patience Woodburn never forgot her father's words and never had cause to
+regret that she had followed them.
+
+The girl, wayward though she might be at times, never gave her mother a
+moment's real anxiety. She was straight as a dart, strong as a young
+hawk, fearless as a lion, and free as the wind. Her simplicity, her
+purity and strength made people afraid of her. In a crowd they always
+made way for her: for she was resolute with the almost ruthless
+resolution of one whose purpose is sure and conscience clean.
+
+"You feel," Mr. Haggard once said, "that--she's clear." He waved
+vaguely.
+
+"Pity she's a little heathen," said Mrs. Haggard acridly.
+
+"She doesn't know her catechism," answered the mild vicar in his
+exasperatingly mild way. "Is she any the worse?"
+
+"Churchman!" snorted his outraged spouse.
+
+Mrs. Haggard's indictment was unfounded. The girl was fierce and swift,
+but she was not a heathen. Mrs. Woodburn had seen to that. Sometimes she
+used to take the child to the Children's Services in the little old
+church on the edge of the Paddock Close. The girl enjoyed the services,
+and she loved Mr. Haggard; but when, during her grand-dad's lifetime,
+her mother gave the child her choice between the church and the little
+God-First chapel on the way to Lewes, she always chose the latter.
+
+It may be that her choice was decided by the fact that she drove to the
+chapel and walked to the church; it may be that, dearly as she loved the
+vicar, she loved her grand-dad more; or it may be that the simplicity of
+the chapel, the austerity of the service, and the character of the
+congregation, all of a kind, close to earth, humble of heart, and russet
+in hue, attending there for no other reason than because they loved it,
+appealed to something profound and ineradicable in the spirit of this
+child bred amongst the austere and simple hills to which she knew
+herself so close.
+
+Old Mat was fond of saying that the girl's mother could do what she
+liked with her, and nobody else could do anything at all.
+
+"I don't try," he would add, "She puts the terror on to me, that gal
+do."
+
+And the old man was right.
+
+Different as they were, there was a deep and mysterious sympathy between
+mother and daughter. And on that sympathy the mother's power was based.
+
+Only once was her authority, based as it was upon the spirit, subject to
+breaking strain.
+
+When the girl was fourteen, Mrs. Woodburn decided to send her to the
+High School at Lewes. Old Mat shook his head; Mrs. Haggard was
+delighted; the girl herself went about with pursed lips and frozen air.
+
+The vicar, meeting her in the village, stopped her.
+
+"What d'you think about it, Boy?" he asked in his grave, kind way.
+
+"I shall go," blurted the girl. "But I shall win all the same."
+
+"Win what?" asked the vicar.
+
+"_That_," said Boy, and flashed on her way.
+
+When the day of parting came, word was sent round to the stables that
+nobody was to be in them at twelve o'clock. At that hour a slight cold
+figure crossed the yard swiftly, and entered the stables. The key was
+turned in the door. There was no sound from within, except the movement
+of the horses, to whom the girl was bidding good-bye.
+
+Half an hour later the door was opened, and she came out, cold and
+frosty as she had entered.
+
+Monkey Brand, standing in the door of the saddle-room, keeping guard
+over the stable-lads lest they should peep and pry, saw her come.
+
+"She look very grim," he afterward reported to Old Mat.
+
+"Keeps a stiff lip for a little 'un," whispered a lad peeping from
+behind the jockey's shoulder.
+
+Monkey Brand rounded on him.
+
+"If you'd 'alf her 'eart," he said, "you might be mistook for a man."
+
+For three weeks thereafter Putnam's knew the girl no more; and it seemed
+that the soul had died out of the place. Monkey Brand moped, and swore
+the horses moped, too.
+
+"When I goes round my 'orses in the mornin' they look at me like so many
+bull-oxes askin' to be slaughtered," he said. "Never see sich a sight.
+Never!"
+
+Old Mat for once was glum. His eye lost its twinkle, and his walk its
+famous lilt. Mr. Haggard was genuinely sorry for the old man.
+
+"Miss her, Mr. Woodburn?" he asked, stopping the trainer in the village
+street.
+
+"Miss her!" cried the other. "Mr. Haggard, there's nothing about Hell
+you can teach _me_. I knows it all." He waved a significant hand and
+walked away, his heart in his boots.
+
+Of all the party at Putnam's, Mrs. Woodburn only seemed undisturbed.
+Unmoved by the gloom of those about her, glum looks, short answers, and
+the atmosphere of a November fog, she went about her business as before.
+
+Boy's history during those weeks has never been written, and never will
+be. What she did, said, thought, and suffered during that time--and what
+others did, said, thought, and suffered because of her--none but the
+Recording Angel knows. The girl herself never referred to the point; but
+were reference made to it, she winced like a foal at the touch of the
+branding-iron.
+
+The episode happily lasted but three weeks.
+
+At the end of that time, on a Saturday morning, one of the lads had
+ridden the Fly-away filly over to Lewes. There in the High Street the
+girl swooped on him.
+
+"Get off!" she ordered.
+
+The lad, who feared Miss Boy as he did the devil, obeyed with alacrity.
+
+"Put me up!" Boy ordered.
+
+Again the lad obeyed, and the next thing he was aware of was the swish
+of the filly's thoroughbred tail as she disappeared round the corner of
+the street.
+
+An hour later the girl clattered into the yard at Putnam's, the filly in
+a foam.
+
+Monkey Brand, a chamois leather in his hand, came running out.
+
+"Miss Boy!" he cried.
+
+There was an extraordinary air of suppressed excitement about the girl.
+She was white-hot and sparkling, yet cold. Indeed, she gave the
+impression of a sea of emotions battling beneath a floor of ice.
+
+"I've got out," she said.
+
+Panting, but fearless eyed, she went in to face her mother.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn did not seem surprised.
+
+She met her daughter's resistance with disarming quiet.
+
+"Well, Boy," she said, kissing the truant.
+
+"I'm not going back," panted the girl. Her spirit fluttered furiously as
+that of an escaped bird who fears recapture.
+
+"I'm not going to send you back, my dear," replied the mother.
+
+The girl put her arms about her mother's neck in a moment of rare
+impulse.
+
+"Oh, mother!" she sighed.
+
+She did not cry: Boy Woodburn was never known to cry. She did not faint.
+She very rarely fainted. But she trembled through and through.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn paid the necessary fees. The schoolmistress didn't ask to
+have the girl back. She admitted that she could make nothing of her.
+
+"Stuck her toes in," said Old Mat. "And I don't blame her. Can't see Boy
+walkin' out two be two, and hand in hand." He shook his head. "Mustn't
+put a blood filly in the cart, Mar," he said. "She'll only kick the
+caboodlum to pieces."
+
+Mrs. Woodburn made one more effort to educate her daughter on
+conventional lines. She introduced a governess to Putnam's. But after
+the girl had taken her mistress for a ride, the poor woman came to Mrs.
+Woodburn in tears and asked to leave.
+
+"I can't teach her the irregular verbs on horseback," she said. "And she
+won't learn any other way. Directly I begin on them, she starts to
+gallop."
+
+Mrs. Woodburn accepted the governess's notice, and tried nothing
+further.
+
+"She must go her own way now," she said to Mat.
+
+"It's the right way, Mar," replied the old man comfortably.
+
+"I hope so," answered his wife.
+
+"She can read, and she can write, and she can 'rithmetik,'" continued
+the other. "What more d'you want with this 'ere education?" He went out,
+shaking his head. "I sha'n't wep no tear," he said. "That I sha'n't,
+even if she don't get round them wriggle-regular French worms Mamsel
+talks of. Roast beef o' old England for me."
+
+Mrs. Woodburn announced her decision to her daughter.
+
+"Thank you, mother," said the girl quietly, and added: "It's no
+good--not for me."
+
+Mrs. Woodburn eyed her daughter.
+
+"You're a good maid, Boy," she said. "That's the main."
+
+A month later the girl asked her mother if she might help with the lads'
+Bible Class.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn consented.
+
+A year later, when the girl was sixteen, Mrs. Woodburn asked her
+daughter if she would take the class alone.
+
+The girl thought it over for a month.
+
+Then she said yes.
+
+In the interval she had passed through a spiritual crisis and made a
+great renunciation.
+
+She had resolved to put aside the dream that had dominated her inner
+life for seven years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Brazil Silver
+
+
+Boy Woodburn's calling had thrown her from early youth into contact with
+Eton men.
+
+Indeed, in her experience the world was divided into Eton men--and the
+Rest. That was what the girl believed; and it was clearly what the Eton
+men believed, too. Boy herself belonged to the Rest, and did not seem to
+regret it. The Rest were infinite in number and variety; that was why
+she liked them so; for the Infinite can know no limitations. It was not
+so with the other division of the Human Race. Eton men, though almost
+equally numerous, were limited and stereotyped all to pattern. In the
+girl's judgment there were three types of them: the Superior Person, who
+treated her as if she was not; the Bad Ass, to whom she was a poor sort
+of Joke; and the Incorrigible Creature, who made up to her as if she was
+a barmaid.
+
+That was her theory. And once the girl had formed a theory as the result
+of observation, she hated that theory to be upset.
+
+Mr. Silver displeased her because he blew her hypothesis to smithereens
+on his first appearance; for he was an Eton man, yet clearly he did not
+come within any of the three known categories.
+
+At first the girl escaped from her intellectual dilemma by a simple and
+purely feminine wile--she refused to believe that he was an Eton man.
+
+And even when it was proved to her that he had rowed in the Eton boat
+she remained unconvinced.
+
+"Need you be an Eton man to be in the Eton boat?" she inquired warily.
+
+Mr. Haggard, her informant, thought it probable, but added that he would
+inquire.
+
+It was not till she had known the young man some six months that she
+settled the question for herself by asking him point-blank if he had
+been at Eton.
+
+"I believe so," he answered.
+
+That was his invariable answer to the question when put to him. Now for
+once he elaborated on it a little.
+
+"Mother wanted me to go," he added. "Father didn't."
+
+"Were you happy there?" asked the girl.
+
+The other's face lit up with the enthusiasm she liked in him so well.
+
+"Was I not?" he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Albert Edward took all the credit to himself for the name of Silver Mug.
+Albert always took all the credit for everything; but really he was by
+no means so original as he imagined.
+
+In fact, Jim Silver had been Silver Mug when Albert was still a ragged
+little urchin asking for cigarette pictures from passing toffs outside
+Brighton Railway Station.
+
+A Lower Boy at Eton had originated the name. It was apt, and it stuck.
+
+Jim Silver in Bromhead's was hugely rich, and he had a great, ugly,
+honest face. Friends and enemies called him by the name; and he had a
+good few of both. The former loved him for the qualities the latter
+hated him for. The cads of the school chaffed surreptitiously about his
+birth. They said he was the grandson of an agricultural labourer and the
+son of a bank clerk; but only one of them, more caddish or more
+courageous than the rest, said so to his face.
+
+"I wouldn't mind if I was," said simple Jim, and was cheered by his
+loyal little friends, Lord Amersham and others of the right kidney.
+
+His father never came to see him when he was at school.
+
+"I know why," sneered the enemy.
+
+"Why, then?" flared Jim.
+
+"He daren't. Give the show away."
+
+After that the lad gave his enemy a sound hiding, and peace reigned. The
+bounders might say he was a bounder, but they had to admit that he could
+give and take punishment with the best.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He left Eton absolutely unspoilt.
+
+A year before the lad quitted the school his father sent for him.
+
+"I didn't want you to go to Eton, Jim," he said. "I'm glad now. Do you
+want to go on to Oxford?"
+
+The boy thought; and when his reply came it was honest as himself.
+
+"All my friends are going," he said. "I should like it for that reason.
+But I don't know that I should get much out of it."
+
+"Go for a year," said his father. "See what you make of it. If you're
+getting any good of it, you can go on. If not, we'll see."
+
+The boy did not leave the room.
+
+His interviews with his father were rare; and there was a question he
+had long wished to ask.
+
+Now he blurted it out.
+
+"Am I to go into the Bank, father?"
+
+The old man blinked at his son over his spectacles, and then shoved back
+his chair.
+
+"What d'you want?" he asked.
+
+"I should like the Army, or to farm," replied the son.
+
+Mr. Silver put down his paper.
+
+It was some time before he answered.
+
+"The Bank's my life," he said at last. "You're my son. You may choose
+for yourself." He drummed with his fingers on the table; and Jim left
+the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the half-breeds, as Lord Amersham called them, jeered at Silver as
+the son of an agricultural labourer there was a modicum of truth at the
+back of the lie.
+
+The boy came of a long line of yeoman-farmers in Leicestershire, famous
+for generations for their stock and their integrity.
+
+Jim Silver's grandfather was the last of that line. He was a big man and
+big farmer, husbanding his wide acres wisely and well, breeding good
+stock, enjoying his day's hunting, but not making too much of it,
+touching his hat to his landlord, a familiar and imposing figure at all
+the Agricultural Shows in the Midlands.
+
+His only son George was in his father's opinion a sport. Certainly he
+was no true Silver: that was obvious from his earliest years. He cared
+nothing for a horse, was a shamefully bad judge of a beast, had no
+feeling for the fields, never knew the real poetic thrill at the sight
+and smell of a yard knee deep in muck, and hated mud and rain.
+
+"More of a scholar," said his father regretfully. "All for books and
+studyin'."
+
+Mr. Silver, wise as are those who come into contact with Nature at first
+hand, did not interfere with his son's queer predilections or attempt to
+stay his development on the lines of instinctive preference, aiding the
+boy indeed in every way to make the most of himself on the path he had
+chosen.
+
+Thus he sent him to the Grammar School at Leicester. The boy went
+joyfully: for he was very modern. The town, the books, the people, the
+streets, the hum of business, the opening gates of knowledge, pleased
+and contented his insatiable young spirit. The father had the reward of
+his daring. George did famously and became in time Captain of the
+School. The farmer attended prize-giving, and watched his son march up
+to the table time after time amidst the cheers of his school-fellows.
+
+"George has got the red rosette again, Mr. Silver," smiled the
+Headmaster.
+
+"So I see," replied the farmer. "But the showring's one thing, work's
+another." And when pressed to send his son on to a University he
+refused.
+
+"He'll get an exhibition," urged the Headmaster.
+
+The father was not impressed.
+
+"Moderation in all things," he said, shaking a shrewd head. "Edication
+as well. He's stood out long enough. Time he began to 'arn."
+
+The Headmaster's arguments were of no avail.
+
+"I'd got all the schooling I needed by then I was eleven. He's had till
+he's eighteen. If it's to be of any good to him it'll be good now," said
+Mr. Silver.
+
+To his surprise and secret pleasure his son backed him. He didn't want
+to go to a University.
+
+"It's not much use unless you're a classic," the boy said. "And I'm a
+mathematician."
+
+Besides he had his own clear-cut views of what he wished to do. And
+those views were very strange. He wanted to go into a Bank.
+
+"Bank!" cried the amazed father. "Set at a counter all day and calcalate
+sums?"
+
+The boy grinned behind his spectacles in his foolish way.
+
+"That's about it," he said.
+
+"Well, I never!" cried the father.
+
+But true to his principles he let his son go his own way. Indeed, he
+helped him to a clerkship in the great Midland and Birmingham Joint
+Stock Bank, of which his landlord, Sir Evelyn Merry, was chairman.
+
+"Glad to get him," said the old baronet. "If he's half as good a man as
+his father he'll do well."
+
+The boy started at a local branch, and in a year was transferred to the
+central office at Birmingham.
+
+There he spent his spare time attending evening classes. At the end of a
+year he held a certificate, was entitled to put certain letters after
+his name, and had written an article on bullion which appeared in the
+_Banker's Magazine_ and was translated into German.
+
+By the time he was thirty he was a manager, and ten years later he was
+one of the managing directors of the second biggest Joint Stock Bank in
+the richest country in the world.
+
+And he did not stop there. George Silver was a financier in the great
+style, and a superlatively honest one. He had the initiative, the
+knowledge, and above all the judgment that made some men call him the
+Napoleon of Threadneedle Street. At forty-five he launched the Union
+Bank of Brazil and Uruguay; and to that colossal undertaking he devoted
+the last twenty-five years of his strenuous and successful life.
+
+In the City he was known thereafter as Brazil Silver.
+
+The Bank was his passion and his life.
+
+When at fifty, to the astonishment of many, he married, the City merely
+said:
+
+"He must have an heir to carry on the Bank."
+
+Mrs. Silver was a semi-aristocratic woman of limited intelligence,
+suppressed ambition, and sound limbs. It was the latter characteristic
+which won her a husband. He was not such a bad judge of make and shape
+as his father would have had the world believe; and as usual Brazil
+Silver's judgment proved good. In the appointed time his wife fulfilled
+her function, and gave him the son he asked of her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+The Eton Man
+
+
+Jim Silver grew up neither his father's son nor his mother's.
+
+"He's a throw-back--to his grandfather," said old Sir Evelyn.
+
+And in fact from the first the lad's soul hankered after the broad lands
+of Leicestershire rather than the counting-house in Threadneedle Street.
+
+His happiest days were spent as a child on his grand-dad's farm, amid
+the great horses, and sweet-breathed kine, and golden stacks.
+
+"Back to the land," as his grandfather was fond of saying, was the
+child's unspoken motto.
+
+The old man and his sturdy grandchild were rare intimates, and never so
+happy as when wandering together about the yards and farm-buildings and
+pastures, the child, silent and absorbed, as he clutched his grand-dad's
+big brown finger.
+
+The pair did not talk much: they were too content. But there was one
+often-repeated conversation which took place between them as they
+strolled.
+
+"What goin' to be when you grows up, Jim?"
+
+"Farmer."
+
+"What shall ye breed?"
+
+"Shire-'osses."
+
+The child came back always from those prolonged visits with the sun on
+his cheeks, the strength in his limbs, and Leicestershire broad upon his
+tongue; and he never understood why his mother cut his visits short on
+every imaginable pretext.
+
+At Eton the lad's friends were almost all drawn from the families in
+whose blood, after generations of possession, the land and its
+belongings had become a real if somewhat perverted passion. They would
+sit on into the twilight in each other's studies and ramble on
+interminably and with the exaggerated wisdom of seventeen about the
+subject nearest to their youthful hearts.
+
+Sometimes Mr. Bromhead would look in, grim and gray behind his
+spectacles.
+
+"Talking horses as usual, Jim, I suppose," he would say.
+
+"And dog, sir," corrected young Amersham.
+
+"With an occasional shorthorn chucked in to tip the scale," added old
+Sir Evelyn's fair grandson.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Brazil Silver died, the year his son was the heavy-weight in the
+Oxford boat, he left a will which was in accordance with his life.
+
+Every penny he had--and he had a good many, as the Chancellor of the
+Exchequer remarked in the House of Commons--was tied up in the Bank, and
+to remain there.
+
+It was all left to his son. "I can trust him to see to his mother," ran
+the will, written on half a sheet of paper, "and to any dependents.
+Charities I loathe."
+
+The son was free to save anything he liked from his vast income, but the
+capital must stay in the Bank.
+
+The old man made no condition that Jim should enter the Bank, and
+expressed no wish to that effect. His friends, therefore, speculated
+what Jim would do.
+
+They might have spared themselves the trouble. He left Oxford, in spite
+of the protests of the Captain of the boat, who spent a vain but hectic
+week pointing out to the apostate the path of duty, which was also the
+path of glory, and went into the Bank.
+
+His reasoning, as always, was simple and to the point.
+
+"The Bank was my father's show," he said. "He made it, and left it to me
+to carry on. And I shall--to the best of my ability."
+
+With that capacity for dogged grind which distinguished him, he tried to
+render himself efficient, working early and late like any clerk.
+
+It was a well-nigh hopeless task. Jim Silver's head was sound if slow;
+but he had no aptitude for figures.
+
+"I'm worth two pound a week in the open market," he told his old
+house-master. "And I'm supposed to be bossing--that." And he brandished
+the latest report of the Bank of which he was nominal chairman.
+
+Notwithstanding obvious differences in many ways, Jim inherited some of
+his father's characteristics.
+
+Brazil Silver, in spite of his success, had always remained in his
+personal life the simple farmer's son. Indeed, it was said in the City
+that he never owned a dress-suit, and that when he had to attend City
+banquets he hired his butler's.
+
+When he died he left behind him none of the usual encumbrances. Original
+in his private life as in finance, he had steadfastly refused to go the
+way of the world. He had never bought a great place in the country or a
+big house in town. He had never taken a Scotch moor or a river in
+Norway. In London he had a plain but perfectly appointed flat; and
+sometimes in the summer he took a house on the river or at St. Helen's.
+
+In these respects Jim followed faithfully in the steps of his father.
+
+He kept on the flat in town, worked in the City all the day, and spent
+much time of evenings at the Eton Mission in Hackney Wick.
+
+One small extravagance he attempted: he tried to buy from old Sir Evelyn
+the farm on which his fathers had lived and died for generations.
+
+The old gentleman, who would sooner have parted from his soul than from
+an acre of his inheritance, refused to sell.
+
+"I suppose the boy'll cut up rough now," grumbled the old baronet, who
+was fond of Jim.
+
+"Oh, no, he won't, grandfather," replied his grandson. "He's awfully
+decent."
+
+"We shall see," mumbled the old man; but he had shortly to admit that
+Billy was right.
+
+Jim Silver, thwarted in his desire to acquire his grandfather's farm,
+rented a little hunting-box near by instead. There he kept his
+weight-carriers, and there during the hunting season he spent his
+week-ends and occasional holidays.
+
+Since the days when he walked his grand-dad's farm as a child, his
+ambitions had changed in degree but not in kind. Then he had proposed to
+devote his life to breeding shire-horses. Now he meant, when once he had
+mastered his job, to devote his leisure to owning and breeding 'chasers.
+
+Some time elapsed after his father's death before he let himself go in
+this respect. His sensitive conscience and high sense of duty gave him
+an uneasy mind in the matter. His father had disapproved of horses, or
+rather had been afraid of the Turf and its consequences.
+
+It was a while before the son could assuage his qualms and feel himself
+free to go forward in the prosecution of his desire.
+
+His old house-master, still his father-confessor in spiritual
+distresses, finally dispelled the young man's doubts and launched him on
+his destined way.
+
+"Be yourself," he said, "as your father was before you. He wouldn't
+farm--because he hadn't got it in him. What he had in him was banking.
+So like a wise man he banked. You've got it in you to breed steeplechase
+horses. So breed them. Only--breed them better than any man ever bred
+them before."
+
+The young man's mind once finally resolved, nothing could stop him. And
+it was in the pursuit of his desire that he first came across Mat
+Woodburn.
+
+The old man and the young took to each other from the first. Indeed,
+there was much in common between the two. Both were simple of heart,
+children of nature, caring little for the world, and both believed with
+passionate conviction that an English thoroughbred was the crown and
+glory of God's creatures.
+
+"_HE_ didn't make no mistake _that_ time," the old man was fond of
+saying with emphasis, to the amusement of Mr. Haggard and the annoyance
+of his wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Boy in Her Eyrie
+
+
+In the corner of the yard at Putnam's was Billy Bluff's kennel. Above
+the kennel, a broad ladder, much haunted by Maudie, the free, who loved
+to sit on it and tantalize with her airs of liberty Billy, the prisoner
+on his chain, led to the loft above the stable.
+
+It was a very ordinary loft in the roof, dusty, dark, with hay piled in
+one corner, a chaff-cutter, and trap-doors in the floor, through which
+the forage was thrust down into the mangers of the horses below.
+
+At the end of the loft was a wooden partition. Behind the partition was
+the girl's room.
+
+She slept and lived up there over the stable at her own desire. It was
+less like being in a house: the girl felt herself her own mistress as
+she did not under the maternal roof; and most of all she was near the
+horses.
+
+"I keep two watch-dogs at my place," Old Mat would say. "Billy Bluff
+a-low and my little gal a-loft."
+
+Boy loved to go to sleep to the sound of the rhythmical munching of the
+horses beneath, and to wake to the noise of them blowing their noses in
+the dawn. Never a mouse moved in the stable at night but she was aware
+of it. And when a horse was training for a big event barely a night
+passed but in the small hours a white, bare-footed figure issued from
+the partition and came swiftly along the loft, disturbing rats and bats
+as she came, to lift a trap-door and look down with guardian eye on the
+hope of the stable dreaming unconsciously beneath.
+
+In her solitary eyrie up there the girl learned a great deal.
+
+Elsie Haggard, the vicar's daughter, or, as Mrs. Woodburn would say,
+with that touch of satire characteristic of her, the daughter of the
+vicar's wife, who was two years older than Boy, and at college, once
+asked her if she wasn't afraid.
+
+"Afraid!" asked the girl. "What of?"
+
+"I don't know," answered Elsie. "It's so far from everybody."
+
+"I like being alone," replied the girl. "And there are the horses."
+
+Elsie Haggard shared her mother's concern for Boy Woodburn's soul.
+
+"And Someone Else," she said.
+
+"Yes," replied the girl simply, almost brutally. "There's the Lord."
+
+Elsie Haggard looked at her sharply, suspecting her of flippancy.
+
+Nothing clearly was further from the girl's mind. Her face was unusually
+soft, almost dreamy.
+
+"Wherever there are horses and dogs and creatures He is, don't you
+think?" she said, quite unconscious that she was quoting inexactly a
+recently discovered saying dear to Mr. Haggard.
+
+"Ye-es," answered Elsie dubiously. "Of course, they've got no souls."
+
+The dreamer vanished.
+
+"I don't agree," flashed the girl.
+
+Elsie mounted on her high horse.
+
+"Perhaps you know more about it than my father," she said.
+
+"He doesn't agree, either," retorted the girl mercilessly.
+
+She was right; and Elsie knew it. The vicar's daughter made a lame
+recovery. Theology was always her father's weak point.
+
+"Or mother," she said.
+
+"Your mother doesn't know much about a horse," said the girl slowly.
+
+"She knows about their souls," cried Elsie triumphantly.
+
+"She can't if they haven't got them," retorted Boy, with the brutal
+logic that distinguished her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Boy Woodburn's room in the loft was characteristic of its owner.
+
+Mr. Haggard said it was full of light and little else.
+
+It was the room of a boy, not of a girl; of a soldier, and not an
+artist.
+
+The girl in truth had the limitations of her qualities. She was so near
+to Nature that she had no need for Art, and no understanding of it.
+
+The room knew neither carpet, curtain, nor blind. The sun, the wind, and
+not seldom the rain and snow were free of it. A small collapsible
+camp-bed, a copper basin and jug, an old chest, a corner cupboard--these
+constituted the furniture. The walls were whitewashed. Three of them
+knew no pictures. On one was her hunting-crop, a cutting-whip, and a
+pair of spurs; beneath them a boot-jack and three pairs of soft
+riding-boots in various stages of wear. In the corner stood a
+tandem-whip.
+
+Above the mantelpiece was one of the plates in which Cannibal had run
+the National, framing a photograph of the ugliest horse that ever won
+at Aintree--and the biggest, to judge from the size of the plate.
+Beneath it was a picture of the Good Shepherd and the Lost Sheep, and a
+church almanac. On the mantelpiece were the photographs of her mother,
+her father, Monkey Brand in the Putnam colours, and the Passion Play at
+Oberammergau; while pinned above the clock was the one poem, other than
+certain hymns and psalms, that Boy knew by heart.
+
+It was called _Two on the Downs_, and had been written by Mr. Haggard,
+when in the first vigour of youth he had come to take up his ministry in
+Cuckmere thirty years since:
+
+
+Two on the Downs
+
+                      _Climb ho!
+                      So we go
+                Up the hill to the sky,
+          Through the lane where the apple-blossoms blow
+                And the lovers pass us by.
+
+                Let them laugh at you and me,
+                Let them if they dare!
+                They're almost as bad maybe--
+                What do we care?
+
+                      Halt ho!
+                      On the brow!--
+                O, the world is wide!
+          And the wind and the waters blow and flow
+                In the sun on every side.
+
+                By the dew-pond windy-dark,
+                Take a gusty breath;
+                The gorse in glory,
+                The sunshine hoary
+                Upon the sea beneath._
+
+                      _Swing ho!
+                      Bowing go,
+                Breathless with laughter and song,
+          The wind in her wilful hair a-blow,
+                Swinging along, along.
+
+                She and I, girl and boy,
+                Merrily arm in arm,
+                The lark above us,
+                And God to love us,
+                And keep our hearts from harm.
+
+                      Sing ho!
+                      So we go,
+                Over Downs that are surging green,
+          Under the sky and the seas that lie
+                Silvery-strewn between_.
+
+One brilliant morning in early June, some two months after she had
+brought the gypsy's mare back to Putnam's on the evening of the Polefax
+Meeting, Boy rose early and stood humming the lines as she dressed, to a
+simple little tune she had composed for them.
+
+The words were in harmony with her mood and with the morning. In part
+they inspired, in part they determined her. As she began the song Boy
+was wondering whether she should begin to bathe. Her mind had resolved
+itself without effort as she ended.
+
+There had been a week of summer; the tide would be high, and only a day
+or two back a coastguard at the Gap had told her that the water was
+warming fast.
+
+She went to the window and looked out over the vast green sweep of the
+Paddock Close running away up the gorse-crowned hillside that rose like
+a rampart at the back.
+
+It was early. The sun had risen, but the mist lay white as yet in the
+hollows and hung about the dripping trees. Earth and sky and sea called
+her.
+
+The girl slipped into her riding-boots, put her jersey on, and over it
+her worn long-skirted coat, twisted her bathing gown and cap inside her
+towel, and walked across the loft, the old boards shaking beneath her
+swift feet.
+
+At the top of the ladder she paused a moment and looked down.
+
+The fan-tails strutted in the yard; Maudie licked herself on the ladder
+just out of the reach of Billy Bluff, who, tossing on his chain, greeted
+the girl with a volley of yelps, yaps, howls of triumph, petition,
+expectation and joy.
+
+Maudie, less pleased, rose coldly, and descended the ladder. She knew by
+experience what to expect when that slight figure came tripping down the
+ladder.
+
+The Monster-without-Manners would be let loose upon Society. The
+Monster-without-Manners was kept in his place all through the night by a
+simple but admirable expedient which Maudie did not profess to
+understand. As the sun peeped over the wall, Two-legs appeared at the
+top of the ladder, and peace departed from the earth till the sun went
+down again, when the Monster-without-Manners resumed his proper place
+upon the chain. He did not know how to treat a lady, and was impervious
+to scratches that would have taught one less shaggy. He was rough, and
+no gentleman.
+
+Maudie herself had the manners of an aristocrat of fiction. She walked
+through life, curling a contumelious lip, unshaken by the passions,
+aloof from the struggles, high above the emotions that stir and beset
+the creatures of the dust. In Maudie's estimation Billy Bluff was a
+bounder. Certainly he bounded, and like most bounders he conceived of
+himself quite falsely as a funny fellow.
+
+Brooding on her grievances, Maudie strolled thoughtfully across the
+yard, one eye always on her enemy, timing herself to be on the top of
+the wall just a second before the M.-w.-M. was free to bound.
+
+"Shut up, you ass!" said the girl as she released the bob-tail.
+
+He was away with a roar, scattering the fan-tails, as he launched on his
+way to exchange jibes with Maudie, languid, secure, and insolent on the
+top of the wall.
+
+The girl went to the saddle-room, took down her saddle and bridle, and
+turned into the stable.
+
+For once she was not the first.
+
+Monkey Brand was before her, standing at the head of a now familiar
+chestnut pony, waiting, saddled, on the pillar-reins.
+
+"Is Mr. Silver down?" the girl asked, surprised.
+
+"Yes, Miss. Came late last night. Down for the week-end, I believe. He's
+goin' for a stretch before he looks at the 'orses," the little jockey
+informed her. "They're goin' to gallop Make-Way-There this morning."
+
+"Are they?" said the girl sharply.
+
+It was rarely anything took place in the stable without her knowledge.
+And Make-Way-There, who was one of Mr. Silver's horses, was to run at
+the Paris Meeting two weeks hence.
+
+The girl, to hide her resentment, placed her hand on the pony's neck,
+hard as marble beneath a skin that was soft to the touch as a mole's.
+
+"Ain't he a little clinker?" said Monkey Brand in hushed voice. "They
+say Mr. Silver refused L600 for him at Hurlingham. And he took champion
+at the Poly Pony Show."
+
+The girl's hand travelled down the pony's neck with firm, strong,
+rhythmical stroke.
+
+"Heart of Oak!" she purred affectionately.
+
+Ragamuffin, the old roan pony in the next stall, began to move, restless
+and irritable.
+
+"He's jealous, is old Rags," smiled Monkey.
+
+The girl went to the roan.
+
+"Now, then, old man," she said. "Old friends first."
+
+She saddled him and led him out into the yard.
+
+Attached to the d's of the light saddle was a string forage bag such as
+cavalry soldiers carry. Into it she stuffed her towel and all that it
+contained.
+
+Monkey Brand held the pony's head as she mounted.
+
+"How's the old mare?" she asked, gathering her reins.
+
+"Four Pound?" queried the jockey. "I didn't see her this morning as I
+come along, Miss. She must ha' been layin' behind the trees. Another
+week, I should say."
+
+"William!" called the girl, and rode through the gate into the Paddock
+Close.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Since the Polefax Meeting Silver had come and gone continually. His
+week-ends he spent frequently at Putnam's, returning to London by the
+first train on Monday morning.
+
+"He don't like the Bank, and I don't blame him," said Old Mat. "I reck'n
+he'd like to be all the while in the saddle on the Downs."
+
+"Why does he stick to the Bank?" the girl blurted out.
+
+It was the only question she had ever put about Mr. Silver.
+
+"Because he's got to, my dear," replied the sagacious old man. "If he
+don't stick to the Bank, the Bank won't stick to him, I guess."
+
+In those months the girl had learned a good deal about Mr. Silver. He
+was different from the other men she knew. She had felt that at once on
+meeting him. She was shy with him and short; and it was rare for her to
+be shy with men. Indeed, in her heart she knew that she was almost
+afraid of him. And she had never known herself afraid of a man before.
+That made her angry with him, though it was no fault of his.
+
+Then she had resented the unconscious part he had played in the affair
+of the wood. She was sure he was laughing at her. And that good, plain,
+smileless face of his, and the very fact that he never referred to the
+incident, only made her the more suspicious.
+
+His awkward big-dog attempts at friendliness had been repulsed. She
+played the Maudie to his Billy Bluff, and all would have been well but
+that he refused to get back upon her by bounding. Instead, he apparently
+had come to the conclusion that she disliked him, and had withdrawn.
+
+That made her angrier still.
+
+Now she had not even known that he was coming down last night. And worst
+and most unforgivable of all, she had not been told that Make-Way-There
+was to be galloped that morning.
+
+Ragamuffin, the roan, was surprised when his mistress picked him up
+immediately she entered the Paddock Close and pushed him into a canter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Old Man Badger
+
+
+Ragamuffin was old, but his heart was good. Directly his mistress asked
+him he snatched for his head and went away smooth and swift as a racing
+boat.
+
+Boy pulled off to the right and made for the clump of trees half-way up
+the hill.
+
+The gypsy's mare was grazing by herself behind them.
+
+The girl steadied to a halt and watched her critically, calling Billy
+Bluff to heel.
+
+She didn't want the boisterous young dog to worry the old mare just now,
+and it was clear that Four Pound didn't want it either.
+
+As Billy Bluff skirmished about, she put back her ears and lowered her
+head with an irritable motion; but she was far too lazy to make the
+charge she threatened.
+
+The girl's inspection made, and conclusions drawn, she pursued her way
+up the hill, popped her pony over the low post and rails which fenced
+off the Paddock Close from the untamed Downs, and walked leisurely over
+the brow, the gorse warm and smelling in the sun.
+
+Beneath her a valley stretched away to the sea. There the cliff rose
+steeply to a lighthouse, standing on a bare summit; dipped, and rose
+again. In the hollow between the two hills a white coastguard station
+sentinelled the Gap, across which the line of the sea stretched like a
+silver wire.
+
+Nobody was yet astir save a ploughman driving a team of slow-moving oxen
+to the fields. To Boy the beauty of the early morning lay in the fact
+that she had the hills and heavens and seas to herself, and could enjoy
+them in her own way without thought of interference from a world too
+frivolous, too feverish, and above all too loud, to understand.
+
+As she rode along, her young face was uplifted to catch the rivulets of
+song that came pouring down on her from the blue.
+
+She dropped down the hill, disturbing the rabbits busy in the dew, and
+bursting through the cables of gossamer that tried to stay her. A
+kestrel hovered over the gorse, and she marked a badger on the hillside
+shuffling home before Man and his Dogs began the old rowdy-dowdy game
+once more.
+
+Happily Billy Bluff, who was always too much absorbed in the object
+immediately beneath his nose to take long views, did not see him. And
+the girl was glad. Sport, in so far as it meant killing the creatures of
+the wilderness for pleasure, made no appeal to her. She had no desire
+whatever to see a fight between the badger and Billy Bluff. The badger
+had in her judgment many qualities. She respected his desire for freedom
+and determination to go his own way. Also if the pair fought, the girl
+shrewdly suspected that Billy Bluff, big though he was, and bold as a
+lion, might be worsted. For Billy, after all, was decadent according to
+the standards of the wilderness.
+
+He lived on a chain, protected by the police, and fed by hand. Every man
+was not his enemy, and he had not to hunt for each meal or go without.
+Billy Bluff, however fine a fellow he might be in his own eyes, was a
+poor creature in that of Warrior Badger. Civilization, if it had given
+him much of which the badger recked nothing, had also taken her toll of
+him.
+
+Thinking vaguely thus, the girl once down the hill caught hold of
+Ragamuffin and spun him along the valley between the hills till she came
+to the coastguard station, straggling like a flock of sheep across the
+Gap.
+
+At the mouth of the Gap was a familiar post.
+
+She slipped Ragamuffin's rein over it, and ran down the steep, uneven
+way through the chalk cliff, her bob-tail baying at her side.
+
+Right athwart the Gap, peering into it, shining-eyed and splendid, lay
+the sea, calling her.
+
+"I'm coming!" her heart answered with a thrill, and she swooped toward
+it with a whoop and widespread arms.
+
+Her feet crashed into the jolly shouting shingle, and she ploughed her
+way through it, to the rocks under the cliff which made her bathing
+tent.
+
+The tide was brimming and beautiful. It came welling up, curled and fell
+with a soft, delicious swish on the answering beach.
+
+Calm and full, twinkling still through faint mists, its shining surface
+was ruffled faintly by a light-footed breeze.
+
+Swift as a bird the girl, blue-clad now, came rushing out from her
+hiding-place, her fair hair bunched in a cap, the sea in her nostrils,
+and exaltation in her heart.
+
+This surely was heaven!
+
+A moment she hovered on the brink, testing the waters with a tentative
+foot.
+
+Then with a sigh of content she trusted herself to the deep. It closed
+about her like the arms of a friend.
+
+She had not bathed since November, and it seemed to her the ocean
+welcomed her, clinging to her, lifting her, loving her, holding her
+close.
+
+She buried her face in it, rose dripping, shaking the water off her eyes
+and face and hair, and swam out to sea with long and steady strokes.
+
+She did not shout, she did not splash, she did not play the fool, and
+did not want to; rejoicing deeply in the quiet of her great friend,
+heart to heart and flesh to flesh, while the waters made music all about
+her.
+
+The first bath was for her a kind of sacrament. She drew from it the
+deep and tranquil exaltation that she supposed Elsie Haggard drew from
+Communion.
+
+Fifty yards out to sea she turned and trod water.
+
+Billy Bluff, the old ass, was fussing about on the edge of the tide,
+barking at her.
+
+"William!" called the head on the water. "Come on!"
+
+Billy fiddled and flirted and could not bring himself to make the
+plunge.
+
+Boy watched him with amused resentment. It was his domesticity which was
+his undoing. Old Man Badger on the hillside would never have dillied or
+dallied like that.
+
+"Come on!" she ordered deeply. "Or I'll come and lug you in."
+
+Billy marked the imperious note in his young mistress's voice. He ran
+this way and that, excused himself, pranced, whined, whimpered, yapped,
+barked, tasted the water and didn't like it, tried a dip, and withdrew,
+and finally made the effort and shoved off.
+
+He swam rather low. His long, black back lay along the shining surface,
+his hair floating like seaweed on either side of him, while he left a
+little eddying wake behind him, as he pushed swiftly toward the girl.
+
+As he came nearer she splashed him and he barked joyfully. He made for
+her, to paw and sprawl upon her. She evaded him.
+
+Awhile girl and dog sported together in the deep, happy and laughing as
+two children.
+
+Then they raced for the shore. He reached it first and, a caricature of
+his usual shaggy self, ran up toward her clothes, flinging off showers
+of drops.
+
+"Keep off, creature!" she ordered, her big voice emerging strangely from
+her wisp of dripping figure, as she walked delicately up the shingle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The Three J's
+
+
+Old Mat was fond of telling his intimates that Monkey Brand was fly.
+
+"He do love his little bit o' roguey-poguey," he would say with a
+twinkle. And it was the old man's opinion, often expressed, that weight
+for age Monkey would beat the crooks at their own game every time.
+
+And when he set the little jockey to snout about and rout out the
+business of Joses, he knew he was setting his head-lad a task after his
+heart.
+
+Monkey Brand had gone to work indeed with the tenacity and the tact that
+distinguished him. Once on a line, he hunted it with the ruthlessness of
+a stoat. But this time, it seemed, he had met his match. If Monkey was
+cunning as a fox, Joses was wary as a lynx.
+
+The fat man watched the other's manoeuvres with eyes that did not
+disguise their amusement. He was always ready for a chat in which Monkey
+liberally be-larded him with sirs, was obsequious and deferential; but
+he would never cross the door of a public-house, and never, as the
+little man reported, "let on."
+
+It was by a chance the seeker came on the clue at last.
+
+One evening he marked his victim down in the Post Office and followed
+him quietly. Joses was at the counter sending a telegram. The
+postmistress, unable to read the code-address, had asked for
+enlightenment.
+
+"Spavin," Joses said; and the secret was out. For all the world knew
+that Spavin was the code-address of the shady and successful trainer at
+Dewhurst on the Arunvale side of the Downs.
+
+"Who said Jaggers?" came a little voice at his elbow.
+
+The fat man turned to find the jockey close behind him.
+
+"I did," he answered brazenly.
+
+Monkey smiled the smile of a bottle-fed cherub.
+
+"'Ow's my ole pal Chukkers?" he piped.
+
+Joses grinned.
+
+"Just back," he said.
+
+"So I hears," answered the other. "Been teachin' 'em tricks in
+Horsetralia, ain't he? Went there by way of God's Country, same as per
+usual, huntin' fer black diamonds. What's he brought back this
+journey?--a pink-eyed broncho from the Prairees bought for ten cents
+from a Texas cow-puncher, and guaranteed to show the English plugs the
+way to move."
+
+Joses wagged a shaggy head. If to retain a sense of humour is still to
+possess something of a soul, then the fat man was not entirely lost.
+
+"You love Chukkers, don't you?" he said.
+
+"Don't I love all dagos?" asked Monkey. "Sich a pretty little way with
+'em they got. Same as a baa-lamb in the meadow 'mong the buttercups."
+
+"Then now I'll tell you something for yourself," said Joses. "He loves
+all the English--owners, jockeys, and crowd. But he loves _you_ best."
+
+"Never!" cried Monkey, greatly moved. "Then I'm the man what won the
+Greaser's Heart. It's too much."
+
+A few further inquiries, made by Mat, put the thing beyond question.
+
+Joses was watcher for Jaggers, who trained for Ikey Aaronsohnn, for whom
+Chukkers rode.
+
+In England, Australia, and the Americas, the three were always spoken of
+together as the Three J's--Jaggers, the Jockey, and the Jew. Wherever
+horses raced their fame was great, and amongst the English at least it
+was evil and ominous.
+
+"Rogues and rasqueals!" Old Mat would say with one of his deep sighs.
+"But whatebber should we do without 'em?"
+
+For Putnam's the Three J's had always possessed a particular interest.
+
+Their stable was at Dewhurst, just behind Arunvah, at the other end of
+the South Downs. And Dewhurst had been for twenty years the centre of
+that campaign to lower the colours of the English thoroughbred, which
+Ikey Aaronsohnn had embarked upon in his unforgotten youth.
+
+The little Levantine hailed from New York, Hamburg, and
+London--especially the first two. A cosmopolitan banker, and genial
+rascal, he had, even in England, a host of friends, and deserved them. A
+man of ideals, and extremely tenacious, _objets d'art_ and steeplechase
+horses had been his twin passions from his childhood. He collected both
+with a judgment amounting to genius. And there were few experts in
+either kind who were not prepared to acknowledge him their master.
+
+The day when Ikey, then young, sure of himself, and enthusiastic, had
+been called a "bloody little German Jew" in the Paddock at Liverpool by
+a noble English sportsman, as he led his first winner home, had been
+forgotten by others but not by him. And when a year later the little man
+stood for White's Club, on the strength of winning the International,
+and was black-balled, the die was cast.
+
+There was no doubt that Ikey had his qualities. Whether he was your
+friend or your enemy, he never forgot you; and he gave you cause to
+remember him. His memory was long; his temper not to be ruffled; his
+humour, in victory and defeat, invincible; his purse unfathomable. He
+was never known to be angry, impetuous, or bitter. And he never deviated
+from his aim. That aim, as he once told the New York Yacht Club, in
+words that were trumpeted across the world, was "to lick the English
+thoroughbred on his own ground, at his own game, all the time, and every
+way."
+
+What P. Forilland had done for a previous generation of Americans, when
+Iroquois snatched the Blue Riband of the Turf from the English and bore
+it across the Atlantic, Ikey meant to do some day at Liverpool.
+
+"We've wopped 'em once on the flat, and we'll wop 'em yet across
+country," he once said at Meadow Brook.
+
+It was with this end in view that Chukkers, then a kid-jockey from the
+West, had crossed the ocean in Ikey's train, and first carried to
+victory the star-spangled jacket which for the past twenty years had
+caused such heart-burnings among the English owners, trainers, and
+jockeys, and such mingled enthusiasm and indignation in the
+uncertain-tempered English crowd.
+
+In that twenty years Ikey, if he had never yet achieved his end and won
+the Grand National with an other-than-English horse, had given the
+Englishmen such a shaking as they had never experienced before.
+
+All over the world, wherever horses were bred, from the Punjab to the
+Pampas, and from the Tenterfield Ranges to Old Virginia, he had his
+scouts and his stud-farms. It was said that if a wall-eyed pack mule,
+carrying quartz in the Nevadas, showed a disposition to gallop and jump
+he would be in Ikey's stable in a fortnight, and, if he made good, at
+Dewhurst within six months.
+
+It was, of course, with the Walers that the little Levantine came
+nearest his desire. He imported them into the old country on a scale
+never before dreamed of. Some of them proved themselves great horses,
+the equals of the best the English could bring against them: all were
+good. And it was only by an act of God, as the enemy English declared,
+that Boomerang, the king of them, had failed to win the National and
+consummate his owner's long-delayed end.
+
+But Ikey, that merry little rogue, the cup of victory dashed from his
+lips, never for a moment lost heart.
+
+As he truly said,
+
+"If I haven't yet found the horse, I've found the jockey that can beat
+their best."
+
+And in time he would find the horse, too.
+
+He believed that. So did America.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The Fat Man
+
+
+It was notorious that the Three J's (or, to be more exact, Ikey) not
+only had their scouts out all over the world, seeking what Monkey Brand
+called "black diamonds," but that they had their eyes everywhere in the
+Old Country, watching enemy stables. And Joses was the Eye that watched
+all the stables on the South Downs from Beachy Head to the Rother--and
+Putnam's most of all.
+
+When tackled further on the subject by Monkey Brand, the tout admitted
+the fact without demur and even with pride.
+
+"Yes," he swaggered. "I'm a commission agent. A very honourable
+profession, too."
+
+"Not ha hartist at all?" queried Monkey, chewing his quid.
+
+Joses laughed and spread himself, throwing back his gingery curls.
+
+"I was at Oxford," he said, "and I've all the tastes of a gentleman. Art
+and poetry are my specialties--when my professional duties allow me
+time."
+
+The little dark jockey turned in his lips, eyeing the other with bland
+interest.
+
+"'Ark to him!" he said. "Don't he talk. Learned the patter at Oxford
+College, I expect." He turned on his lame leg. "Anyway, we know now
+where we are, Mr. Moses Joses."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the incident in the Post Office Joses dropped his easel and went
+about with field-glasses unashamed. To give him his due, there were few
+better watchers in the trade. A man of education and great natural
+ability, he was quite unscrupulous as to how he achieved his end.
+
+As Chukkers said of him:
+
+"He gets there. Never mind how."
+
+Joses indeed was out early and late, and he was horribly alert. Nobody
+knew when and where his fat body and brown face might not be turning up.
+
+"Crawls around like a great red slug," said Old Mat; and it was seldom a
+horse did a big gallop but the fat man was there to see.
+
+The morning Boy went for her first dip he was at the lighthouse on the
+cliff above the Gap. Whether he had slept there, or risen with the dawn,
+it was hard to say. The lighthouse marked the highest point in the
+neighbourhood, and was therefore useful for the watcher's purpose. From
+there with his glasses he could sweep The Mare's Back and The Giant's
+Shoulder and neighbouring ridges on which the horses of the stables in
+the district galloped.
+
+The Paris Meeting was the next big event; and Ikey Aaronsohnn's horse
+Jackaroo--the waler Chukkers had just brought back with him from the
+other side--was to make his first appearance at it. There was only one
+English horse of which the Dewhurst stable had not the measure, and that
+was the Putnam mare Make-Way-There. Jaggers, in that curt, sub-acid way
+of his, had instructed Joses to report on her form, and "to make no
+mistake about it."
+
+The tout had touched his hat and answered:
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+Now it was well known that a man had to be up very early in every sense
+if he wanted to keep an eye on a Putnam horse. Mat Woodburn might be
+old, but he was by no means sleepy; and Joses could not afford to
+blunder.
+
+Last night two telegrams had come to Cuckmere: one was to Silver from
+Chukkers, and the other to Joses from Jaggers. They had been written at
+the same moment by the same man. And the one to Joses ran--
+
+          _Make-Way-There to-morrow._
+
+Standing under the lee of the lighthouse, seeing while himself unseen,
+the tout kept his eyes to his glasses.
+
+Little escaped him. He saw the badger moving on the hillside, and
+watched the girl on her pony come over the crest from Putnam's, a slight
+figure black against the sky. He followed her as she dropped down the
+hill and scampered along the valley, marked her hang her pony's rein
+over the post, and disappear down the gap.
+
+Joses closed his glasses. His face became a dirty red. It was as though
+the mud in him had been stirred by an obscene hand.
+
+In a moment a slight figure in a blue gown appeared from under the cliff
+and entered the sea.
+
+Shoving his glasses into his pocket, Joses began to shuffle down the
+hill toward the Gap. The kittiwakes flashed and swept and hovered in the
+blue above him. The sea shone and twinkled far beneath. A great,
+brown-sailed barge lolled lazily by under the cliff.
+
+He was unaware of them, shuffling over the short, sweet-scented turf
+like some great human hog, snorting as he went, his eyes on that little
+bobbing black dot on the face of the waters beneath him.
+
+There was no cover. The turf lifted its calm face to the naked sky. And
+he crept along, crouching in himself, as though fearing detection from
+on high.
+
+The girl was in and out of the water again with astonishing speed. By
+the time the tout had reached the foot of the hill she was under the
+cliff again and out of sight. He peered over stealthily. There was
+nothing much to see but a dark blue gown spread on a rock to dry, and
+behind the rock the bob of a bathing cap.
+
+The Gap was three hundred yards away. A sleepy coastguard had emerged
+from one of the cottages and was washing at a tub of rain water.
+
+Where Joses stood the cliff was low, scarcely twenty feet above the
+beach, and was not entirely precipitous.
+
+He pocketed his glasses and scrambled panting down to the beach.
+
+Then he began to stalk the rock decorated with the bathing gown; and he
+did not look pretty.
+
+His hot red face perspired, and he panted as he crawled.
+
+It is hard to say what was in his heart, and better perhaps not to
+inquire.
+
+One thing only stood out clearly in his mind.
+
+He owed that girl behind the rock _two_; and Joses rarely forgot to pay
+his debts.
+
+There was first the affair of the wood. He suffered pain and
+inconvenience still as the result of that incident, and the doctor told
+him that he might expect to continue to suffer it. And what mattered
+more, there was the sense of humiliation and the disfigurement. His
+nose, never a thing of beauty, was now a standing offence. The children
+ran from it, and Joses was genuinely fond of children. The little
+daughter of Mrs. Boam, his landlady, Jenny, once his friend, had now
+deserted him.
+
+And there was the matter of the young man, which he found it even harder
+to forgive. That young man was Silver, and he was a Mug. A mug was made
+to be drained; and Joses had dreamed that to him would fall the draining
+of this singularly fine specimen of his class. His attachment to the
+firm of the Three J's, based largely on fear, was not such but that he
+would break it at any moment could he do so with security and profit.
+
+He had known all about Silver long before he had turned up at Putnam's;
+it was part of his business to know about such young men. Indeed, he had
+made an abortive, determined, and characteristically tortuous attempt to
+sweep the young man and his horses into Jaggers's capacious net.
+
+Silver indeed had hesitated awhile between the two stables. Then he had
+met Jaggers, and had decided at once--against Dewhurst. When the game
+was finally lost, and it was known that Putnam's had come out top again
+in the struggle that had lasted between the two stables for thirty
+years, the tout changed his method but never lost sight of his ideal;
+yearning over the rich young man as a mother yearns over a child.
+
+His dreams had been shattered finally in the wood a month back, and for
+that debacle the girl behind the rock must be held responsible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Boy Sees a Vision
+
+
+Joses when in liquor was wont to boast that his memory was good, and he
+was right upon the whole. But on this occasion he had forgotten
+something, and that something was Billy Bluff. Billy and Joses had met
+before, as Monkey Brand had pointed out to Mat, and had agreed to
+dislike each other. And when Joses began his stalk, Billy Bluff started
+on a stalk of his own.
+
+Boy Woodburn, peeping between two rocks, watched with grim glee. Her
+senses, quick as those of a wild creature, had warned her long ago of
+the Great Beast's approach. For Joses to imagine he could take her by
+surprise was as though a beery bullock believed that he could catch a
+lark. The girl was almost sorry for the man: his fatness, his fatuity
+appealed to her pity. Alert as a leopard, she was not in the least
+afraid of him. In the wood, true, he had caught her, but her downfall
+there she owed to a sprain. Here in the open, in her riding things, she
+could run rings about her enemy.
+
+Lying on her face behind the rock, she watched the little drama.
+
+Billy Bluff, wet still from the sea, his hair clinging about his ribs,
+and giving him the air of a heraldic griffin, crept on the puffing fat
+man and hurled at him with a roar.
+
+The assault was entirely unexpected.
+
+"You--bear!" blurted Joses, the picturesque phrase popping out of him
+like a cork from a heady bottle of champagne.
+
+He struggled to his feet, picked up a stone, and slung it at the
+charging dog.
+
+Billy Bluff meant business; and it was well for his enemy that the stone
+struck him on the fore-paw. The blow steadied, but it did not stop, the
+dog. He gave a little gurgle and came again on three legs in silent
+fury.
+
+Joses made for the cliff, where a fall had constituted a steep ramp. He
+scrambled up it, an avalanche of chalk slipping away from beneath his
+feet and half burying the pursuing dog.
+
+He panted up to the top of the ramp, and stood with his back to the
+cliff, looking down on his attacker.
+
+Billy Bluff could not make his footing good upon the shale.
+
+He lay at the foot of the cliff, one eye on his prey, licking his
+damaged paw, and swearing beneath his breath. And it was clear he did
+not mean to budge.
+
+Joses turned his face to the cliff. He got his hands on the top, and
+lifting himself, could just peer over the edge of the cliff and see the
+green and the gorse beyond. Unaided, he could do no more.
+
+Happily help was at hand.
+
+A man on a chestnut pony was standing on the turf not twenty yards away.
+
+"Give me a hand up, will you?" he panted. "That ---- of a dog!"
+
+The young man approached.
+
+"By all means," he said, in a deep, familiar voice.
+
+It was Silver.
+
+Joses did not mind that. He was not at all above taking a hand from an
+enemy in an emergency.
+
+And young Silver seemed surprisingly kind. Big men usually were.
+
+The young man got off his pony, came to the edge of the cliff, and gave
+the perspiring tout his hand. With a heave and a lurch Joses scrambled
+to the top.
+
+How strong the fellow was! No horse would ever get away with _him_.
+
+"Good of you," panted the fat man, rising to his feet.
+
+"Not at all," replied Silver. "It was less trouble to pull you up than
+to come down to you."
+
+There was a note in his quiet voice Joses did not like.
+
+"What you mean?" he asked.
+
+"I'm going to give you a hiding," observed the other mildly.
+
+Joses looked aghast at his rescuer and snorted. He shot forward his
+shaggy face, and the action seemed to depress his chest and obtrude his
+stomach.
+
+"Whaffor?" he asked, in tones that betrayed the fact that such
+experiences were not entirely new to him.
+
+"I don't know," said Silver in his exasperatingly lazy way. "I feel I'd
+rather like to."
+
+He seemed quietly amused, much more so than was Joses. And he meant what
+he said. His clean, calm face, his mouth so determined and yet so mild,
+his steady eyes and the thrust of his jaw, all betrayed his resolution.
+
+"Here, stow it!" stammered the fat man. "Chuck the chaff. A gentleman!"
+
+"I'm not chaffing," said Silver in a matter-of-fact way. "How d'you like
+it?"
+
+"What ye mean?"
+
+"Will you put your hands up--or will you take it lying?"
+
+His pony's rein was over the young man's arm; and they were standing on
+the edge of the cliff. Joses, weighing his chances with the swift and
+comprehending eye of fear, marked it greedily. Silver was young, strong,
+an athlete; but he was handicapped.
+
+Joses's cunning was returning to reinforce his doubtful heart.
+
+"That's Heart of Oak, isn't it?" he asked.
+
+"Is it?" said the young man.
+
+"The model polo pony," continued Joses. "Refused L600 for him at
+Islington, didn't you? And I don't blame you. You're rich, we all know,
+Mr. Silver. L600's no more to you than sixpence to me. But there's the
+pony! You can't replace him. Pity if he got away here on the edge of the
+cliff and all."
+
+For the second time that morning Joses's luck deserted him.
+
+"I'll hold your pony," said a deep voice from behind.
+
+The fat man turned.
+
+Boy Woodburn stood behind him.
+
+Fresh from the sea, her hair in short, thick plaits of gold, dark and
+wet and bare; with the eyes of a sword and the colour of an
+apple-blossom; the brine upon her and the brown of wind and sun; in her
+breeches, boots, and jersey, her big dog straining on his lead, she
+looked like Diana turned post-boy.
+
+"Thank you," said the young man, handing over his pony.
+
+Joses snorted.
+
+"Call yourself a woman!" he cried.
+
+"I'm all right," answered the girl, seating herself critically on a
+mound, the pony in one hand, the dog in the other. "Don't hit him over
+the heart," she advised out of some experience of race-course scraps.
+"There might be trouble."
+
+"I sha'n't hit him at all," replied the young man. He seized the fat man
+by the shoulder and spun him round. "I shall--_shake_ him, and--_punt_
+him."
+
+The girl did not know what punting meant, but it sounded good and was
+not so bad to watch.
+
+Silver was applying his knee to his victim with precision and power. The
+fat man's teeth seemed to rattle under the pounding shocks. The words
+came joggling out of him, and they were not pretty words. He struck
+backward with his arms and feet, wriggling to get his plump shoulders
+free; but he was helpless as a baby in the arms of a nurse.
+
+Silver was strong. Joses was right in that if in nothing else.
+
+"He's killing me!" he gasped. "Fetch the coastguard!"
+
+"No, thank you," said the girl.
+
+The young man loosed his prey at last, and sent him spinning forward,
+projecting him with a kick.
+
+Joses fell on his face, and stayed there fumbling, while he vomited
+oaths.
+
+"Look out!" cried the girl sharply. "He's got a knife, and he'll use
+it."
+
+She was right. Joses was busy with that wooden-handled sheath-knife of
+his.
+
+Silver took a step forward.
+
+"Ah, then!--would you?" he scolded, and hit the other a tap over the
+wrist with the handle of his hunting crop.
+
+Joses yelped and dropped the knife.
+
+Then he scrambled to his feet, wringing his hand.
+
+The brown of his face had turned a dirty livid.
+
+"I see what it is!" he cried. "Assignation. And I spoiled the
+sport--what! You and the dandy toff.
+
+          _Him and me,
+          Beside the sea._
+
+_Quite_ unintentional, I assure you!"
+
+He bowed, cackling horribly.
+
+Silver looked ugly.
+
+"Now then!" he said, and advanced a pace.
+
+The girl put a staying hand upon him; and the tout shambled away toward
+the Gap, muttering to himself.
+
+Silver turned to his companion. He was breathing deep, but outwardly
+unmoved.
+
+"Are you all right?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she said. "He knocked Billy Bluff out, but he didn't touch me.
+Hold your paw, Bill! It's nothing much. I shall put him on a wet bandage
+soaked in borax when I get home."
+
+A sound of hand-clapping and hoarse laughter ascended to them from the
+Gap.
+
+Joses had slipped Ragamuffin's reins over the post, and was clapping his
+hands. Then he took up a pebble and threw it at the roan. The old pony
+went off at a gallop and with trailing reins.
+
+Boy watched him calmly.
+
+"I should have thought of that," she said.
+
+Silver was starting off down the hill toward the mocking figure at the
+mouth of the Gap; but the girl stopped him.
+
+"You get on and ride up the valley," she said. "Ragamuffin'll stop to
+graze under the lighthouse; and you'll collar him there."
+
+Silver hesitated.
+
+"What about you?" he asked.
+
+"I shall be all right," she answered. "I've got the legs of him."
+
+He mounted and went off at a canter, Billy Bluff pursuing him.
+
+The girl walked down toward the Gap, looking ridiculously slight in her
+post-boy attire.
+
+Joses had disappeared.
+
+As she came to the mouth of the Gap and picked up her coat, her towel,
+and the tackle she had thrown down, she saw him.
+
+He was standing in the Gap, between the white chalk walls, nursing his
+hand.
+
+She was glad he was down there. He would be safe at least from Mr.
+Silver.
+
+As she put on her coat she looked at him with calm, musing eyes. The
+Spirit of Action was laid to sleep in her. In its place a Moving Dream,
+welling up as it were out of Time into Eternity, possessed her slowly.
+These Other-Conscious Moments, as Mr. Haggard called them, grew on the
+girl with the growing years. She was aware of them in others--in her
+mother, Mr. Haggard, her grand-dad--but hardly so in herself. They were
+of her, yet beyond her--mysterious invasions from she knew not where,
+gleams of Eden from exile. At these times she saw men as trees walking
+and all created things as part and expression of a Huge Vague Life of
+Wonder and Beauty without end.
+
+And now, as she looked at the man in the Gap she said with quiet
+severity, as though addressing one of the lads at Bible Class:
+
+"You _are_ a naughty boy."
+
+He glanced up at her from his earth.
+
+She saw his eyes, and the suffering in them, and recognised them with a
+start. They were the eyes of a fox she had seen last season dug out of
+an earth to the screams of men and halloos of women, after a long run,
+that hounds might not be defrauded of blood.
+
+And she felt now as she had felt then. A passion of sympathy, a sea of
+furious indignation, boiled up within her. Something pitifully forlorn
+about the man struck her to the heart. Quite suddenly she felt sorry for
+him; sorry with the sorrow that has sent heroes and saints throughout
+the ages to persecution and death with joy, if only they may relieve by
+ever so little the sufferings of sinful humanity.
+
+Boy Woodburn was not a saint and was not a hero; but she was on the way
+to be a woman. The Voice that was not hers spoke out of her deeps.
+
+"Why did you do that?" she asked quietly.
+
+There was no anger in her tone or spirit; no sorrow, no surprise. She
+was curiously impersonal.
+
+The fox showed his teeth.
+
+"I'll do worse than that yet," he said.
+
+The girl found herself gulping.
+
+She looked at him through shining eyes. And as she did so it came in
+upon her that this degraded creature had once been beautiful. Ruin as he
+was, there was still about him something tragic and forlorn as of a
+great moor over which a beaten host has retreated, leaving desolation in
+its wake.
+
+The man in the Gap wrung his wrist.
+
+The girl took a step toward him.
+
+"May I look at it?" she said.
+
+He glanced up at her again, much as glances a dog which has had a
+licking and is uncertain whether the hand stretched out is that of an
+enemy or a friend.
+
+"Likely," he snarled. "You'd bite."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Two on the Downs
+
+
+Silver came trotting up with Ragamuffin trailing discontentedly behind.
+
+The old roan didn't really mind being caught, but he dearly loved to
+pretend he did.
+
+Billy Bluff, who had already forgotten his injury, limped along behind,
+busy and cheerful.
+
+Both man and dog had on their faces the same jolly grin of health and
+happiness, the result of a sound conscience and still more a sound
+digestion.
+
+"He didn't take much catching," said the young man. "And Billy Bluff
+helped."
+
+Boy looked at her dog.
+
+"I saw him helping," she said sternly. "You old scoundrel, you!"
+
+The young dog lay on the ground and gnawed his wounded paw complacently.
+He loved being scolded by his mistress when she was not too serious.
+
+The girl stuffed her towel and all it contained into the forage bag.
+
+"Shall I give you a leg up?" asked Silver.
+
+"It's all right," she answered.
+
+She mounted and rode alongside him.
+
+"Where's our friend?" he asked.
+
+"Gone to earth."
+
+"What!--down the Gap?" He turned on her with that delightful eagerness
+which constantly revealed him to her as a boy in spite of that plain,
+grave face of his. "Shall I draw him?"
+
+She shook her head gravely.
+
+"Poor old thing," she said.
+
+He steadied instantly to her mood.
+
+"Are you sorry for him?" he asked.
+
+Boy looked away, shy and wary.
+
+"Sometimes," she said. "He must have had a pig's time to be so rotten as
+that."
+
+It was a new view to the young man, and sobered him.
+
+"Perhaps," he said doubtfully. He was thinking out the question in his
+slow way. "It may be his own fault," he said. "You make yourself, I
+think."
+
+"Part," answered the girl. "And part you are made by your surroundings.
+That's the way with young stock anyhow. It's a bit how they are
+bred--the blood in them; and part the food they get, and the air and
+liberty and sun they're allowed."
+
+"I suppose so," said Silver quietly. "Certainly our friend's food don't
+seem to have suited him."
+
+The girl refused to be amused.
+
+"He's come down," she said. "Mr. Haggard says he was once a gentleman."
+
+"Some time since, I should guess," replied Silver. "What!"
+
+They were moving along a narrow cart-track that led across a fallow. He
+was riding behind her, his eyes on her back. The bathing cap had been
+stuffed away, and her hair, still dark from the sea, was bare to the
+sun.
+
+"I'm glad you came," she said casually over her shoulder.
+
+"I was just out for a canter before going to look at the horses," he
+answered.
+
+She nodded to where against the skyline a string of tall, thin-legged
+black creatures, each with a blob of jockey on his back, paraded
+solemnly against the sky.
+
+"See them!" she said. "On the Mare's Back." She watched them critically.
+"That's Make-Way-There--No. 2 in the string. Now she's playing up." She
+lifted her voice. "_Don't pull at her, you little goat!_"
+
+"They're going to gallop her this morning, I believe," said Silver. "You
+hear Chukkers has let me down?"
+
+"No!" cried the girl keenly.
+
+"Yes; he wired last night to say he couldn't ride for me at Paris."
+
+If it was news to the girl, it was by no means unexpected, and she took
+the blow with philosophical calm.
+
+"That was certain once he knew we were training for you," she said. "I
+suppose dad's going to see who he'll give the ride to."
+
+"Shall we canter?" said the young man. "I don't want to miss it."
+
+"That's all right," replied the girl. "Father won't set 'em their work
+till I come."
+
+It was clear she wished to keep him walking at her side, and he was
+pleased.
+
+The incident on the cliff had brought them closer. For the first time
+the young man felt the warmth of the girl breaking through the barriers
+of her reserve. Her eyes, when they met his, were friendly, even
+affectionate. It was his turn to be pleasantly shy.
+
+"D'you love them?" she asked.
+
+She felt somehow so much older than he that she was free to question
+him.
+
+"The horses?" he asked. "_Rur-rather_," with that infectious enthusiasm
+of his.
+
+"You've got some pretty good ones," she told him.
+
+"D'you think so?" keenly.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Raw, but they'll come on. That's what you want."
+
+"Any up to National form?" he asked.
+
+"Make-Way-There might be good enough in a season or two if she'll stay,"
+she said. "You can never tell. She's only four off."
+
+They began to breast the slope of the Mare's Back.
+
+"I've only had one real ambition in life," he said confidentially.
+
+She looked at him.
+
+"What?"
+
+"To win the Nun-National."
+
+She beamed on him friendly.
+
+"I used to have one," she said--"till last year: tremendously."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"To ride the National winner."
+
+She peeped to see if he was mocking. He was sober as a judge.
+
+"You may yet."
+
+"Not now."
+
+"Why not?" he asked. "Because it's against the National Hunt Rules?"
+
+"Not that," she said with scorn. "I could get round their rotten rules
+if I wanted."
+
+"How?" he asked.
+
+She glanced at him warily.
+
+"Eighteen months ago a lad came into our stable who was rather like me."
+
+He laughed merrily.
+
+"Good for you!" he cried. "Now put your idea into practise."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't want to win the National now."
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+She looked up into his face.
+
+"I'm too old," she said. "I've got to put my hair up this winter."
+
+The confidence once made frightened her.
+
+She broke into a canter, Heart of Oak striding at her side. The hill
+steepened against them just under the brow, and they came back into a
+walk.
+
+"If I was my own master I should farm and breed horses," said the young
+man.
+
+She glanced at him keenly.
+
+"Aren't you your own master?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I've got to stick to the desk."
+
+"D'you like it?"
+
+He looked away.
+
+"I shall never make a banker," he said. "You see, I'm no good at sums."
+He flicked at the turf with his thong. "Now my father was a born
+financier. He could do that--and nothing much else. If there are no
+banks in heaven I'm afraid he'll be terribly bored. But I'm a farmer--or
+a fool; I'm not quite sure which. If my father had lived it might have
+been different. He might have entered me. But he died during my second
+year at Oxford four years ago, and I had to buckle to and do the best I
+could for myself."
+
+"Bad luck," said the girl.
+
+"It was, rather," admitted the young man. "But it gave me my head in
+one way. You see, father didn't approve of horses, though he was a
+farmer's son himself. He was afraid of the Turf. But he was always very
+good to me. He let me hunt when I was a boy though he didn't like it."
+The young man laughed. "But when I grew big he was awfully pleased.
+'You'll never make a jockey now,' he used to say. And I never shall."
+
+Boy ran her eye approvingly over his loose, big-limbed figure.
+
+"You play polo, don't you?" she said.
+
+"I do, a bit," he admitted.
+
+"Back for England, isn't it?" she asked.
+
+"This old pony did," Silver answered. "And he used to take me along
+sometimes."
+
+"Don't you play still?" she inquired.
+
+"I haven't this season, and I sha'n't again," he answered. "To play
+first-class polo you must be in the top of condition. And they keep my
+nose too close to the grindstone. Besides, pup-polo's very jolly, but
+'chasing's the thing!"
+
+They topped the brow. The crest of the Downs swelled away before them
+like a great green carpet lifted by the wind.
+
+"There they are!" cried Boy, beginning to canter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Cannibal's National
+
+
+Old Mat sat dumped in familiar attitude on a cob as full of corners and
+character as himself.
+
+The trainer was thumping mechanically with his heels, sucking at the
+knob of his ash-plant, his legs in trousers that had slipped up to show
+his gray socks, and his feet shod with elastic-sided boots.
+
+He glanced shrewdly at the pair as they rode up.
+
+"Good morning, sir," he said, touching his hat. "So Chukkers has chucked
+you."
+
+"So I believe," answered Silver.
+
+"I wep' a tear when they tell me. I did reelly," said the old man,
+dabbing his eye. "He's goin' to ride Ikey's Jackaroo--that
+donkey-coloured waler he brought home from Back o' Sunday. That's what
+he's after."
+
+Silver nodded.
+
+"I'm not altogether sorry," he said quietly. "And I'm not entirely
+surprised."
+
+"Nor ain't I," replied Mat, with faint irony. "Not altogether
+somersaulted with surprise, as you might say. We knows Chukkers, and
+Chukkers knows us--de we." He dropped his voice. "Monkey Brand'll tell
+you a tale or two about his ole friend. You arst him one day when you
+gets him on the go."
+
+He raised his voice and began to thump the air with his fist.
+
+"Rogues and rasqueals, Mr. Silver!" he cried in a kind of ecstasy.
+"Emmin on you in--same as the Psalmist says. But we got to love 'em all
+the same; else we'll nebber, nebber lead their liddle feet into the
+way." He coughed, wiped the back of his hand apologetically across his
+lips, and ended dryly: "Not the Three J's anyway!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The horses were walking round the little group. Tall, sheeted
+thoroughbreds, each with his lad perched like a bird on his back, they
+swung daintily over the turf, blowing their noses, swishing their long
+tails, miracles of strength and beauty.
+
+Monkey Brand led them on Goosey Gander, bandaged to the knees and hocks.
+Albert followed him on Make-Way-There, a pretty bay, with a white star.
+The lad's lips were turned in, and his face was stiff with aspiration
+and desire. That morning he hoped to have his chance, and he purposed to
+make the most of it. Jerry, the economist with the corrugated brow,
+followed him on a snake-necked chestnut. He sat up aloft, his shoulders
+square, his little legs clipping his mount, a Napoleon of the saddle,
+pondering apparently the great things of life and death. In fact, he was
+cogitating whether if he smoked behind the Lads' Barn at nights it was
+likely that he would be caught out by Miss Boy. Next came Stanley, the
+stupid, surreptitiously nagging at the flashy black he rode. Young
+Stanley was in evil mood, and he meant his horse to know it. His dark
+and heavy face was full of injured dignity and spite. Last night
+Chukkers, just back from winning the Australian National, had wired to
+say he couldn't keep his engagement to ride Make-Way-There at Paris.
+Monkey Brand would not ride, as his leg had been troubling him again;
+and Jerry had it that Albert, who was Make-Way-There's lad, was to get
+the mount. Stanley resented the suggestion. Albert had never yet ridden
+in public, while he, Stanley, had sported silk half-a-dozen times and
+had won over the sticks.
+
+"Pull out, Brand," grunted the old trainer.
+
+The little jockey yielded the lead to Albert, and joined the group of
+watchers.
+
+The lads continued their patrol.
+
+"What's the going like on the top there, Brand?" asked the old man.
+
+"Not so bad, sir," the other answered. "Tidy drop o dew, I reck'n."
+
+Make-Way-There, now she had the lead, showed a tendency to swagger. She
+bounced and tossed. The fair lad, swaying to the motions of his horse,
+rode the fretting creature patiently and well.
+
+"She's a bit okkud yet," said Monkey, watching critically. "_Woa, my
+lady. Woa then._"
+
+"It's the condition comin' out of her," muttered Mat. "She's all of a
+bubble. Fret herself into a sweat. Boy, you'd better take her. Send her
+along five furlongs smart and bustle her a bit as she comes up the
+slope."
+
+"No," said the girl.
+
+The old man threw a swift glance at her.
+
+Boy had stuck her toes in again. He knew all the symptoms of old and
+made no effort to overcome them. She was growing into a woman, Boy was.
+That was the young man. A while back she cared not a rap for all the men
+in creation.
+
+The old man made a mental note for reference to Ma.
+
+"Albert can ride her," said the girl. "I want to see if he's coming on."
+
+Jerry, the true prophet, winked; Stanley jobbed the black in the mouth
+and kicked him; Albert, his face firm and important, drew out. He had at
+least one of the qualities of a jockey--supreme self-confidence.
+
+"Take her along at three-quarter speed till you get round them
+goss-bushes," growled Old Mat. "And when you feel the hill against you
+shove her for a furlong. Don't ride her out. And no fancy pranks, mind."
+
+"And sit still," said the girl.
+
+"Jerry, you take him along," continued the trainer.
+
+The lads made sundry guttural noises in their throats, leaned forward as
+though to whisper in their horses' ears, and stole easily away.
+
+A flash of swift feet, a diminishing thunder of hooves, and the pair
+made a broad sweep round the gorse-clump and came racing home.
+
+Once the girl spoke.
+
+"Keep your hands quiet," she ordered deeply.
+
+Opposite them Jerry took a pull, but Albert and the mare went thundering
+past the watching group, the lad's fair head bowed over his horse's
+withers. He had her fairly extended, yet going well within herself, her
+head tucked into her chest.
+
+On the ridge behind them he steadied to a walk, jumped off, and led the
+mare, breathing deep and flinging the foam abroad, down to the party.
+
+"That's a little bit o' better," muttered the old man. "She can slip it.
+That lad'll ride yet, Boy."
+
+"Perhaps; but don't tell him so," said the girl sharply.
+
+She walked her pony across to the lad, and laid her hand on the mare's
+wet neck.
+
+"That's a little better to-day, Albert," she said. "But you ought to
+steady a bit before you come."
+
+The boy touched his cap and rode arrogantly on to join the other lads.
+
+Monkey Brand saw the look upon his face.
+
+"Once you knows you know nothin', you may learn somethin'," he said
+confidentially as the lad passed him. Then he turned with a wink to
+Silver and said _sotto-voce_: "They calls him Boysie when he's crossed
+'em. See he apes Miss Boy. He features her a bit, and he knows it. She's
+teaching him to ride, and he's picked up some of her tricks. Course he
+ain't got her way with 'em. But he might make a tidy little 'orseman one
+o' these days, as I tells him, if so be he was to tumble on his head a
+nice few times and get the conceit knocked out of him."
+
+The lads continued their patrol.
+
+Their knees were to their chins, and their hands thrust in front of
+them, a rein in each, almost as though they were about to pound a big
+drum with their fists.
+
+Monkey nodded at them.
+
+"She rides long, Miss Boy do--old style, cavalry style, same as you
+yourself, sir. They've all got the monkey-up-a-stick seat."
+
+"Don't you believe in it?" asked the young man.
+
+The other shook his head. He was himself a beautiful horseman of the Tom
+Cannon school; too beautiful, his critics sometimes said, to be entirely
+effective.
+
+"Not for 'chasin," he said. "You can't lift a horse and squeeze him,
+unless you've got your legs curled right away round him. They ain't
+jockeys, as I tells 'em. They rides like poodle-dogs at a circus. There
+ought to be paper-'oops for em to jump through. No, sir. It may be
+Chukkers, as I says, but it ain't 'orsemanship."
+
+The young man angled for the story that was waiting to be caught.
+
+"Yet Chukkers wins," he said. "He's headed the list for five seasons
+now."
+
+"He wins," said Monkey grimly. "Them as has rode against him knows 'ow."
+
+Silver edged his pony up along the other.
+
+"You've ridden against him?" he inquired with cunning innocence.
+
+The little jockey's eyes became dreamy.
+
+"My ole pal Chukkers," he mused. "Him and me. Yes, I've rode agin' him
+twenty year now. He was twelve first time we met, and I was turned
+twenty. The Mexican Kid they called him in them days. Kid he was; but
+wise to the world?--not 'alf!" ...
+
+"Was that his first race?" asked Silver.
+
+"It was so, sir--this side. Ikey'd just brought him across the Puddle to
+ride that Austrian mare, Laria Louisa. Same old stunt it was then as
+now--_Down the Englishman, don't matter how._ Yes, it was my first smell
+of the star-spangled jacket."
+
+"Was that when you got your leg?"
+
+"No, sir. That was eight years later. Boomerang's year. He was the first
+waler Ikey brought over this side to do the trick. My! he were a proper
+great 'orse, too. I was riding Chittabob--like a pony alongside him. At
+the Canal Turn Chukkers ran me onto the rails." He told the tale slowly,
+rolling it in the mouth, as it were. "Chukkers went on by himself.
+Nobody near him. Thought he'd done it that time. Only where it was
+Boomerang snap his leg at the last fence. Yes, sir," mystically,
+"there's One above all right--sometimes, 'tall events."
+
+"And you?" said Silver.
+
+The little jockey thrust out his left leg.
+
+"I was in 'orspital three months.... Howsomever, it come out in the wash
+next year."
+
+"That was Cannibal's year, wasn't it?" asked Silver.
+
+"Ah!" said Monkey. "Cannibal!--his name and his nature, too. He was a
+man-eater, that 'orse was. Look like a camel and lep like a
+h'earthquake. It was just the very reverse that year. Chukkers was on
+Jezebel, Chukkers was. She was a varmint little thing enough--Syrian
+bred, I have 'eard 'em say. And he was out to win all right that
+journey. There was only us two in it when we come to Beecher's Brook
+second time round." He came a little closer. "So when we got to the
+Canal Turn I rides up alongside. 'That you, Mr. Childers?' I says, and
+bumps him. That shifted him for Valentine's Brook. There's a tidy drop
+there, sir, as you may remember. Chukkers lost his stirrup, and was
+crawling about on her withers. I hove up alongside agin'. He saw me
+comin' and made a shockin' face. 'Clear!' he screams, 'or I'll welt you
+across the ---- monkey mug!' And just then, blest if old Cannibal didn't
+make another mistake and cannon into him agin'. That spilt him proper!
+Oh, my, Mr. Silver!--my! And I sail 'ome alone. Oh, he was a reg'lar
+outrageous 'orse, Cannibal was." He dropped his voice. "When he come out
+of 'orspital of course he made a fuss about it, he and Jaggers and
+Jew-boy Aaronsohnn. But of course I knew nothin' about it; nor did
+nobody else. See, they all knew Chukkers. He'd tried it on 'em all one
+time or another. And I told the Stewards I was very sorry the fall had
+gone to 'is 'ead. Only little Bertie Butler--him with the squint, what
+won the Sefton this year, you know--who'd been following Chukkers--he
+says to me: 'Next time you're goin' to play billiards with Chukkers, Mr.
+Brand, tip us the wink, will you?'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+The Paddock Close
+
+
+The girl's voice broke in on them.
+
+"I'm going home now," she cried abruptly.
+
+"Right," answered Silver. "May I come along?"
+
+As he swung round, he saw the girl already jogging away. He pursued
+leisurely, anxious to talk about Make-Way-There, the Paris Meeting, and
+Chukkers and Monkey Brand's gossip. But she flitted away in front of
+him. As he drew up to her she broke into a canter, and the young man
+took a pull.
+
+His intuitions, like those of most slow-brained men, were unusually
+swift and sure. It was as though Nature, the Dispenser of Justice, to
+compensate him for an apparent dearth in one direction, had endowed him
+richly in another.
+
+"Woa, my little lad, woa then!" he murmured as Heart of Oak bounced and
+fretted to catch the retreating roan.
+
+He realised that the girl had withdrawn within herself again. On the
+cliff, in the excitement of action, she had forgotten herself for the
+moment. Now she was cold and shy once more, retreating behind her
+barriers, closing her visor. It was as though she had admitted him too
+close; and to recover herself must now swing to the other extreme.
+
+Obedient to her will, he kept several lengths behind her. When she found
+he did not draw up alongside, she slackened her pace. He felt her
+resistance was dying down in answer to his non-resistance. She was
+shoving against emptiness, and getting no good from it.
+
+As they came to the crest of the Downs and began the descent of the
+hill, Boy dropped into a walk.
+
+Below them the long roofs of Putnam's showed, weathered among the
+sycamores.
+
+As the girl passed into the Paddock Close he was riding at her side
+again.
+
+The Paddock Close was a vast enclosure, fenced off from the Downs, an
+ideal nursery and galloping ground for young stock.
+
+There was hill and valley; here and there a group of trees for shade in
+the dog-days; a great sheltered bottom fringed by a wood that ran out
+into the Close like a peninsula; and the wall of the Downs to give
+protection from the east.
+
+As they walked together down the hill, Boy was looking about her.
+
+"Where's the mare?" she asked.
+
+They were the first words she had spoken.
+
+"Which mare?" asked Silver
+
+"Four Pound."
+
+He glanced round. The young stock were standing lazily under the trees,
+swishing their tails, and stamping off the flies. But the old mare had
+forsaken her usual haunt.
+
+Then far away on the edge of a bed of bracken in the bottom, something
+like a piece of brown paper caught his eye. It rose and fell and flapped
+in the wind.
+
+Boy saw it, too, and darted off.
+
+"Call Billy Bluff!" she cried over her shoulder; but Billy had already
+trotted off to the yard to renew the pleasant task of tormenting Maudie
+and the fan-tails.
+
+The girl made at a canter for the brown paper struggling on the edge of
+the bracken.
+
+As she came closer she raised a swift hand to steady the man pounding
+behind her.
+
+The brown paper was a new-born foal, woolly, dun of hue, swaying on
+uncertain legs. The little creature, with the mane and tail of a toy
+horse, looking supremely pathetic in its helplessness, wavered
+ridiculously in the wind. It was all knees and hocks, and fluffy tail
+that wriggled, and jelly-like eyes. Its tall, thin legs were stuck out
+before and behind like those of a wooden horse. It stood like one dazed,
+staring blankly before it, absorbed in the new and surprising action of
+drawing breath through widespread nostrils; quavered and then collapsed,
+only to attempt to climb to its feet again.
+
+Close beside her child lay the mother, her neck extended along the
+green, her eyes blood-shot.
+
+As the girl rode up, the old mare raised her gaunt, well-bred head and
+snorted, but made no effort to rise.
+
+Boy dismounted.
+
+"Hold Ragamuffin, will you?" she said.
+
+Silver, himself dismounted now, obeyed.
+
+Boy knelt in the bracken and felt the mare's heart.
+
+The young man stood some distance off and watched her.
+
+"Pretty bad, isn't she?" he said gravely.
+
+"Go and tell mother, please," replied the girl, still on her knees. "And
+send one of the lads with a rug and a wheelbarrow."
+
+The young man walked away down the hillside, leading the two ponies.
+
+Left alone, Boy brushed away the flies that had settled in black clouds
+on the mare's face. The foal repeated its ungainly efforts, whimpering
+in a deep and muffled voice, like the wind in a cave. The urge of hunger
+was on it, and it did not understand why it was not satisfied. Boy went
+to it, and thrust her thumbs into its soft and toothless mouth. The
+foal, entirely unafraid, sucked with quivering tail and such power that
+the girl thought her thumbs would be drawn off. The old mare whinnied,
+jealous, perhaps, of her usurped function.
+
+In another moment Mrs. Woodburn's tall and stately form came through the
+gate and laboured up the hill. She was wearing a white apron and carried
+a sheet in her hand.
+
+Soon she stood beside her daughter, breathing deeply, and looking down
+upon the mare.
+
+"Bad job, Boy," she said.
+
+"Have you brought a thermometer?" asked the girl.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn nodded, and inserted the instrument under the old mare's
+elbow, laying an experienced hand on her muzzle.
+
+"If she'd make an effort," she said in her slow way. "But she can't be
+bothered. That's Black Death."
+
+Silver, looking ridiculously elegant in his shirt-sleeves and spotless
+breeches, came up the hill toward them, trundling a dingy stable barrow.
+Behind him trotted a lad, trailing a rug.
+
+"We must just let her bide," said Mrs. Woodburn. "Lay that sheet over
+her, George, to keep the flies off, and get a handful of sweet hay and
+put it under her nose to peck at it. You've brought the barrow, Mr.
+Silver. Thank you."
+
+"Can you lift the foal in?" asked Boy.
+
+"I guess," answered the young man, stripping up sleeves in which the
+gold links shone.
+
+"Oh! your poor clothes!" cried Mrs. Woodburn. "Whatever would your
+mother say? Put on my apron, do."
+
+The young man obeyed, gravely and without a touch of self-consciousness,
+binding the apron about his waist; and to Boy at least he appeared, so
+clad, something quite other than ludicrous.
+
+"Can you manage it, d'you think?" she asked in her serious way.
+
+"I guess," answered the young man.
+
+He blew elaborately on his hands, made belief to lick them, and bowed
+his back to the lifting. There were no weak spots in that young body. It
+was good all through.
+
+Strong as he was tender, he gathered the little creature. A moment it
+sprawled helplessly in his arms, all legs and head. Then he bundled it
+into the barrow.
+
+The old mare whinnied.
+
+"Put the rug over her head so she can't see," said Mrs. Woodburn.
+
+The foal stood a moment in the barrow, then it collapsed, lying like a
+calf with a woolly tail, its long legs projecting over the side.
+
+Silver grasped the handles of the barrow.
+
+"Is it all right?" asked Boy.
+
+"I guess," replied the young man, and trundled his load away down the
+hill.
+
+The girl walked beside the barrow, one hand steadying the foal, who
+reared an uncanny head.
+
+They passed through the yard, jolted noisily over the cobbles, and
+turned into a great cool loose-box, deep in moss-litter.
+
+"I'll go and get the bottle," said the girl. "George, just run and bring
+a couple of armfuls of litter-grass off the stack and pile it in that
+corner."
+
+When she returned with the bottle, the barrow was empty, and the foal
+lay quiet on a heap of brown grass in the corner.
+
+It whinnied and essayed to stand.
+
+"It's coming, honey," said Boy in her deep, comforting voice.
+
+The foal sucked greedily and with quivering tail.
+
+From outside in the yard came the pleasant clatter of horses' feet on
+the cobbles.
+
+The string was returning.
+
+In another moment Old Mat was standing in the door of the loose-box,
+grunting to himself, as he watched the little group within.
+
+Boy, in her long riding-coat, stood in the dim loose-box, her fair hair
+shining, tilting the bottle, while the foal, with lifted head and
+ecstatic tail, sucked.
+
+Silver, still in his shirt-sleeves, watched with folded arms.
+
+"Colt foal I see," grunted the old man. "That's a little bit o' better.
+Four-Pound-the-Second, I suppose you'll call him."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+SILVER MUG
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+The Berserker Colt
+
+
+On the morning that Make-Way-There had done his gallop Old Mat had noted
+that a change was coming over Boy.
+
+She was ceasing to be a child, and was becoming a woman.
+
+He mentioned it to Ma.
+
+"Time she did," said the mother quietly. "She'll be seventeen in March."
+
+The girl herself was aware of strange happenings within her. More, she
+knew that the tall young man was responsible for them.
+
+A great new life, full of shadows and delicious dangers, was surging up
+in her heart, sweeping across the sands of her childhood, obliterating
+tide-marks, swinging her off her feet, and carrying her forward under
+bare stars toward the Unknown.
+
+She fought against the invasion of this Sea, struggling to find footing
+on the familiar bottom.
+
+That Sea and Mr. Silver were intimately connected. Sometimes, indeed,
+the girl could not distinguish one from the other. Was it the Sea which
+bore Mr. Silver in upon her resisting mind?--or was it Mr. Silver who
+trailed the Sea after him like a cloud?
+
+Her helplessness angered and humiliated her. She fought fiercely and in
+vain. That strong will of hers, which had never yet met its match, was
+impotent now. This Thing, this Sea, this Man, crept in upon her like a
+mist, invading her very sanctuaries.
+
+She might close the doors and lock them--to no purpose.
+
+She was angry, excited, not entirely displeased.
+
+The change wrought in her swiftly. At least she had the sense that she
+was embarking on a great adventure; and her romantic spirit answered to
+the appeal.
+
+She became quieter and passed much time in her room alone.
+
+Mr. Silver kept knocking at the door in the loft which he had never
+entered; but she refused to open to him.
+
+To revenge herself she practised small brutalities upon him, which had
+no effect. He just withdrew and came again next day with his big-dog
+smile, quiet and persistent as a tide. Shy he was, and singularly
+pertinacious.
+
+Then his mother died.
+
+That seemed to Boy unfair; but as she reasoned it out he could hardly be
+held responsible.
+
+They knew all about it at Putnam's, because there was a paragraph in the
+paper about Brazil Silver's widow.
+
+The young man buried his mother on Friday, and on Saturday came down to
+Putnam's for his usual week-end.
+
+Boy asked her mother if he had spoken to her about his trouble.
+
+"No," said Mrs. Woodburn.
+
+"Then he shall to me," said the girl, with determination.
+
+He should not bottle up his grief. That would be bad for him. The
+mother in the girl was emerging from the tom-boy very fast.
+
+On Sunday evening she took him for a ride, and had her way, without a
+struggle.
+
+As they breasted the hill together, the young man told her all at some
+length.
+
+"Was she much to you?" asked the girl keenly.
+
+Her own mother was all the world to her.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Oh! that's all right," replied the girl, relieved and yet resentful,
+"if you didn't care."
+
+"In some ways I'm glad for her sake," continued the young man. "She was
+always unhappy. You see she was ambitious. One of the disappointments of
+her life was that my father wouldn't take a peerage."
+
+"Can't you be happy and ambitious?" asked Boy, peeping at him in the
+wary way he loved.
+
+Jim Silver laughed and flicked his whip.
+
+"I doubt it," he said.
+
+"Aren't you ambitious?" she inquired.
+
+He laughed his deep, tremendous laughter, turning on her the face she so
+rejoiced in.
+
+"I've told you my one ambition."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"To breed a National winner."
+
+That brought them back to their favourite subject--Four-Pound-the-Second
+and his future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The foal kept the girl busy, for the old mare died, and Boy had to bring
+up the little creature by hand. She didn't mind that, for the summer is
+the slack season in the jumping world. Moreover, trouble taken for
+helpless young things was never anything but a delight to her. And
+fortune favoured her. For the Queen of Sheba, one of her nanny-goats,
+had lost her kids, and the milk was therefore available for the foal.
+
+Boy fed him herself by day and night, sleeping in his loose-box for the
+first few weeks, she and Billy Bluff, who promised to be good. Monkey
+Brand, who had neither wife nor child of his own, and loved the girl
+with the doting passion of a nurse, wanted to share her watch, but his
+aid was abruptly refused. So the little jockey slept in the loft
+instead, to be near at hand, and would bring the girl a cup of tea after
+her vigil.
+
+Once, in his mysterious way, he beckoned Silver to follow him. The young
+man pursued him up the ladder, treading, of course, on Maudie, who made
+the night hideous with her protests.
+
+Up there in the darkness of the loft the little man stole with the
+motions of a conspirator to a far trap-door. He opened it gingerly and
+listened. From beneath came the sound of regular breathing. Thrusting
+his lantern through the dark hole, he beckoned to Silver, who looked
+down.
+
+In a corner of the loose-box, on a pile of horse rugs, slept Boy, her
+mass of hair untamed now and spreading abroad like a fan of gold. Beside
+her on the moss-litter lay Billy Bluff, curled and dreaming of the
+chase. And on a bed of bracken by the manger, his long legs tied up in
+knots, was the foal.
+
+Silver peeped and instantly withdrew as one who has trespassed
+innocently.
+
+"Pretty as a pictur, ain't it?" whispered the little jockey. "Only don't
+go for to say I give her away. That'd be the end of Monkey Brand, that
+would."
+
+He swung the lantern so that the light flashed on the face of the
+sleeping girl.
+
+"That'll do," muttered the young man uneasily. "You'll wake her."
+
+"No, sir. She's fast," the other answered. "Fair wore out. He wouldn't
+take the bottle yesterday, and she was up with him all night. I went
+down to her when it come light. Only where it is she won't allow nobody
+to do nothin' for him only herself." He stole back to his lair in the
+straw at the far end of the loft. "That's the woman in her, sir," he
+said in his sagacious way. "Must have her baby all to herself. Nobody
+don't know nothin' about it only mother."
+
+Four-Pound-the-Second after the first few perilous weeks throve
+amazingly. He ceased to be a pretty creature, pathetic in his
+helplessness, and grew into a gawky hobbledehoy, rough and rude and
+turbulent.
+
+Old Mat shook his head over the colt.
+
+"Ugliest critter I ever set eyes on," he said, partly in earnest and
+partly to tease his daughter.
+
+"You'll see," said Boy firmly.
+
+"If he's a Berserk he's worth saving, surely," remarked Silver.
+"Berserker--Black Death. Ought to be able to hop a bit."
+
+Everybody at Putnam's knew that the colt was the son of that famous
+sire, but nobody, except Mat Woodburn and Monkey Brand, knew how they
+knew it.
+
+"Oh! if he's going to win the National--as I think he is, de we--he's
+worth a little trouble," replied the old man, winking at Monkey Brand.
+
+"D'you think he'll win the National?" cried the young man, simple as a
+child.
+
+"Certain for sure," replied the other. "When 'e walks on to the course
+all the other hosses'll have a fit and fall down flat. And I don't blame
+'em, neether."
+
+"Father _thinks_ he's funny," said the girl with fine irony.
+
+"I ain't 'alf so funny as that young billy-goat o' yours, my dear,"
+replied the old trainer, and lilted on his way. "It's his foster-ma he
+takes after. The spit of her, he be."
+
+As soon as the foal began to find his legs Boy took him out into the
+Paddock Close, and later on to the Downs. He followed like a dog,
+skirmishing with Billy Bluff up and down the great rounded hills.
+
+The bob-tail at first was inclined to be jealous. He thought the foal
+was a new kind of dog and a rival. Then when he understood that after
+all the little creature was only an animal, on a different and a lower
+plane, to be patronised and bullied and ragged, he resumed his
+self-complacency. Thoroughly human, a vulgar sense of superiority kept
+his temper sweet. He accepted Four-Pound-the-Second as one to whom he
+might extend his patronage and his protection. And once this was
+understood the relations between the foal and the dog were established
+on a sound basis, while Maudie watched with a sardonic smile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That autumn the girl, the foal, and the dog roamed the hillside by the
+hour together in the cool of dawn and evening. And the colt became as
+handy as the goat he was alleged by his detractors to resemble.
+
+"Go anywhere Billy Bluff does," said Monkey Brand. "Climb the ladder to
+the loft soon as look at you."
+
+On these frequent excursions Boy took her hunting-crop with her, and the
+long-flung lash often went curling round the legs of the unruly foal.
+Early she broke him to halter, and when he became too turbulent for
+unbridled liberty she took him out on a long lounging rein.
+
+The Downs about Cuckmere, which lies half-way between Lewes and Beachy
+Head, are lonely. Apart from shepherds, you seldom meet on them anyone
+save a horseman or a watcher. But more than once the three came on Joses
+on the hillside.
+
+Since the moment she had marked him cowering in the Gap like a hunted
+creature, Boy had seen the tout with quite other eyes than of old. Never
+afraid of him, from that time her aversion had turned to pity for one so
+hopelessly forlorn.
+
+Whether Joses felt the change or not, and reacted to it unconsciously,
+it was impossible to say. Certainly he showed himself friendly, she
+thought, almost ashamed. At first she was not unnaturally suspicious,
+but soon the compassion in her heart overcame all else.
+
+One brilliant September evening she came upon him on the Mare's Back.
+
+The fat man pulled off his hat shyly.
+
+"You've put him on the chain, I see," he said, referring to the long
+rein.
+
+Boy stopped.
+
+His face was less bloated, his appearance more tidy than of old. It was
+clear he had been drinking less.
+
+"What d'you think of him?" she asked.
+
+The tout threw a critical eye over the foal. There was no question that
+Joses knew a thing or two about a horse.
+
+"Ugly but likely," he said, with the deliberate air of a connoisseur.
+"What they call in France a _beau laid_."
+
+The girl demurred to the proposition. Her foal was _not_ bow-legged.
+
+"His legs are all right," she said, somewhat tartly. "He's a bit _on_
+the leg; but he's sure to be at that age."
+
+"How's he bred, d'you know?" asked the other thoughtfully.
+
+Boy was on the alert in a moment. That was a stable secret, and not to
+be disclosed.
+
+"I'm not _quite_ sure," she answered truthfully. "We picked up the dam
+from a gypsy."
+
+The fat man nodded. He seemed to know all about it. Indeed, it was his
+business to know all about such things.
+
+"She was a Black Death mare, that, no question," he said, and added
+slowly, his eye wandering over the colt: "Looks to me like a Berserk
+somehow." She had a feeling he was drawing her, and kept her face
+inscrutable in a way that did credit to the teaching of Monkey Brand.
+"If so, you've drawn a lucky number," continued the other. "Such things
+happen, you know."
+
+Boy moved on, and was aware that he was following her.
+
+She turned and saw his face.
+
+There was no mischief in the man, and fluttering in his eyes there was
+that look of a hunted animal she had noticed in the Gap.
+
+She stopped at once.
+
+"What is it, Mr. Joses?" she asked.
+
+She felt that he was calling to her for help.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Miss Woodburn," he began.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Joses."
+
+Her deep voice was soft and encouraging as when she spoke to a sick
+creature or a child. Those who knew only the resolute girl, who went her
+own way with an almost fierce determination, would have been astonished
+at her tenderness.
+
+"That little mistake of mine on the cliff," muttered the man.
+
+A great impulse of generosity flooded the girl's heart and coloured her
+cheek.
+
+"That's _quite_ all right," she said.
+
+It was clear he was not satisfied.
+
+His eyes wandered over heaven and earth, never meeting hers.
+
+"You've not said anything to the police about that?"
+
+"No!" she cried.
+
+"Nor that gentleman?"
+
+"Mr. Silver?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'm _sure_ he hasn't."
+
+The other drew a deep breath.
+
+"It wouldn't help me any if he had," he said.
+
+He looked up into the deep sky, that was gathering the dusk, and still
+alive with the song of larks. "I wouldn't like to see 'em in a cage," he
+said quietly. "It wasn't meant. Never!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next Saturday, when Mr. Silver came down, she told him of the incident.
+
+"You didn't say anything to the police, did you?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"No," he said. "I meant to, but I forgot."
+
+She repeated Joses's remark about the cage.
+
+"He's been in the cage," she said quietly.
+
+"Are you sure?" he asked.
+
+She nodded with set lips.
+
+"How d'you know?"
+
+"I saw it in his eyes."
+
+The young man was genuinely moved.
+
+"Poor beggar!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Ragamuffin
+
+
+The little affair of Joses was one of the many trifles that made for
+intimacy between the young man and the girl.
+
+In spite of herself Boy found her opposition dying away. Indeed, she
+could no more resist him than she could resist the elements. She might
+put her umbrella up, but that did not stop the rain. And if the rain
+chose to go on long enough, the umbrella would wear away. The choice lay
+with the rain and not with the umbrella.
+
+By the autumn Boy had ceased even to pretend to be unfriendly. It was no
+use, and she was never much good at pretending.
+
+Then with the fall of the leaves old Ragamuffin began to tumble to
+pieces.
+
+She watched him closely for a week. Then one October dawn, the mists
+hanging white in the hollows, she led him out to the edge of the wood
+before the lads were about. Only Monkey Brand accompanied her.
+
+Herself she held the old pony alongside the new-dug grave, talking to
+him, stroking his nose. Monkey Brand, of the steady hand and loving
+heart, did the rest. A quarter of an hour later the girl and the little
+jockey came back to the yard alone. She was carrying a halter in her
+hand and talking of Four-Pound-the-Second.
+
+The lads watched her surreptitiously and with brimming eyes. Albert, who
+prided himself on the hardness of his heart, wept and swore he hadn't.
+
+"I'll lay she feels it," blubbered Stanley, who was not clever enough to
+conceal his tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Silver came down for the week-end, Old Mat told him what had
+happened.
+
+"That's the strength in her," he whispered. "Just took and did it, she
+and Monkey Brand. Never a word to her mother or me--before or since."
+
+But the young man noticed that the girl looked haggard, wistful, more
+spiritual than usual. He was shy of her, and she of him.
+
+When that evening she met him in the yard and said, "Will you come and
+see?" he was amazed and touched.
+
+They stood together by the new-made grave under the wood. Jim was far
+more moved than when his mother died.
+
+"Dear old Ragamuffin!" he said.
+
+She seemed to quaver in the dusk.
+
+"You mustn't," she said, in strained and muffled voice, and for a moment
+laid a finger on his arm.
+
+Next day, as they were making their Sunday round of the horses together,
+Silver stopped at Heart of Oak's box.
+
+"I don't quite know what to be at with this poor old cormorant," he
+said, slow and cogitating. "I'm looking for a home for him. But there
+are no bidders. A bit too good a doer, I guess. Eat 'em out of hearth
+and home."
+
+The girl's eyes flashed on his face and away again.
+
+"He's not old," she said, as her hand stroked the pony's neck.
+
+"Well, he's like me," the young man replied. "He's older than he was."
+
+Boy made a cursory inspection of the pony's mouth.
+
+"Eleven off," she said.
+
+"That's too old to play polo."
+
+She believed it to be a lie, but she did not think she was sufficient an
+authority on the game to justify her in saying so.
+
+"Anyway, I'm getting too heavy for him," Silver went on. "Joint too big
+for the dish, as they say. That fellow's more my sort, ain't you, old
+lad?" He nodded to the next loose-box, where his seventeen-hand hunter,
+Banjo, stood, blowing at them through the bars. "What Heart of Oak wants
+is a nice light weight just to hack him about the Downs and ease him
+down into the grave."
+
+That evening after supper Jim Silver sang.
+
+Apart from the members of the Eton Mission Clubs there were perhaps a
+dozen men in the world--Eton men all, boating men most--who knew that he
+did "perform," to use their expression; and just two women--Boy Woodburn
+and her mother. Old Mat, to be sure, did not count, for he always slept
+through the "performance."
+
+The young man's repertoire consisted of two songs--_The Place Where the
+Old Horse Died_ and _My Old Dutch_.
+
+With a good natural voice, entirely untrained, he sang with a deep and
+quiet feeling that made his friends affirm that once you had heard
+Silver Mug's--
+
+          _We've been together now for forty years,
+          And it don't seem a day too much,
+          There ain't a lady livin' in the land
+          As I'd swop for my dear old Dutch._
+
+you would never listen to Albert Chevalier again.
+
+That, of course, was the just and admirable exaggeration of youth and
+friendship.
+
+But it was the fact that always after the young man had sung there was
+an unusually prolonged silence, and, as Amersham once said, you felt as
+if you were in church.
+
+This evening, after he had finished, and Mrs. Woodburn had broken the
+silence with her quiet "Thank you," the young man returned to the
+subject he had broached in the stable.
+
+Silver indeed was nothing if not dogged, as the girl was beginning to
+find out.
+
+"I say, Miss Woodburn," he began in that casual way of his, "I wish
+you'd take charge of that old yellow moke o' mine."
+
+Boy shook her head.
+
+He laughed and drew his chair beside her as she worked. Not seldom now
+he doffed the Puritan with her, and became easy, chaffing, almost
+gallant. Amersham and his friends would have been amazed had they seen
+their sober Jim Silver so much at home with a lady.
+
+"Oh, I say--why not?" he protested, boyish and chaffing.
+
+"He's too much of a handful for me," said the girl gravely, threading
+her needle against the light.
+
+He laughed, delighted, smacking his knee as he did when pleased, while
+even Ma, who of wont turned a deaf ear on the young couple, smiled
+sedately.
+
+"I like that!" cried Silver. "Ha! ha! ho! ho! That's a good un." Then he
+turned grave, almost lugubrious. "But of course if you won't have him I
+must do something to him. I'm too fond of the old fellow to let him
+rot."
+
+Next morning, before he left for London, Boy saw him from her window
+holding intimate communion with Monkey Brand in the Paddock Close beside
+the wood.
+
+When he had driven away, the girl descended from her eyrie and
+cross-examined the little jockey sharply.
+
+Monkey looked secretive and mysterious even for him.
+
+"He's a very queer gentleman," was all he would say. "One o' them that's
+been to India without their 'ats, I should say. You know, Miss?" He
+tapped his forehead. "Melted a-top."
+
+"What did he _say_?" persisted the girl.
+
+"He said nobody was to exercise Heart of Oak only unless you wanted him.
+And he said he'd make up his mind next week."
+
+"Make up his mind?"
+
+"That was the word, Miss."
+
+"Bring me the gun," ordered Boy.
+
+The little man obeyed sulkily.
+
+"It'll be in my room," she said. "And it'll stay there."
+
+"Very good, Miss," replied the jockey, and winked to himself as the girl
+ascended the ladder.
+
+That evening, as Old Mat slept noisily by the fire with open mouth, the
+two women worked.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn every now and then lifted her eyes to her daughter's face
+and let them dwell there, as the sky dwells on a tree.
+
+"D'you like him, Boy?" she asked at length, tranquilly.
+
+The girl for once was taken by surprise. She flushed a little and
+perhaps for the first time in her life fenced.
+
+"Who, mother?"
+
+"Mr. Silver."
+
+"Yes," said the girl. "He's like Billy Bluff--only less rowdy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+The Duke's Hounds
+
+
+Silver's Leicestershire friends were under the delusion that he was
+keeping his hunters at Lewes. And so indeed he did till the hunting
+season began; and then he brought them over to Putnam's.
+
+The Duke's north-country stud-groom, who was in _The Beehive_ at
+Folkington, as they came along the road from Lewes, ran out of the bar
+to have a look at them.
+
+"Ma wud!" he whistled. "Champion!"
+
+And Mike Rigg was right. Silver's horses indeed were the one item of his
+personal expenditure on which the young man never spared his purse. He
+used to say with perfect truth that except for his stud he could live
+with joy on L3 a week. But there was no man in England who had a rarer
+stud of weight-carriers.
+
+"Big as blood elefunks," said Monkey Brand in the awed voice of a
+worshipper. "Flip a couple o' ton across country singin' hallelooyah all
+the way."
+
+The Duke, when first they appeared with his hounds at the covertside,
+shook his head over them: for Jim Silver came south with a formidable
+reputation as a thruster.
+
+"Too classy for my country, Silver," he said. "What d'you want with that
+sort of stuff down here?"
+
+"I didn't like to part with 'em, sir," replied the young man. "They've
+done me well in their time."
+
+"I don't want you young bloods from the shires down here," scolded the
+Duke. "You'll be all over my hounds. This is an old man's country, ain't
+it, Boy?"
+
+Thunderbolt stood on his hind legs and pawed deliberately at the
+heavens.
+
+"They're big, your Grace," answered the girl. "But Mr. Silver's bigger.
+He can hold them."
+
+"And you can hold him, my dear," said the Duke. "Keep him in your
+pocket, there's a good gal. Now, Joe, let's be moving on."
+
+The Duke was fond of the girl. It was said, indeed, that he liked her
+better than anybody in the hunt. Certainly he was never so happy as when
+showing her round his famous piggeries at Raynor's, or talking goats to
+her at an Agricultural Show.
+
+Boy on her side was one of the most regular followers of the Duke's
+hounds; but, as she never tired of impressing on her friends, she hunted
+for professional reasons, and not for pleasure. Indeed, she was honest
+as always when she declared that she did not care for hunting for its
+own sake. There was so much swank about it and so little business:
+oceans of gossip, flirting, swagger, and spite to every ounce of
+reality. Moreover, her refined and Puritan spirit revolted against the
+people who hunted: she thought of them all as bubbles, brilliant
+apparently, but liable to burst at any moment and leave nothing behind
+them but a taint of vulgarity.
+
+When hounds were running people saw little of Silver and the girl, who
+were always well behind.
+
+"Carrying on together," was the spiteful comment of those whom Boy was
+wont to call in scorn "the ladies."
+
+But it was not true. The pair were not coffee-housing. Boy was at her
+job, schooling her youngsters with incomparable patience, judgment, and
+decision; and Jim Silver, on those great fretting weight-carriers of
+his, was marking time and in attendance.
+
+The Duke, when he got the pair alone, never tired of chaffing them.
+
+"I notice she always gives you the lead, Silver," he mocked.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the young man. "She makes the hole, and I creep
+through it afterward."
+
+The couple were talked about, of course; and both were dimly aware of
+it. Boy was used to being made the subject of gossip; and Silver was
+almost as unconscious of and aloof from it as were the horses that he
+rode.
+
+The ladies, to whom he paid no attention, were indignant and resentful.
+
+"It can't be," they said; and--"I hate to see that chit making a fool of
+a nice man like that."
+
+The Duke, whose ears were growing longer every day, heard them once and
+began to bellow suddenly in that disconcerting way of his.
+
+"It's all right!" he shouted. "You needn't be afraid. She won't have
+him."
+
+The ladies jeered secretly. To their minds the question was not whether
+the girl would have Silver, but whether he would be Mug enough to give
+her the chance.
+
+Certainly the pair were drawing close.
+
+Days together in the saddle, the risks and small adventures of the
+field, and by no means least those long hacks home at evening, not
+seldom in the dark, over the Downs, a great wind blowing gustily under
+clear stars, did their sure, unconscious work.
+
+Up to Christmas the young man visited Putnam's regularly. Then he missed
+two successive week-ends. When he came again there was a cloud over him.
+It was so faint and far that nobody noticed it indeed but the girl. She
+was not deceived.
+
+As they rode home in the afternoon he was more silent than his wont.
+Once or twice her eyes sought his. His brows were level and drawn down.
+There was resistance in his face.
+
+"Are you worried?" she asked.
+
+His plain, strong face broke up, brightened and became beautiful.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"Tell me."
+
+"It's the only thing that ever worries me."
+
+"What?"
+
+"The Bank."
+
+"Is it going wrong?"
+
+He laughed again.
+
+"I don't know," he said, and began to chuckle at himself. "That's the
+trouble. I can't get the hang of it. There's a screw loose somewhere.
+I'm like a man steering a ship who knows nothing about navigation."
+
+"It's all right if you do your best," said the girl, with the little
+preacher touch she inherited from her grand-dad. That note always caused
+an imp of mischief to bob up in the young man's heart.
+
+"Hope so, de we," he said.
+
+She looked at him sharply. _She_ might censure her father, but she
+allowed that liberty to no one else.
+
+"What!" she said.
+
+Jim Silver took to instant flight.
+
+"None-nothing," he stammered. "Only I'm afraid the pup-passengers won't
+think it's all right when they find themselves going to the bottom.
+They'll say, 'What business had you at the wheel if you can't steer?'
+And they'll be right, too."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the New Year the young man came no more for week-ends, and the
+reason was well known.
+
+The hunting-field is always a great place for gossip, for except at rare
+intervals there is little else to do. And with the Duke's hounds the
+gossip was about Mr. Silver.
+
+The Union Bank of Brazil and Uruguay was known to be in difficulties,
+and Boy hunted alone.
+
+"Where's your Life Guardsman?" asked the Duke.
+
+"Guarding the Bank, I believe, your Grace."
+
+The Duke grunted.
+
+"Wants guarding from what I can hear of it," he blurted. "Tell him it's
+no good," he shouted. "Tell him to come out of it. It's no job for an
+honest man."
+
+"What isn't?"
+
+"Bankin'." He muttered to himself. "There's only one thing an honest man
+can do, that's land. Everything else you get dirty over. I'm not
+overclean myself, but I'm not as dirty as some of 'em."
+
+Then there appeared paragraphs in the paper.
+
+The girl asked her father about them.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I don't understand it, my dear," he said. "And what's more, I don't
+believe Mr. Silver do himself. I see the accounts published in the
+paper. Accordin' to them the Bank had five millions in cash. You'd
+think you couldn't go very fur wrong with five millions in cash in the
+till."
+
+"Perhaps a clerk's been taking some," said the girl eagerly.
+
+Once, but only once, there had been a clerk at Putnam's.
+
+The old man was not to be convinced.
+
+"Take a tidy-sized clurk to go off with five million in his pocket," he
+said. "Course I don't say he couldn't do it, Gob 'elpin' 'im. Only he'd
+be carryin' a lot o' dead weight, as the Psalmist said. _Too_ 'eavily
+penalised, I should say. No, my dear, 'tain't the clurk. 'Tis the
+li'bilities."
+
+"What are the liabilities?" asked Boy.
+
+"They're the devil, my dear," said the old man. "That's all I can tell
+you. Land you in the lock-up soon as look at you."
+
+Later that evening the girl went to call on her friend, Mr. Haggard.
+
+He was in his study among his books, and rose to greet her with that
+affectionate kindliness he reserved for her.
+
+"I want to know something, Mr. Haggard," said the girl in her determined
+way.
+
+He looked at her over his spectacles.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can they put you in prison if you lose your money?"
+
+"Not if you lose it honestly," replied the vicar.
+
+One reason the girl liked him so much was that he never played the fool.
+The heavy horse-chaff with which the average Englishman of the Duke's
+type, in his elephantine efforts at gallantry, thinks it necessary to
+adorn his conversation, were not for him.
+
+"Oh, he'll lose it honestly all right," cried the girl eagerly,
+unconscious of the fact that she was giving herself away, or careless of
+it.
+
+It was not hard for the other to gauge her mind. Casually he turned over
+an evening paper.
+
+"I see there's good news about Mr. Silver's Bank," he said. "It's
+weathered the storm."
+
+He pointed out to her a paragraph in the stop-press column.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+The Man with the Gamp
+
+
+The good news was confirmed.
+
+That night a telegram came from Mr. Silver to say he was coming down
+next morning and asking them to meet him at Lewes.
+
+"I knew he'd come if he could to-morrow," cried the girl.
+
+Her mother looked at her.
+
+"It's your birthday, Boy," she said.
+
+The girl's fair face flushed.
+
+"He doesn't know that," she said, on the defensive. "And you're not to
+tell. It's the last day of hunting. That's what I meant."
+
+She was indeed seventeen next day. And the sign of her womanhood was
+that when she came down in the morning her hair was bunched in a neat
+little coil at the back of her head. Because of it she was shy and
+somewhat defiant. Dressed for hunting in snowy shirt and long-skirted
+dark coat, she entered the parlour more swiftly than her wont, in her
+shoes and stockings, and carrying her riding-boots in her hand.
+
+Her father's mild blue eye penetrated her secret at once.
+
+"That's a little bit o' better," he said. "It's _Miss_ Woodburn now."
+
+"Now then, father," reproved Mrs. Woodburn.
+
+"Oh, I knows my place, plea Gob," mumbled the old man. "Ought to arter
+all the trainin' you been at the pains to put me to." And he winked and
+chuckled and grunted over his porridge.
+
+"Let me look at you, Boy," said her mother, when the teasing old man had
+gone.
+
+The girl coloured faintly. Her mother kissed her. "Joyce," she said
+gravely, "you're a woman now."
+
+"Am I, mother?" laughed the girl. "I feel like a boy sometimes still."
+
+She was gay with an unusual gaiety.
+
+Her mother marked it with those observant eyes of hers.
+
+After the pair had read together, as their custom was, Mrs. Woodburn
+laid the Bible down and took up her knitting.
+
+Boy pulled on her boots before the fire.
+
+"I hope you won't marry out of your own class, Boy," said Mrs. Woodburn
+at last quietly. "We're humble folk, as dad says."
+
+"I don't think I shall marry at all," replied the girl curtly. "I don't
+feel like it."
+
+The mother continued on her tranquil way.
+
+"When you marry, marry your own sort," she advised.
+
+Boy was silent for a time.
+
+"Isn't Mr. Silver our sort?" she asked at last, her eyes on her
+mother's.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn, for all her liberal mind, was of the older generation.
+
+"My dear," she said, "he's an Eton man."
+
+"He's not like one," replied the girl shortly. "He's a gentleman."
+
+"My dear, Eton men are gentlemen," reproved Mrs. Woodburn.
+
+"Some," replied the girl. "The Duke is." She added
+maliciously--"Sometimes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Old Mat, Monkey Brand, and Albert started early for the meet.
+
+It was a long hour later before mother and daughter, waiting in the
+parlour, heard the steady clop-clop of a horse's feet and the crisp
+trundle of wheels on the road.
+
+In another moment the buggy had drawn up at the gate; Goosey Gander was
+stretching his neck, and Jerry of the corrugated brow was touching his
+hat to the descending passenger.
+
+A tall, top-hatted figure, enfolded in long, shaggy gray frieze coat,
+came up the paved yard toward them between clouds of arabis.
+
+Silver had changed in the train on the way down. He was booted, spurred,
+and above all radiant.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn went out on to the steps to meet him. The girl hid her
+hair behind her mother's stately figure.
+
+"So you've managed it!" smiled Mrs. Woodburn.
+
+"I was determined not to miss it," replied the young man, striding up
+the steps stiff in his top-boots. "Miss Woodburn, congratulations."
+
+"Who told you?" cried Boy, taken aback.
+
+"Billy Bluff, of course," replied the other. "Caddish of him, wasn't
+it?"
+
+They went into the parlour.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn did not offer the traveller a drink for the simple reason
+that it never occurred to her to do so.
+
+"By Jove! I _am_ late!" cried the young man, glancing at the clock.
+"There was a break-down at Hayward's Heath."
+
+He stripped off his ulster, and stood up in his pink coat, his baggy
+white breeches, and top-boots.
+
+In Boy Woodburn's judgment most men, so attired, looked supremely
+ridiculous. It was not so with Mr. Silver. It may be that his absolute
+lack of self-consciousness distracted attention from his costume. It may
+be that he was so real himself that he dominated his artificial
+habiliments. Certainly his strong, clean face, his short, crisp hair,
+and pleasant, booming voice possessed and pleased the girl.
+
+"You'd better be off, or you'll have the Duke down on you," said Mrs.
+Woodburn.
+
+"Dad's gone an hour since," said Boy.
+
+She led the way swiftly down long stone passages out into the yard. He
+followed, his eyes on that shining bunch of hair before him.
+
+The yard looked deserted. The fan-tails strutted vaingloriously; Maudie
+lay in the sun on the stable wall; and Billy Bluff's kennel was empty.
+
+"Hullo, where's Bill?" cried the young man.
+
+"Some idiot's let him off his chain," grumbled the girl. "Just like
+them. A hunting morning."
+
+A great gray horse, led by little Jerry, was feeling his way through the
+stable-door. Banjo stood seventeen hands or over, but he was all
+quality. His long neck was hog-maned; and his Roman nose and sober
+colour gave him an air of wisdom and experience which a somewhat
+frivolous character belied.
+
+Young Lollypop, a brown three-year-old, followed demurely behind. For
+all his sixteen hands, he looked a mere stripling beside the gray; but
+he was far too tall for the girl to mount without assistance. Stanley
+went for a bucket, but before he could return Silver had shot the girl
+into the saddle, and stood a moment looking up at her with eyes in
+which laughter and admiration mingled.
+
+The girl seemed so slight and yet so masterful on these great larruping
+thoroughbreds she always rode!
+
+Young Lollypop had the callow and awkward ways of a young giraffe, but,
+though only a three-year-old, he was sedate as an old maid and had the
+dignity of a churchwarden. His behaviour was an example to his flippant
+colleague.
+
+For Banjo, directly he felt his master on his back, began to galumph
+about the yard with a clatter of hoofs among the injured fan-tails and
+to the discomfiture of Maudie.
+
+"Right!" grunted Silver, settling into his saddle. "Now, you old hog,
+you!"
+
+Brown Lollypop cocked his long ears and watched with pained disapproval
+the gambols of his elder. Himself incorruptible, he was no doubt well
+pleased at heart that Banjo's misconduct should throw up in high relief
+his own immaculate conduct. Lollypop was in fact a bit of a prig. Had he
+been a boy he would have been head of his school, a Scholar of Balliol,
+and President of the Union at his University.
+
+The girl followed her leader through the gate, the brown horse stepping
+gingerly, swinging his tail, and feeling his bit, while Banjo galumphed
+and grunted to the sound of a squeaking leather.
+
+The meet was at Folkington Green, at the foot of the Downs on the edge
+of the low country.
+
+Once in the road, Silver and the girl turned their backs on the sea and
+made through the village.
+
+Just outside it a familiar figure was waiting them on the road,
+apologetic and pleading.
+
+"I knew he would," said Boy. "He started with father and got turned
+back. Now he's waiting for us. _Go back, you bad dog!_"
+
+"Poor boy!--he wants a bit of a hunt, too," said the young man.
+
+"I'll hunt him!" cried the girl remorselessly, and proceeded to do so
+with vigour.
+
+It was some time before the dog was routed and they were free to pursue
+their way.
+
+"What's the time?" asked the girl.
+
+Silver referred to his wrist-watch.
+
+"It's nearly half-past eleven."
+
+"We must trot," said Boy.
+
+They trotted away, the brown horse and the gray side by side, the
+regular clap-clap of their feet sometimes overlapping and sometimes
+beating in unison, only to break eventually again, to the disappointment
+of the girl's attentive ear. It was the fashion amid the hunting folk to
+despise hacking along the road as so much waste of time. To the girl the
+steady tramp along the hard road was like the march of life. She would
+hack from covert to covert, one of a great cavalcade, men and women,
+with bobbing heads, their faces set all in the same direction, the sound
+of the horses' feet splashing all round her like a stream. She would
+flow along in the centre of that stream, unconscious of those about her,
+silent when addressed, absorbed in the only music for which she cared.
+
+The noise of Banjo blowing his nose now brought her back to earth. She
+peeped at the face of the man on the big gray at her side.
+
+"Had a bad time?" she asked warily.
+
+He turned to her, his face lit with the smile that took all the
+heaviness out of it.
+
+"Worrying," he said.
+
+"Well, you're through now," said the girl.
+
+"Plea Gob," he answered, "till next time. We'd have been in the cart but
+the Bank of England stood by like a brick."
+
+Their steady pace took them along. They were getting away from the
+hills, and the Weald was opening before them. The sun shone on them, and
+the willows on either side the road declared that April was at hand.
+They eased down to a walk.
+
+Silver opened his chest.
+
+"I feel like singing!" he cried.
+
+"Sing then," said Boy.
+
+In his quiet booming voice he sang a verse from _Two on the Downs_,
+which in their long hacks home of evening she had taught him--
+
+                    _Sing ho!
+                    So we go,
+          Over Downs that are surging green
+          Under the sky and the seas that lie
+              Silvery-strewn between_.
+
+He finished and turned to her with a laugh and shining eyes.
+
+She glanced away, and on her face was that delicious wary look he loved
+so well, baffling and baffled, disturbing because disturbed, as when a
+little wind ruffles at evening a willow, exposing to the sky in spite of
+protest the silvery undersides of naked, shining leaves.
+
+Jim Silver edged across to her.
+
+"Miss Woodburn!" he said quietly. He held out a great gloved hand.
+
+Boy looked resolutely between her horse's ears.
+
+"Trot," she said.
+
+A few straggling foot-passengers, an occasional trap, a man on a
+bicycle, and some children pushing a perambulator, showed them they were
+drawing near their goal.
+
+About half a mile in front the road opened on to a green. There among
+trees they could see a gathering of men and horses.
+
+"Good!" cried the young man. "They haven't moved off yet. Shall we slow
+down?"
+
+"Best get on, I think," replied the girl.
+
+A man in a slouch hat, carrying a gamp as untidy as himself, was walking
+before them down the middle of the road.
+
+"Ass!" muttered the young man. "Why can't he keep to one side?"
+
+Boy shot ahead, Silver took a pull. Banjo made a fuss, took offence,
+then went striding hugely by, and shied off, splashing through a puddle.
+
+The brown waters rose and drenched the pedestrian.
+
+"Thank _you!_" he called furiously after the horseman.
+
+Banjo, as though frightened at his deed, tried a bolt. A horseman of
+unusual power, Silver steadied the great horse and swung him across the
+road. There Banjo sidled, yawed, and passaged, fretting to be after the
+brown.
+
+The young man, swinging to the motions of the tossing gray, raised his
+hand in that large and gracious way of his.
+
+"So sorry," he shouted back.
+
+The man with the gamp shuffled toward him.
+
+"Of course it wasn't deliberate!" he cried.
+
+It was Silver's turn to be angry.
+
+He gripped the gray, lifted him round like a polo pony, and drove him
+back to the angry man.
+
+"You don't think I'd do a thing like that on purpose!" he said, and saw
+for the first time that the man with the gamp was Joses.
+
+"You didn't know it was me, of course," sneered the other, shaking with
+anger.
+
+"I did not," replied Silver, calm and cold as Joses was hot.
+
+"Then I don't believe you," cried the tout.
+
+Silver looked down at him.
+
+"I've said I'm sorry. I've no more to say," he remarked quietly.
+
+"Haven't you?" cried the fat man. "I have, though."
+
+He made a snatch at Banjo's rein.
+
+The gray reared, backed away into the ditch, collapsed there on his
+quarters, and recovered himself with the grunt and flounder of a
+hippopotamus emerging from a river.
+
+A little crowd was collecting swiftly, drawn by the hopes of a row.
+
+Then there came the clatter of a horse's feet. Boy was coming back to
+the group at a gallop.
+
+"I saw what happened," she said, her deep voice a little sharp. "Your
+horse shied and splashed Mr. Joses." She appealed swiftly to him.
+"Wasn't that it?"
+
+"Yes," said Silver coldly. "I splashed him by accident and apologised."
+
+"_And he turned nasty!_"
+
+The intervening voice was harsh and unfamiliar. Silver turned to see a
+tall inspector of police sitting like a pillar of salt in a dog-cart,
+which had drawn up in the road.
+
+Joses, who had seen him, too, began to shake, and more horrible still to
+laugh.
+
+"He was naturally a bit annoyed," said Silver.
+
+The tall inspector was looking Joses up and down. There was a dreadful
+air of domination about him.
+
+"If you're satisfied, sir, I say no more," said the inspector, reluctant
+as a dog to leave a bone.
+
+"I'm satisfied," replied Silver.
+
+The inspector withdrew. The little knot of people who had gathered began
+to disperse. The young man and the girl trotted on their way.
+
+"Most unfortunate," muttered Silver.
+
+"Most," Boy answered.
+
+In Joses's eyes she had seen again that look of the wild beast, caged
+and cowering.
+
+The young man felt censure in her voice.
+
+"Well, I don't think it was my fault," he said, nettled.
+
+"I know it wasn't," she cried. "But--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That inspector's way with him. Like a slavedriver."
+
+"I know," said Silver. "Horrible."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+The Black Bird
+
+
+The last meet of the season was, as always, at Folkington Green, close
+enough to Lewes to draw the townsfolk out on bicycles and in
+char-a-bancs.
+
+The morning was fine after rain, and there was a full attendance on the
+green under the swinging sign of _The Beehive_.
+
+Old Mat sat by the muddy pond on his three-cornered cob. He was dressed,
+as always, in flat-topped hat, trousers, and elastic-sided boots; and he
+swung his legs mechanically against Ichabod's hardened sides.
+
+About him was gathered the usual group of admiring ladies. They liked
+Old Mat as much as they disliked his daughter.
+
+"I don't come 'ere to 'unt," the old man was saying wearily; "I come
+'ere to putest. Yes, you can persecute me if you like, same as you do
+the fox, but if I live through it, as I 'ave before, I shall go 'ome to
+Mar, and next time you comes out I shall be there givin' my witness, de
+we." His face was firm and nobly resolute. "Crool, I calls it," he said.
+"Such a lot of you, too. Hosses and dogs, men and women, not to say
+perambylators. All on his back at once; and he'll beat the lot yet,
+you'll see. That's because he's got religion in him, little red fox has.
+His conscience is clear, same as mine." He looked about him. "Now
+there's Mr. Haggard there be the elm. He thinks just the very same as
+me--only he ain't got the spirit in him to stand up and say so. I'd 'a'
+wep a tear--only I ain't got one."
+
+The Duke in his hunting cap sat close by on his cobby chestnut, which
+looked as if it had come out of an old hunting print, and the hounds
+sprawled about it in the sunshine on the green.
+
+Silver rode up to the Duke, who greeted him ironically.
+
+"Late as usual, Silver," he said. "We've been waiting for you since
+Christmas."
+
+"Very good of you, sir," replied the young man. "I only came down from
+town this morning."
+
+"Glad you could get away," grunted the Duke. "Hope you've done 'em down
+all right."
+
+Silver walked his horse away across the green.
+
+The inspector, who had drawn up in the road, got down from his trap, and
+came toward Silver.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "You've nothing against that chap?"
+
+He knew very well who Silver was, and was obsequious accordingly.
+
+"Nothing," said Silver shortly.
+
+"Excuse me, won't you, sir?" continued the inspector. "I wouldn't
+trouble you only we know him. He's been in trouble before. And we have
+to watch him. He's a bit funny in the temper. And when he's on the boil
+there's not a great deal he'll stop at."
+
+"I've nothing against him," repeated Silver, and rode on to join Monkey
+Brand, who was nursing a youngster by the pond.
+
+The little jockey greeted him with a drop of one eyelid.
+
+"He's watchin' you, sir," he said quietly.
+
+"Who is?" asked the young man.
+
+"Joses, sir. Through the window of _The Beehive_."
+
+"Never mind him," replied Silver, keeping his broad scarlet back turned
+on the public-house and the face peering at him over the half-blind.
+
+"He's got some friends here," continued Monkey, in the same hushed
+monotone. "That's why he's gone inside. That tall genelman you was
+talkin' with. Very close they was at one time. Too close in a manner o'
+speakin'. See, you can be _too_ close friends. Then you gets to know too
+much about each other. Then there's trouble and a kickin'-match."
+
+The Duke waved his arm, and hounds moved off.
+
+Horsemen, carriages, and pedestrians followed them in straggling
+procession.
+
+Monkey Brand and Silver kept together. In front of them Boy Woodburn and
+Albert Edward rode side by side.
+
+Viewed from the rear, they were ridiculously alike in shape and size and
+bearing.
+
+The little jockey pointed out the resemblance to his companion. He
+clucked and winked and joggled with his elbow.
+
+"Not much atween 'em seen from behind, sir," he said.
+
+"How's he coming on?" asked Silver.
+
+"Why, not bad, sir," replied the jockey. "He's the pick of our bunch
+anyway. If he wasn't so puffed up wiv himself, he'd do."
+
+"I saw he did Chukkers down at Sandown in the International," said the
+young man.
+
+"He did, sir. He did so," replied the little man. "One more up to
+Putnam's, that was." And he gave the story of how the Putnam's lad had
+beaten the crack in the big race.
+
+It seemed that Chukkers, who was riding Jackaroo for Ikey Aaronsohnn,
+had thought he was well through, and was sitting down to idle home, when
+two fences from the finish Albert Edward, riding an any-price outsider,
+came up on his right out of the blue and challenged the star-spangled
+jacket.
+
+Chukkers, who was on the favourite, with orders to win, had drawn his
+whip and ridden for his life.
+
+"'E could draw whip and draw blood, too," chuckled Monkey Brand. "But it
+weren't no manner o' good. Took up his whip and stopped his 'orse.
+Albert, 'e never stir. Sat there and goes cluck-cluck and got home on
+the post. Rode a pretty race, he did. Miss Boy was ever so please."
+
+"And what about Chukkers?" asked Jim.
+
+Monkey Brand sniggered.
+
+"He was foamin'-mad, bloody-yellin' all over the place. I was glad Mrs.
+Woodburn wasn't there to hear. Jaggers had him out on the mat afore 'em
+all. Said he'd been caught nappin'--by a boy with a face like a girl,
+too. Putnam 'orse and all. That got ole Chukkers' tail up. He made
+trouble in the weighin'-room. Said Albert had done him a dirty dish; but
+you can't go to the Stewards on that. And Albert he told Miss Boy--'I
+never done nothin' to him, only beat him.' And he told the truth that
+time if he never told it afore. 'Never you mind,' says Miss Boy. 'You
+won and you'll win again--if your head don't get so swelled you can't
+get the weight. We all know Chukkers,' says she, 'and Jaggers, too.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last day was never taken very seriously by the regular followers of
+the Duke's hounds. All those to whom hunting was the one worthy
+occupation in life kept religiously aloof.
+
+"It's the people's day," they said. "They don't want us."
+
+To-day was no exception to the rule.
+
+Before lunch hounds chopped a mangy fox outside Prior's Wood; and it was
+not till the afternoon was getting on that they found a rover lying out
+in a field of mangolds.
+
+He must have been a hill-fox, who had been caught raiding in the
+lowlands, for he made a straight point for the Downs.
+
+There was the usual scurry. Boy Woodburn was, as always, the last away,
+with Silver in close attendance.
+
+They threaded the ragged fringes of pedestrians, who still clung to the
+skirts of the horsemen, turned to the right through an open gate, and
+leisurely pursued the cavalcade disappearing furiously before them in
+the distance.
+
+The girl nursed her baby, who showed himself as unconcerned by the fuss
+and flurry of the vanguard as his young mistress; while Banjo fretted
+and fumed to get away.
+
+They crossed a big grass field at a canter. Lollypop was young and raw
+as a calf, and Jim Silver rode well behind, giving him and his rider
+plenty of room.
+
+Before them was a low stake-and-bound with a drop on the far side.
+Lollypop flopped along toward it like a boat in a swell, flapping his
+long ears, bridling, and pondering whether he would have it or not. On
+the whole, he thought he would. To lift over it would probably mean less
+trouble in the end than to fight the quiet and resolute creature who
+cooed so softly in his ears, and rode him with such iron resolution.
+Moreover, he knew now as the result of experience that if it came to a
+struggle he would be worsted in the end if it took all day. It would
+certainly be less irksome, and more gracious, to get the thing behind
+you. To jump, and to pretend you liked it, was the generous and the
+politic thing to do. Moreover, it was all in the direction of home and
+bran-mash; while there was Banjo golly-woshing through the mud close
+behind him. And Lollypop not only had to live up to his reputation and
+set his elder an example, which he loved to do, but he also wished to
+show the gray what he could do himself when he tried.
+
+The young horse had just made up his mind in the right way, cocked his
+ears, gathered himself, and passed the thrill to his responsive and
+expectant mistress, when a huge and black bird, vaster and far more
+hideous than anything the young horse had ever seen upon the Downs, rose
+suddenly underneath his nose on the far side of the hedge, flapped its
+wings obscenely, spread them wide, and then twirled round insanely at
+astonishing speed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joses, nursing his wounds, sat on in the parlour of _The Beehive_ long
+after the cavalcade had moved off, and comforted himself in the usual
+way.
+
+When at length he rose with a drained tankard and paid his shot at the
+counter, he gave his views on society to the landlord in such coloured
+terms as genuinely to shock that worthy, who had been brought up
+respectably in the shadow of a Duke.
+
+"They're patriots and imperialists, they are," said the fat man. "Never
+think of themselves. They hunt the fox, and shoot the pheasant, and
+keep you and me under, not because they enjoy it and want all the fun to
+themselves. Oh, no!--don't make that mistake. But because it's their
+bounden duty to God and man so to do!"
+
+The landlord gave him his change.
+
+"Are you a Socialist?" he asked.
+
+"No," laughed Joses. "I'm a ---- aristocrat. You might know it from me
+language--let alone me looks. With a stake in the country, a pew in the
+church, and a seat in the House of Mammon. Goodbye! God bless our
+gracious King! And to hell with the rights of You and Me!"
+
+He went out and made for the hills, churning his grievances into mud
+within him.
+
+He had walked for an hour across the fields, blind and deaf to all about
+him, when an insistent sound from the outer world penetrated the
+outworks of his disturbed spirit.
+
+He stopped and listened.
+
+Hounds were running. Yes. No. Yes. That musical tow-row, passionate,
+terrible, and never-to-be-forgotten, was not to be mistaken.
+
+Hounds were running, and they were coming in his direction at speed.
+Joses, always something of a sportsman, came out of himself in his own
+despite. He hurried down a bridle-path toward the line of the hunt.
+
+Before him, some fields away, he saw hounds toppling over a hedge like a
+breaker curling before it fell. There followed in line horsemen and
+horsewomen, singly, straggling, and in groups.
+
+Joses stayed and watched them sweep by some distance from him. The
+mutter of horses' feet close at hand struck his ear. He turned and
+looked over the hedge. A man and a girl were cantering leisurely toward
+him. The man was on a gray, and it was clear from the way the girl
+handled her horse that he was young and uncertain of himself.
+
+An imp of malignant deviltry, born of spite and alcohol, bobbed up in
+Joses's heart. He ducked behind the hedge, opened his umbrella suddenly,
+and twirled it overhead.
+
+Lollypop's nerves were of the very best, but this was altogether too
+much for him. He refused suddenly and with a snort, whipped about, swift
+as a top, slid up, and collapsed on his side.
+
+Boy was flung forward on her head and shoulder.
+
+A moment she stayed where she was on her hands and knees, clutching at
+the bridle. Lollypop floundered to his feet, and tugged to get away,
+staring with wide-flung nostrils and trembling flanks at the hedge.
+
+The girl rose slowly to her feet. Her hat was muddy and battered, and
+she looked before her foolishly and with dazed eyes.
+
+Silver had galloped up and was on his feet in a minute at her side.
+
+"Are you hurt?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"I'm all right," she replied sleepily.
+
+Joses was peering over the hedge. It was difficult to say what was in
+those shining eyes of his.
+
+"Nasty shy," he said.
+
+Silver looked up.
+
+"I'm coming round to you in a minute, my friend," he said deeply.
+
+Joses's face darkened.
+
+"Why, you don't think it was deliberate?" he cackled.
+
+"I'll let you know what I think later," replied the young man.
+
+"You frighten me!" mocked the other, rumbling his dreadful laughter.
+"Mind you tell your friends the police!" he added, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Jim Silver Goes To War
+
+
+Boy was muddy, and her hat was dented and askew. The little creature
+looked strangely pathetic as she stood up alongside tall Lollypop with
+the slimy flank.
+
+"I'll get on again now," she said, gathering her reins. "Put me up, will
+you?"
+
+"No," answered Silver.
+
+The tears sprang to the girl's eyes.
+
+"Why not?" she asked fretfully, but for the first time since they had
+met she submitted to his will.
+
+Jim took Lollypop's rein and led both horses slowly toward the farm
+among apple trees at the end of the field.
+
+Boy walked at his side.
+
+"It's silly to feel so funny," she laughed feebly.
+
+"Take my arm," he said; but she refused.
+
+They came to the gate of the farm.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked.
+
+"In here."
+
+He gave a shout.
+
+A woman in a sunbonnet came to the door and stared.
+
+"Is that you, Miss Woodburn?" she cried. "Oh! _dear_ me!"
+
+"Hullo, Mrs. Ticehurst," said the girl. "I've had a bit of a spill."
+
+"Can Miss Woodburn come in and rest for a moment?" asked Silver.
+
+"Come in and rest!" cried the woman. "Hark to him! Think I'd turn a dog
+away like that--let alone Miss Joyce."
+
+"Such a fuss!" protested the girl.
+
+The woman called to a yokel to come and take the horses.
+
+Languidly the girl walked down the paved path between rank currant
+bushes, and entered the house.
+
+"Here in the parlour, Miss!" said the woman, kind and bustling.
+
+"I'd rather the kitchen, please," said Boy. "Cosier there."
+
+"Very well, my dear. There's a fire there. And I'll get you a cup o'
+tea."
+
+When Silver entered the house a little later he saw the girl comfortably
+established by the fire.
+
+He peeped in and withdrew quietly.
+
+"I'll be back in a minute," he said quietly to the woman. "I'm just
+going to have a look at the horses."
+
+In the yard he found the yokel trying in vain to induce Banjo to enter a
+door that was too small for him.
+
+"All right," said the young man. "He won't fit."
+
+Mounting, he rode out into the field.
+
+Banjo knew his master meant business directly he was in the saddle, and
+answered instantaneously to the call, dropping the nonsense, and
+settling down to work sober as a bishop.
+
+The yokel watched the pair with admiration.
+
+There was such power about them both.
+
+The big man cantered across the field, put the gray at the fence, and
+cleared it without an effort.
+
+There was a slight drop into a bridle-lane.
+
+The man on the gray turned and cantered quietly along it.
+
+He jumped a low heave-gate and followed the track beyond. In the next
+field he saw his quarry, hunting along at a little dog-trot.
+
+Joses seemed to have no fear of pursuit.
+
+Jim Silver stole up behind him, Banjo, as though entering into the
+spirit of the pursuit, seeming to muffle the sound of his going.
+
+A hundred yards from his quarry the young man came with a rattle. Joses
+turned, but it was too late.
+
+The lash curled round his plump carcase.
+
+Silver swept on like a hailstorm, and pulled Banjo up on his haunches.
+
+Then he sat with white face and shining eyes, trailing his lash as he
+waited the assault.
+
+He had not long to wait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Boy sat by the fire in the kitchen and drank her tea, an alert little
+figure, her burnished hair neatly coiled, and hat beside her.
+
+It was clear she was entirely herself again.
+
+Then Silver stood in the door and smiled at her. He was very quiet and
+rather pale.
+
+The girl looked up at him suspiciously.
+
+"Where've you been?" she asked.
+
+"With the horses," he answered.
+
+She was not to be deceived.
+
+"You've been having a hunt of your own," she said. "I hope you didn't
+find."
+
+He looked out of the window evasively.
+
+"Scent poor to bad," he said slowly.
+
+By the time they mounted it was late in the afternoon, and the glory had
+departed from the day.
+
+They climbed the Downs, and rode along the tops of them, their faces to
+the sea, speaking hardly at all, and walking all the while.
+
+This sudden and surprising contact with evil had taken the joy from
+their hearts and oppressed them like a shadow.
+
+Once as they drew near home he spoke.
+
+"How are you?" he said.
+
+"I'm all right," she answered, and added, lifting her face to his in
+that frank and beautiful way of hers, "I don't think he meant it for
+me."
+
+"I'm not sure," replied Silver.
+
+"I think he meant it for you," continued Boy.
+
+"If so I should think a shade better of him," replied the other
+stubbornly.
+
+"I'm glad you didn't catch him," said the girl. She turned full face to
+him. "You _were_ angry."
+
+"I _was_ a bit put out, I think," answered the other.
+
+They dropped down the hill into the Paddock Close, graying faintly in
+the dusk.
+
+Boy's high spirits were pouring back on her in merry little rivulets,
+all the readier to brim their banks for having been dammed so long.
+
+"Come and see Four-Pound-the-Second," she cried, and led away along the
+hillside at a trot.
+
+"How's he coming on?" asked the young man, jogging at her side,
+delighting in her returning life.
+
+"Father thinks he's going to be a great horse," laughed the girl. "But
+he won't admit it to me, of course."
+
+"So he is, plea Gob," said Jim.
+
+Boy looked at him severely. Then she tapped him with her crop.
+
+"He may," she said. "You mayn't. And you mustn't mimic dad."
+
+He touched his forehead.
+
+At the Bottom, not far from the place where the old mare had died, a
+rough thatched shed of tarred sleepers had been run up for the colt.
+
+"There he is!" said the girl. "By the wood," and called him.
+
+The yearling came, trotting proudly at first, and then breaking into an
+ungainly gallop. A gawky creature, with a coat like a bear's, he moved
+with the awkward grace of a puppy, slithering and slipping in the mud,
+yet always recovering himself with surprising speed and precision.
+
+Boy dismounted, and Silver followed her example.
+
+She held out her hand toward the colt.
+
+"Come on, the boy!" she cooed. "Billy Bluff's not here to rag you."
+
+The colt came delicately with outstretched neck and wide nostrils,
+fearing for his liberty, yet poking out his nose toward the extended
+palm on which there lay a piece of bread.
+
+"Looks as if he might make into something, don't you think?" said the
+girl. "Lots of bone."
+
+"What colour's he going to be?" asked the young man.
+
+"Black-brown with bay points. Black-and-tan, mother calls him."
+
+"Black-and-tan," said the young man. "That's Berserk, isn't it?"
+
+"I believe so," replied the girl.
+
+"Is that sure?" asked the young man.
+
+"Father seems to think so," replied Boy evasively. "Monkey Brand met the
+gypsy afterward, who pitched him a tale."
+
+"Who's he belong to?" asked the young man.
+
+"Me, of course," laughed Boy.
+
+"I'll go shares with you!" said Silver. "Halve expenses and winnings.
+There's an offer now!"
+
+"Right," she cried.
+
+They shook hands with laughter, and led their horses across the Close.
+
+The girl edged off to the right.
+
+"We'll look in on old Ragamuffin," she said. "I always used to give him
+an apple on my birthday."
+
+As they put the wood between them and the Bottom, a man who had been
+lying in the shelter out of the wind came to the door and called to the
+colt.
+
+"Whoa, little man!" he said. "Whoa then!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+The Fire in the Dusk
+
+
+It was Jerry who gave the alarm ten minutes later. He had been busy at
+his garden in the Sloperies when he saw the smoke rise from the shelter
+on the hill, and rushed into the yard to say the shed was ablaze.
+
+Boy and Silver, after their leisurely walk home, had just entered the
+yard and surrendered their horses to two of the lads. The girl was
+releasing Billy Bluff from his chain, to Maudie's open annoyance, when
+Jerry panted in with his news.
+
+Silver ran to the gate.
+
+"By Jove, so it is!" he cried.
+
+He was in the saddle in a moment, but not so quickly as was the girl.
+
+She led him through the gate.
+
+Together they galloped across the Paddock Close and made for the hill,
+Billy Bluff racing at their side.
+
+The lads ran heavily behind.
+
+The shed was belching smoke, and from the heather-thatch the flames were
+leaping in red flicker.
+
+"Jolly blaze!" cried Silver as he galloped.
+
+A sound of banging came from the heart of that cloud of smoke, and then
+the loud neigh of a frightened horse.
+
+The young man's face changed.
+
+"Four Pound's inside!" he cried.
+
+He stormed up the hill, and for the first time in his life Banjo tasted
+steel.
+
+Boy, too, had heard that muffled cry, and came shooting by the
+heavy-weight up the hill, Lollypop well extended.
+
+"Keep clear!" cried Silver. "Hold my horse!"
+
+He was off in a trice, and wading through the bellying smoke.
+
+The girl could see him dimly as he kicked at the door of the shed.
+
+It burst open.
+
+A vast shadow came hurtling through the fog.
+
+Silver was sent hurling backward and sprawled on the hillside.
+
+He was on his feet in a moment.
+
+"That's all right," he panted, as he watched the colt career whinnying
+away, wreaths of smoke still clinging to his woolly coat. "He's not
+taken much harm."
+
+"I suppose he went in after we left," mused Boy. "And then the wind
+banged the door."
+
+"I don't think the wind dropped that bar," said the young man. "And I
+doubt if it set the shelter alight."
+
+The shed was blazing merrily, the flames devouring the tarred wood with
+greed.
+
+Jerry had seen a man leave the public path, cross the Paddock, and enter
+the shed half an hour before.
+
+"What kind of a man?" asked Silver.
+
+"Trampy, sir," replied the lad.
+
+"He got smokin' in it out of the wind," said Stanley, "and set it
+ablaze, and did a bolt."
+
+"After shutting the door behind him with the colt inside," commented
+Silver.
+
+He searched the grass on the outskirts of the shed for footmarks.
+Something glimmering in the dusk caught his eye. It was a
+wooden-handled sheath-knife.
+
+Silver picked it up and showed it to the girl.
+
+She said nothing.
+
+"Billy Bluff!" called the young man. He shoved the knife under the dog's
+nose. "Sik him out!" he called. "Good dorg!"
+
+Billy Bluff skirmished round and went off up the hill at score.
+
+Silver mounted and followed.
+
+The trail carried the dog up on to the Downs.
+
+He pursued it at speed and unfaltering in the dusk.
+
+Against the pale west, on the brow, the figure of a man soon came into
+view. Billy Bluff raced up and greeted the pedestrian effusively.
+
+Silver, pounding up behind, found himself face to face with the vicar.
+
+The dog, his task completed to his own entire satisfaction, sought
+applause and sympathy from the horseman.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Haggard?" called the young man in the dusk.
+
+"Yes; I came up to have a look at the sunset."
+
+"You haven't seen that man Joses about?"
+
+"Our lurid friend," said the vicar absently. "No; and I don't want to
+see him just now. It's all so quiet."
+
+Boy, who had stayed behind to examine the colt, came cantering up.
+
+The dusk was drawing down apace, the earth dark about them, and seaward
+that window in the west pale and lovely.
+
+"Wonderful!" said Mr. Haggard, dreamily, and repeated slowly and to
+himself--
+
+          _Since I can never see your face,
+            And never shake you by the hand,
+          I send my soul through time and space
+            To greet you. You will understand._
+
+The riders turned away.
+
+Neither spoke for a while.
+
+"Mr. Haggard's like mother," said the girl at last. "He's got _that_."
+She added: "I'm glad we met him. I was very angry."
+
+"Aren't you now?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she said, "but in a different way. It's white now. It was red
+then."
+
+They rode slowly off the crest amid the gorse, the lights of Putnam's
+burning far beneath them in the dusk.
+
+"Give me that knife, please," she said.
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I want it."
+
+"What for?"
+
+He didn't answer.
+
+"I know," she said. "To get him put away."
+
+"He deserves it," replied the young man doggedly. "If it had only been
+the shed now!--but--"
+
+"Four Pound," she said. "I know." Her little hand came reaching toward
+him in the dusk. "Give me that knife, please."
+
+He fenced with her.
+
+"Don't you believe in punishment?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Not even for cruelty?"
+
+"I don't think you can stop cruelty by being cruel yourself."
+
+"Wouldn't you give him in charge?"
+
+"Yes," she said, "if I was sure they'd kill him. But they wouldn't.
+They'd only cage him. And I can't believe in the cage for anyone." She
+was breathing deeply.
+
+"Here you are," said the young man.
+
+She laid her hand on his a moment.
+
+He grasped it, and drew toward her silently.
+
+The horses moved side by side down the hill, a few pale stars sprinkling
+the dull heavens, and somewhere behind, the glimmer of a young moon.
+
+They passed into the Paddock Close, stealing softly over the turf, the
+wood moving gently on their right in the darkness.
+
+He came looming up beside her.
+
+"Boy," he said deeply.
+
+It was the first time he had dared.
+
+"Yes," she answered, and her voice trembled ever so little.
+
+"Will you share something besides Four-Pound-the-Second?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+The moon caught her.
+
+She turned full face to him; and her eyes were tender and brilliant as
+he had never known them.
+
+"D'you care for me?" she asked.
+
+"I love you," said Silver.
+
+She squeezed his hand, but answered nothing.
+
+"D'you care for _me_?" he asked in his turn.
+
+She did not answer for some time.
+
+"I'm not going to marry you," she said at last.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+He thought she gulped.
+
+"I'm not going to marry a gentleman."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Again she paused.
+
+"It doesn't do."
+
+He lifted her little hand in his great gloved one and kissed it.
+
+"Bless you, dear Boy," was all he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+The Fat Man Goes Under
+
+
+It was two days later that the girl met Joses in the village street.
+
+She crossed to him swiftly, and she was white and sparkling.
+
+"Here's your knife, Mr. Joses," she said, handing it him.
+
+There came into his eyes at once that hunted look.
+
+He put both hands behind him and bowed with his honeyed smile.
+
+"It's not mine, Miss Woodburn, thank you," he said.
+
+The girl was growing apace.
+
+A few months back she would have said "It is," and have dropped it at
+his feet. Now she answered:
+
+"You may have it whenever you like to call for it," and passed on.
+
+A little farther down the street she met the vicar.
+
+On her face was that frosty look that Mr. Haggard said made him afraid.
+
+"Well, Boy?" he said.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Haggard," she answered, but she did not stop.
+
+That evening she called at the cottage where Joses lodged and handed
+Mrs. Boam the knife done up in brown paper.
+
+"Will you give this to Mr. Joses?" she said.
+
+The woman's apron was to her lips, and over it her frightened eyes
+peered at the girl.
+
+"He's gone, Miss," she said.
+
+The girl was surprised.
+
+"Gone?" she said. "Where?"
+
+The woman nibbled her apron.
+
+"An hour since. The police come for him. I was makin' the tea."
+
+That strange tide of Other-Consciousness overwhelmed the girl.
+
+"Are you fond of him?" asked the Voice that used her as an instrument.
+
+The woman with the streaming eyes nodded over her apron.
+
+"Our Jenny love him," she said.
+
+
+End of Part I
+
+
+
+
+Battle
+
+
+It was Old Mat who was responsible for the arrest of Joses on the charge
+of incendiarism.
+
+"I got to do me duty by the pore feller," he said quietly. "And will do,
+de we. Same as the Psalmist says. It's _because_ you love 'em you got to
+chastise of 'em. Only where it is," he ended disconsolately, "don't
+somehow seem as they _can_ understand."
+
+The evidence was fairly plain. Jerry had marked the tout late in the
+afternoon of the day in question cross the Paddock Close from the public
+park and enter the shed half an hour before the fire; while Monkey
+Brand, coming off the hill, on his return from the hunt, swore he had
+seen him emerge from the shed as flames broke from the thatched roof.
+
+It was growing dusk at the time, and the distance was considerable, as
+Monkey admitted, but the little jockey maintained with restraint and
+emphasis that "he'd know that waddle anywheres."
+
+Joses did not go undefended. The fact of his value to the Three J's, if
+ever in doubt, was proved beyond question by the fact that they paid a
+good lawyer to keep him out of gaol. And it was notorious that the Three
+J's never gave except where they got.
+
+Indeed, one of the funniest scenes at the trial took place when Ikey
+Aaronsohnn, who it was said had returned post-haste from America for the
+purpose, Jaggers, and Chukkers, one after the other, stood up in the
+witness-box and gave evidence solemnly as to the character of the
+accused.
+
+"Of course we know he _has_ made a little mistake in the past, pore
+chap," said Jaggers, who looked like an austere Stiggins. "But he's a
+_good_ man for all that."
+
+"A hopeful penitent," suggested the prosecuting counsel.
+
+"There's 'ope for all, I 'ope, sir," said Jaggers, with quiet manliness.
+
+The case against the accused seemed black; but he met it with
+extraordinary courage and resource.
+
+He admitted that he had been in the shed at the time alleged.
+
+He said that he had gone there to smoke out of the wind, and admitted
+further that he _had_ set the shed on fire--by accident.
+
+When asked in court why, if he had set the shed on fire by accident, he
+had run away, his defence was simple and convincing.
+
+He said he was afraid. He'd been in trouble before.
+
+"And once you've been in trouble, the police know you, and you never get
+a chance. I got a panic, and I bolted--very foolishly."
+
+The defence evidently impressed both judge and jury. And had it been
+simply a question of setting fire to the shed the accused might have got
+off; but there was the further matter of Four-Pound-the-Second.
+
+How did the yearling come to be in the shed?
+
+Joses retorted that it was not for him to say; but he suggested that it
+had come on to rain, and that the colt had sought shelter from the
+storm.
+
+It was there that Silver came in.
+
+The papers said, and said truly, that the young banker gave his evidence
+with obvious reluctance.
+
+"Was the colt in the shed when you came up?" asked the prosecuting
+counsel.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was it raining?"
+
+"It was drizzling."
+
+"Was the door shut?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How was it shut?"
+
+"With a wooden latch."
+
+"That you lifted to let the colt out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Could the wind have banged the door to?"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"Could the latch have _fallen_ into its place?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"What d'you think?"
+
+"I doubt it."
+
+In cross-examination the aim of the counsel for the defence was to show
+that the evidence of the witness was unreliable because he was actuated
+by personal malevolence against the accused.
+
+"Have you had words with the prisoner on more than one occasion?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It was a word from you that put the police on to him in the first
+instance?"
+
+"It was _not_," with warmth.
+
+"You found a knife you believed to belong to the prisoner in the shed
+after the fire?"
+
+"Outside the shed."
+
+"And you took the knife to the police?"
+
+"I did not."
+
+"Where is the knife now?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Who did you give it to?"
+
+"Miss Woodburn."
+
+The girl was called. Her evidence was very brief. Mr. Silver had given
+her the knife. She had taken it to the cottage where the prisoner lodged
+and handed it back to the woman there.
+
+To substantiate the charge that Mr. Silver was actuated by malice, the
+counsel for the defence called evidence to prove the scene that had
+taken place between the witness and the accused on the way to the meet.
+
+On this point the prisoner gave further evidence himself.
+
+"You met Mr. Silver later in the day?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"He rode at me and struck me."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"He said he'd show a ---- convict how to speak to a gentleman; and he'd
+get me put away."
+
+"Was anybody present?"
+
+The accused laughed.
+
+"No fear! He waited till he got me alone."
+
+"What time was this?"
+
+"About two-thirty."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Just outside Prior's Wood."
+
+Mr. Silver, recalled by the prosecuting counsel, was re-examined as to
+the facts alleged by Joses.
+
+"Did you strike the prisoner?"
+
+"I gave him one with the lash of my crop."
+
+"Under what circumstances?"
+
+The witness explained.
+
+"Did you say the words attributed to you?"
+
+"I did _not_."
+
+"Did any words pass between you?"
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"After I struck him, while he was messing about with his knife, he said:
+'I'll do time for you!'"
+
+"Did you say anything?"
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"I said: 'What! More?'"
+
+In cross-examination the counsel for the defence asked the young banker
+what he meant when he said to the prisoner--"'What! More?'"
+
+Silver was silent.
+
+"Were you referring to the fact that the accused had been in trouble?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you're a sportsman?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"And a gentleman?"
+
+In his speech for the prosecution counsel pointed out that the motive
+for the crime--the one point in doubt--had been established. Joses had
+been a little too clever and had established it himself. He had supplied
+the one missing link, and would be hung in a chain of his own making.
+The two men had come to words and blows. Joses, smarting alike in body
+and mind, had trotted home and, beside himself with rage and a desire
+for revenge, had committed this most insensate and abominable crime.
+
+The jury found the prisoner guilty without leaving the box, and the
+judge, who described the crime as deliberate, malignant, and the work of
+a frustrated fiend, gave him a swinging sentence.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE WOMAN AND THE HORSE
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+THE TRIAL
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Albert Edward
+
+
+Four years had passed; but Maudie had not changed or aged.
+
+She lay in the sun on a step on the ladder, languid, insolent, concerned
+only for herself. True the kennel beneath the ladder was empty now, and
+had a rusty and pathetic air as of long disuse; but the
+Monster-without-Manners was not dead, alas!--he had but changed his
+abode. Now and for some years past the Great Unspeakable had shared a
+kennel with the Four-Legs-Who-Might-Not-Walk-Alone; the one who there
+was all this foolish fuss about. There were many such Four-Legs about,
+each as a rule with a small Two-Legs in attendance or on top. As a
+whole, they were harmless. They lived and let live, and Maudie asked no
+more. But the Four-Legs with whom the Monster-without-Manners had
+entered on a sinister intimacy had been corrupted by his companion. He
+bounded, too, upon occasion. And when he bounded he was so big that he
+seemed to fill the yard, sprawling here and there and everywhere, till
+the walls bulged and burst, to the grave inconvenience of Maudie, the
+fan-tails, and all sober citizens; while the Monster-without-Manners
+_more suo_, encouraged him with coarse laughter.
+
+When the Four-Legs-Who-Might-Not-Walk-Alone bounded in the yard, Maudie
+retired indignantly and with the grand air to safety in the loft. She
+did not blame the Four-Legs. He was young, innocent, and the victim of
+the impossible M.-w.-M., who was still the villain of her piece and had
+not altered for the better with the years. Maybe he bounded less; but on
+the other hand age had brought with it cunning.
+
+When Putnam's Only Gentleman had brought her a saucer of milk the
+M.-w.-M. would approach with a great air of gallantry and high breeding,
+and deliberately thrusting his great foot into the saucer, would upset
+it. That was what the M.-w.-M. thought a joke.
+
+Apart from Maudie the yard was deserted now. The horses moved restlessly
+in their loose-boxes, but there was no bustle of shirt-sleeved urchins
+with buckets and pitchforks mucking them out. For it was Sunday morning,
+and the lads were elsewhere.
+
+Arrayed on the long-backed roofs the fan-tails sidled, cooed, and
+blinked in the sun. In a sycamore in the Paddock Close a hedge-sparrow
+raised its thin sweet song, and the celandine lifted a pale and fragile
+face under the beeches on the hillside. Hope was everywhere except in
+Maudie's heart, for February was already on the wane.
+
+The back door of the house opened, and Mrs. Woodburn, grayer than of
+old, stately and aproned, stood in it with a corn-measure in her hand,
+and tossed showers of golden grain for the fan-tails who came fluttering
+to her call.
+
+Albert, busy on his chin with a shaving brush, peeped surreptitiously
+round the door of the saddle-room, and seeing Ma opposite withdrew
+swiftly; but he kept the door ajar as though awaiting something he was
+determined not to miss.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn retired indoors, and a few minutes later there came the
+noisy clacking of a horse and cart entering the cobbled yard.
+
+Instantly Albert was all alert. He flung a towel about his neck and
+looked out.
+
+An ostler from Lewes, known familiarly as Cherry, had pulled up a
+dog-cart opposite the pump. The old horse stretched his neck, shook his
+collar from his sweating shoulders, and, breathing on the water in the
+trough, drank delicately.
+
+Mr. Silver descended from the cart.
+
+He marked the fair lad in the door of the saddle-room and greeted him in
+his large and leisurely way:
+
+"Good morning, Albert," he said.
+
+"Morning, sir."
+
+"Where are the other lads?"
+
+"Where they ought to be, sir. In the Lads' Barn, waiting for Miss Boy."
+
+"And why aren't you there?" asked the young man, amused.
+
+Albert, in fact, spent all his spare time of late shaving. Indeed, he
+was in the habit of informing those he called his colleagues that unless
+he shaved three times a day he wasn't 'ardly decent.
+
+"I got to keep at it, sir," he confided now to Mr. Silver. "Else I gets
+it from Miss Boy."
+
+"What d'you get from her?" asked the young man blandly. "A razor?"
+
+Old Cherry chuckled.
+
+"'E larders his chin and then scrapes the soap off," he said. "That
+amooses Albert, that does."
+
+The insult left the lad cold; but that was less because the insult was a
+feeble one than because his mind was elsewhere.
+
+His eyes and whole attention were on the back of the departing toff.
+
+There was something fascinating to Albert about that back this morning.
+He followed the young man with the interest and the undisguised
+admiration of a Paris gamin watching an aristocrat go to the guillotine.
+
+As the long back disappeared round a corner, the lad turned to Cherry
+and winked.
+
+"Guts," he said.
+
+The ostler led the old horse with dripping muzzle away from the
+water-trough. The expression on his face seemed to suggest that the
+other was a vulgar fellow.
+
+"Did he talk?" asked Albert.
+
+"Talk!" said Cherry ironically. "To me? Likely, ain't it? He talked all
+right. Only he never let on."
+
+Albert had picked up his towel, and was scrubbing away at his chin.
+
+"Plucky little feller," he said. "You'd never know."
+
+"He takes his gruel all right," admitted the other surlily,
+unharnessing.
+
+"Yes, we've learned him his lesson since he's been at Putnam's,"
+reflected Albert.
+
+"'Ow long's he been training here then?" asked Cherry grudgingly, as he
+coiled the traces.
+
+"Five year I've had him now," answered Albert. "He come to me the spring
+afore Four-Pound-the-Second was foaled."
+
+Cherry led the old horse into the stable and put him into an empty
+stall.
+
+"---- shame I call it," he said. "A nice feller like that."
+
+Albert watched him with folded arms.
+
+"I would, too," he said, "only it's Sunday, and Mar might hear."
+
+Cherry smirked.
+
+"Why ain't you at Bible Class then?" he asked grimly.
+
+The Bible Class at Putnam's was a standing joke along the South Downs
+from Arunvale to Beachy Head.
+
+Albert swaggered.
+
+"I'm not takin' it this morning," he said. "I'm givin 'em a serees of
+addresses on the 'Igher Life when the jumpin' season's over."
+
+The little ostler looked at his watch.
+
+"You'd better step it," he said, "you and your Hired Life. It's past
+eleben and the bells have stopped. If you ain't there before her, you'll
+get the stick, you will."
+
+Albert moved slowly up the gangway behind the loose-boxes, unheeding the
+other's taunts.
+
+"I reck'n they've took a couple o' million off of him since Christmas,"
+he said, returning to the subject which he could not leave. "And I got
+to get it back for him."
+
+"Indeed?" said Cherry ironically. "'Ow? Tellin' lies and gettin' paid
+for 'em?"
+
+Albert opened the door of a loose-box and pointed dramatically.
+
+Cherry stared at the brown horse within.
+
+Albert whistled softly and the horse turned his long neck and gazed at
+them with wise and quizzical eye. "Ain't he a big un?" cried Cherry, the
+note of irony dropping from his voice in spite of himself.
+
+Billy Bluff, who had been curled under the manger, came across the
+loose-box and sniffed the little ostler friendly.
+
+"'Ullo, Billy!" said the old man. "Do you sleep in here?"
+
+"Won't sleep nowhere else," answered Albert. "And what's more, Four
+Pound won't sleep unless his pal's with him. They've always had this
+loose-box atween 'em from the start. Miss Boy used to sleep in here,
+too, when he was a foal." The youth dropped his swank, and became
+confidential and keen. "Wonderful close friends, them two, you wouldn't
+believe. Four Pound had a cracked heel last autumn, and I used to
+bandage him at nights. He didn't like the bandages, and every night
+after I'd rugged him up and left him, Billy'd take and unwind the lot.
+Didn't you, Billy?"
+
+He shut the door.
+
+"Who's goin' to ride him?" asked Cherry.
+
+"Me or Monkey," said Albert. "'Taint settled yet. Will be this morning."
+
+He led along toward the saddle-room.
+
+"You got your work cut if you're goin' to beat _her_," said Cherry.
+
+"No fear!" answered Albert. "Got the Sunday paper? What are they
+layin'?"
+
+"Sevens the favourite," replied the old ostler, producing it. "The rest
+any price."
+
+The youth glanced at the betting news.
+
+"Sevens it is," he said. "Price shortening. I suppose the stable's got
+all the money they want on her, and so they don't bother to tell no more
+lies."
+
+Albert opened the saddle-room door. Cherry passed in. The lad followed,
+and locked the door behind him.
+
+"Now don't mind me," he said. "I'm busy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+The Bible Class
+
+
+In the old days, when Mat had been in his prime, there had not seldom
+been as many as a hundred horses on occasion billeted in and around
+Putnam's.
+
+At that time Mat had done a bit of dealing in addition to his training,
+and had kept hunters as well as 'chasers.
+
+The Lads' Barn, as it was called, was at the back of the old
+hunter-stables, somewhat removed from the yard, and opening on to the
+Paddock Close.
+
+It was big, black, with red-tiled roof, raftered, and ideal for its
+purpose; for it served as the Lads' Club, instituted by Mrs. Woodburn
+when first she came to live at Putnam's. Here in winter they had
+singsongs, dances, and entertainments; and in the summer they played
+games, read, and held their committee meetings.
+
+At one end was a mattress, a wooden horse, parallel bars and rings, and
+the ordinary appurtenances of a Boys' Club; at the other a raised
+platform, and on it a blackboard and harmonium.
+
+Now some twenty lads were gathered in the barn, waiting for Miss
+Woodburn to take the Bible Class.
+
+To-day the girl for once was late. And the lads were glad. They had
+plenty to talk about this morning, and they welcomed an opportunity for
+misconduct at this time all the more because it rarely offered. There
+was a delicious relish about wrongdoing in the one hour a week devoted
+to seeking good and ensuing it.
+
+Some of them were smoking, some playing cards.
+
+Both acts were forbidden--the latter absolutely, the former in the main;
+for no lad under seventeen years was allowed to smoke in the Putnam
+stable.
+
+The consequence was that the lads over the age limit bought and owned
+the cigarettes, and with fine capitalist instinct let them out to the
+youngsters at a farthing the puff. Albert when under age had instituted
+the puff, and when over it had organized the tariff. By the
+puff-a-farthing method the cigarettes could not be confiscated, for they
+belonged only to those who had a prescriptive right to them, while the
+puffers, with a little cunning, were able to enjoy illicit smokes.
+
+Jerry, the economist with the corrugated brow, and Stanley the stupid,
+both with cigarettes in their mouths, were standing apart in lofty
+isolation, as befitted the fathers of the flock.
+
+A cherub-faced urchin, playing cards, and deep in his play, was humming
+abstractedly the chorus of a catchy song.
+
+Stanley nudged his pal, strolled up behind the youth, and boxed his
+ears.
+
+The whistler rose and rubbed his ear, aggrieved.
+
+"What's that for?" he asked.
+
+Stanley scowled down at him.
+
+"Whistlin' that at Putnam's o' Sunday."
+
+"What were I whistlin' then?" asked the aggrieved urchin.
+
+"Mocassin Song," said the haughty Stan. "Now no more of it!"
+
+"I didn't know I were whistlin' it," replied the youth.
+
+"He whistles it in his dreams, Alf does," explained a little pal. "It's
+got to his head."
+
+"He won't 'ave no 'ead to dream with if he mocassins us," retorted Stan.
+
+The wrong righted, and order restored, Stanley stalked majestically back
+to his pal with a wink.
+
+"Where's Albert then?" asked Jerry.
+
+"He said he wasn't comin'."
+
+"He's been sayin' that every Sunday these ten year past," answered Jerry
+with the insolence of the ancient habitue. "Ere, one o' you kids, fetch
+me a bit o' chalk. I 'ate to see you idlin' your time away, gamblin' and
+dicin', like the Profligate Son when he broke the bank at Monte Carlo."
+
+He mounted the platform.
+
+"While Ginger's gettin' the chalk I'll ask you a question or two to
+testify your general knowledge."
+
+He took the cigarette out of his mouth, and wriggled his chin above his
+high collar.
+
+"Who done Mr. Silver down?" he asked pontifically.
+
+There was a moment's silence. Then a hand went up.
+
+"Chukkers," piped the cherub-faced urchin.
+
+There was a jeer from the other lads, and even the proud Stanley deigned
+to smile.
+
+"Alf's got Chukkers on the crumpet," Jerry said sardonically. "If there
+was a nearthquake and they ask Alf who done it, he'd say Chukkers."
+
+"Well, he's up to all sorts," retorted the wise cherub.
+
+Jerry repeated his original question.
+
+"Who done Mr. Silver down?"
+
+"Jews," ventured a sporting youth.
+
+This answer met with more approval.
+
+"That's more like," said Jerry. "Now 'ow can he get back on 'em?"
+
+"Bash 'em," suggested the sportsman, encouraged by his previous success.
+"He's bigger nor them, I'll lay."
+
+The lecturer on the platform lifted a protesting hand.
+
+"You mustn't bash 'em, boy Jackson," he said. "Tain't accordin' to
+religion--at least not the religion what I'm here to teach you. No,"
+said the preacher of righteousness, "you mustn't bash 'em. That'd never
+do."
+
+"What then?" piped the cherub.
+
+"You must lay for him," answered the moralist.
+
+Alf was on his feet in a trice.
+
+"At the Canal Turn," he chirped. "Bump him off and then jump on the flat
+of his face."
+
+The moralist greeted the suggestion with warm approval.
+
+"One up to Alfie!" he cried. "He'll make a jockey and a Christian yet,
+Alf will."
+
+Ginger handed up a piece of chalk.
+
+Jerry hushed his audience.
+
+"Quiet now, _if_ you please," said he.
+
+He took the chalk and wrote up in sprawling letters on the board:
+
+     _Bible Class._
+
+     _First Question. What price Four-Pound-the-Second, Grand National?_
+
+Instantly there was a hub-bub, from which the words "Hundred to one"
+came with insistent force.
+
+"Hundred to one," said the lecturer. "Thank you, genelmen."
+
+He proceeded to write.
+
+     _Second Question. Any takers?_
+
+"Yus," said the lofty Stanley. "I'll do it in dollars--twice over."
+
+"Thank _you_," said the scribe.
+
+     _Third Question. What price Mocassin?_
+
+The name was received with groans.
+
+"Sevens--if Chukkers rides," cried the cherub. "Tens if he don't."
+
+The answer was received with jeers.
+
+"Chukkers _not_ ride!"
+
+"O' course he'll ride!"
+
+"He always has ridden her--here and in the States and in Australia!"
+
+Stanley finally deigned to descend from his heights to crush the youth.
+
+"They got a quarter of a million on God Almighty's Mustang, the Three
+J's 'ave. Think they'd trust anyone up only one of their fat selves? Now
+then!"
+
+In the middle of the storm Monkey Brand, who had been waiting for the
+girl in the door, looked in.
+
+He saw the writing on the board and crossed the barn. Monkey himself
+could neither read nor write, but he was well aware that anything
+written by the lads should be rubbed out at once.
+
+"Who wrote this?" he asked.
+
+Jerry, who on the other's entrance had descended swiftly from the
+platform, repeated the question.
+
+"Who wrote this?" he asked authoritatively. "Can't you 'ear Mr. Brand?"
+
+"Albert, I reck'n," answered Stanley, taking his cue from his pal.
+
+The door opened, and a girl stood on the threshold.
+
+"Who said Albert?" she asked.
+
+The lads turned.
+
+The young lady wore a long drab coat and had a fair pig-tail. She was
+like Boy Woodburn and yet unlike her: the figure much the same, the
+colouring identical. But if it was Boy, the years had coarsened her and
+altered the expression in her eyes not for the better.
+
+With swift, decisive steps she made for the platform amid the suppressed
+giggles of the lads.
+
+Jerry made way for her at once.
+
+The girl proceeded to rub out with the duster all the questions but the
+first. Then she turned over the leaves of a Bible, wetting her thumb for
+that purpose, seized the pointer, and took her stand by the blackboard.
+
+"The first question that arises h'out of h'our lesson to-day," she began
+quietly, "is this 'ere--'_What price Four-Pound-the-Second?_' Now think
+afore you answers, there's good little fellers."
+
+It was Jerry who held up his hand.
+
+The girl pointed at him.
+
+"You there, Jerry me boy."
+
+"Depends on who rides him, Mrs. Chukkers," he said.
+
+There was a deadly silence. In it the girl let the handle of the pointer
+fall with the noise of a grounded rifle.
+
+"Mrs. Who?" she asked, fatally quiet.
+
+"Chukkers, ma'am," answered the courteous Jerry.
+
+"Go on then," sneered the girl. "Chukkers ain't married. Nobody won't
+'ave him."
+
+Jerry had risen.
+
+"No, ma'am. That he ain't," said the polished little gentleman. "You're
+his mother--from Sacramento. Anyone could see that by the likeness.
+You're the spit of each other, if I might make so bold. And I'm sure,"
+said the orator, "speakin' on be'alf of all present, meself included, we
+feel honoured by the presence in our umble midst of the mother of the
+famous 'orseman--Chukkers Childers."
+
+In the silence the speaker resumed his seat.
+
+The lady addressed was too busy to reply.
+
+She was taking off her drab coat, her picture hat, and her pig-tail, and
+she was spitting in her hands.
+
+Soaping them together, she came to the edge of the platform.
+
+"Shall I come down and give it you?" she asked. "Or will you come up and
+fetch it?"
+
+"Neever, thank you," said Jerry, puffing imperturbably.
+
+Albert jumped down.
+
+"You're for it, Jerry," said Stanley, glad it was his friend's turn this
+time.
+
+"Not me," Jerry replied. "No scrappin' Sunday. Miss Boy's orders."
+
+Albert, very white, was sparring all round his adversary's head.
+
+"Chukkered me, did ye?" he said. "Put 'em up then, or I'll spoil ye."
+
+The offence was the unforgiveable in the Putnam stable, and the watching
+lads had every hope of a battle royal when a calm, deep voice stilled
+the storm.
+
+"That'll do," it said.
+
+The real Boy entered.
+
+The dark blue of her dress showed off her fair colouring and hair.
+
+She was nearly twenty-one now and spiritually a woman, if she still
+retained the slight, sword-like figure of her girlhood days. Her face
+was graver than of old and more quiet. The touch of almost aggressive
+resolution and defiance it once possessed had shaded off into something
+stiller and more impressive. There was less show of strength and more
+evidence of it. Her roots were deeper, and she was therefore less moved
+by passing winds. Something of her mother's calm had invaded her. She
+got her way just as of old, but she no longer had to battle for it now
+as then. Or if she had to battle, the fight was invisible, and the
+victory fought and won in the unseen deeps of her being.
+
+"Who's been smoking here?" the girl asked immediately on entering the
+barn.
+
+"Me, Miss," said Jerry.
+
+Monkey Brand was fond of affirming that on the whole the lads told the
+truth to Miss Boy. But whether it was the girl's personality or her
+horsemanship that accounted for this departure from established rule it
+was hard to surmise.
+
+"You might leave that to Jaggers's lads," said the girl. "Surely we
+might keep this one hour in the week clean."
+
+Mr. Haggard had once said that the girl was a Greek. He might have
+added--a Greek with an evangelical tendency. For this Sunday morning
+hour was no perfunctory exercise for her. It was a reality, looming
+always larger with the years, and on horseback, in the train, at
+stables, was perpetually recurring to the girl throughout the week.
+
+In the struggle between her father and her mother in her blood, the
+mother was winning the ascendancy.
+
+"I thought the rule was we might smoke if you was late, Miss," said
+Jerry, in the subdued voice he always adopted when speaking to his young
+mistress.
+
+"It's not the rule, Jerry," the girl replied quietly, "as you're
+perfectly well aware. And even if it was the rule it would be bad
+manners. Alfred, give me those cards."
+
+"What cards, Miss?"
+
+"The cards you were playing with when I came in."
+
+The cherub produced a dingy pack.
+
+"They're only picture cards, Miss," he said.
+
+The girl's gray eyes seemed to engulf the lad, friendly if a little
+stern.
+
+"Have you been gambling?" she asked.
+
+"No, Miss," with obvious truthfulness.
+
+"He's got nothin' to gamble with," jeered the brutal Stanley. "His
+mother takes it all."
+
+The girl mounted swiftly on to the platform, saw the writing on the
+blackboard, and swept it away with a duster.
+
+Then she turned to her little congregation, feeling their temper with
+sure and sensitive spirit.
+
+They were out of hand, and it was because she had been late through no
+fault of her own. The kitchenmaid had fainted, and Boy had, of course,
+been sent for.
+
+There was one hope of steadying them.
+
+"We'll start with a hymn," she said, taking her seat at the harmonium.
+"Get your hymn-books. What hymn shall we have? Alfred, it's your turn, I
+think."
+
+Alfred, after some hesitation, gave _The Day Thou Gavest Lord Is Ended_,
+amid the jealous murmurs of his friend.
+
+"That's a nevenin nymn, fat-'ead," cried Jerry in a loud whisper.
+
+"I don't care if it is," answered Alf stoutly. "It's nice."
+
+"'E likes it because it makes him cry," jeered Stanley.
+
+The girl started to play, her back to the congregation.
+
+They sang two verses with round mouths, Jerry and Stanley shouting
+against each other aggressively and wagging their heads. The third verse
+went less well. There were interruptions. The voices grew ragged. Jerry
+spoke; somebody whistled; and the singing ran away into giggles.
+
+Boy swung round.
+
+The cause of the merriment was sufficiently obvious.
+
+A lop-eared Belgian rabbit was hopping across the floor, entirely
+self-complacent and smug. As the sound of singing, which had covered him
+like a garment, died away in smothered titters, he sat up on his
+hind-legs and stared about him.
+
+The girl descended from the platform, caught the rabbit by the ears and
+suspended him.
+
+Tame as a cow, he made no resistance.
+
+"Who's is this hare?" she asked.
+
+"Mrs. Woodburn's, Miss," answered Jerry brightly. "That's Abe Lincoln.
+Queen Victoria's his wife. They lives together in a nutch."
+
+"How did he come in?"
+
+"Through the window," said the muffled voice of Albert from the back.
+"Flow'd."
+
+The rabbit, which had been hanging placidly suspended, was now seized
+with spasms and began to twitch and contort violently.
+
+The reason was not far to seek. A red-eyed ferret, tied by a string to
+the foot of a chair, was making strenuous efforts to get at him.
+
+"Who's is that ferret?" asked Boy.
+
+"That genelman's," replied the voice from the back.
+
+The girl looked up and saw Silver standing in the door.
+
+Coldly she dismissed the class.
+
+"That'll do," she said. "You can all go now." The lads shuffled away,
+rejoicing. "There'll be no sing-song this evening," continued their
+cruel mistress. "Jerry, put that rabbit back in the hutch you took it
+from. Stanley, I don't want to see that ferret of yours at Bible Class
+again."
+
+The lads trooped out, injured and innocent.
+
+Albert was left in his shirt-sleeves and without a collar.
+
+"What is it?" asked the girl.
+
+"Can I 'ave me things, Miss?"
+
+His face was stiff and impenetrable.
+
+She handed him the long drab coat on the platform.
+
+"And me 'at, Miss."
+
+"Is this yours?"
+
+"Yes, Miss."
+
+She passed him the picture-hat. Albert received it with immobile face.
+
+"And me pig-tail."
+
+"You don't deserve it," said Boy.
+
+Silver approached.
+
+"Put 'em on, will you?" he said.
+
+Albert obeyed without demur and without a symptom of emotion. In a
+moment he had become a coarse caricature of his young mistress,
+ludicrously alike and yet worlds away.
+
+"Not so bad," commented the young man. "You could act, Albert?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Albert, in whom diffidence was not a defect.
+
+The lad made for the door in his hat and pig-tail, and as though to
+manifest his quality gave a little coquettish flirt to the skirt of his
+coat as he went out.
+
+"You'll be wanted this morning, Albert, you and Brand," the girl called
+after him.
+
+"Yes, Miss."
+
+"Mare's Back. Twelve-thirty. Make-Way-There and Lollypop, trial horses.
+Stanley and Jerry know. Silvertail for me."
+
+"Yes, Miss."
+
+He closed the door behind him.
+
+Silver came toward the girl slowly and took her hand.
+
+"How are you, Boy?" he asked.
+
+The girl laid her firm, cool little hand lightly on his and let it rest
+there. Her eyes were soft in his, still and steady. She felt herself
+surrounded by his love as by a cloud, and dwelt in it with quiet
+enjoyment and content.
+
+It was a while before she answered.
+
+"I'm all right," she said. "You're through, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes; I'm free."
+
+"That's right," she said. "The rest doesn't matter."
+
+Together they went out into the sunshine of the Paddock Close.
+
+He stood a moment, filling his chest, and looking up toward the green
+wall of the Downs.
+
+"Let's go slow," he said.
+
+She accommodated herself to his stroll.
+
+"By Jove," he said slowly. "It _is_ a delight to get down here again.
+And I don't feel anything's changed really."
+
+"Nor has it _really_," replied the girl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+God Almighty's Mustang
+
+
+Jim Silver turned out of the yard into the office.
+
+As the young man entered, the old trainer sat dumped in his chair, rosy,
+bald, with innocent blue eyes, like a baby without a bib, waiting for
+its bottle. His round head was deeper between his shoulders than of old,
+and his pink face was strained and solicitous.
+
+Some men said he was over eighty now.
+
+"Well, sir," he wheezed, "I see you take it good and game."
+
+"No good crying over spilt milk," replied Silver.
+
+The old trainer raised his hand as he settled in his seat.
+
+"Don't tell me," he said. "It's them there li'bilities. I was always
+agin 'em. Said so to Boy four year back. 'Cash in 'and's one thing,' I
+says. 'And li'bilities is another and totally different.'" He lifted a
+keen blue eye. "I understand from what Mr. Haggard tell me, you could
+ha' dodged 'em out o' some of it--only you was too straight." He held up
+a disapproving finger. "That's just where you done wrong, Mr. Silver. No
+good ever come o' bein' _too_ straight, as I often says to Mar. You're
+only askin' for trouble--same as the Psalmist says. And now you got to
+pay for it."
+
+"Well, they're all satisfied now," laughed Silver. "And so am I."
+
+"I should think they was," snorted Mat Woodburn. "I see 'em settin'
+round, swellin' and swellin', and rubbin' their fat paunches. Think
+they'll keep a nag among the lot of 'em! Not so much as a broken-down
+towel-hoss."
+
+Silver stared out of the window.
+
+"I shall have to sell the horses," he said.
+
+The old man banged the table.
+
+"Never!" he cried. "They've took a slice off o' you, and now you must
+take a bit off o' them. That mayn't be religion, but it's _right_ all
+right!"
+
+He rose and, kicking off his slippers, padded to the door and looked
+out. Then he peeped out into the forsaken yard and half drew the
+curtain.
+
+Silver, who loved the old man most when he was most mysterious, watched
+him with kind eyes that laughed.
+
+"I don't bet, Mr. Silver, as you know," began the other huskily, "except
+when it's a cert., because it's against _her_ principles." He looked
+round him and dropped his voice. "But I took a thousand to ten about
+Fo'-Pound-the-Second at Gatwick on Saraday. Told Mar, too. And she never
+said No. Look to me like a sign like." He blinked up at the young man.
+"You ain't clean'd out, sir, are you--not mopped up with the sponge?" he
+asked anxiously.
+
+"There'll be a few thousands left when it's finished, I guess," replied
+the other.
+
+The old man lifted on his stockinged toes.
+
+"Put a thousand on," he whispered. "I'll do it for ye, so there's no
+talk. If he wins, thar's a hundred thousand back. If he don't, well,
+it's gone down the sink and h'up the spout same as its fathers afore
+it."
+
+The young man brimmed with quiet mirth.
+
+"Will he win?" he asked.
+
+Old Mat swung his nose from side to side across his face in a way styled
+by those who knew him trunk-slinging.
+
+"He's up against something mighty big," said Jim, nodding at the wall.
+
+On it was pinned a great coloured double-page picture from _The Sporting
+and Dramatic_ of the famous American mare Mocassin. Beside it were
+various cuttings from daily papers, recounting the romantic history of
+the popular favourite, and beneath the picture were three lines from the
+Mocassin Song--
+
+          _Made in the mould,
+          Of Old Iroquois bold,
+          Mocassin, the Queen of Kentucky_.
+
+Ikey indeed had found his horse at last; and she was American--Old
+Kentucky to the core. It was said that Chukkers had discovered her on
+one of his trips home. Certainly he had taken her across to Australia,
+where she had launched on her career of unbroken triumph, carrying the
+star-spangled jacket to victory in every race in which she ran. Then he
+had brought her home to England, her reputation already made, and
+growing hugely all the while, suddenly to overwhelm the world, when she
+crowned her victories on three continents by winning the Grand National
+at Liverpool--only to be disqualified for crossing amid one of the
+stormiest scenes in racing history. After that Mocassin ceased to be a
+mare. She became a talisman, an oriflamme, a consecrated symbol. She was
+American--youthful, hopeful, not to be put upon by the Old Country,
+quietly resolute to have her rights.
+
+For the past twelve months indeed the Great Republic of the West had
+fixed her two hundred million eyes upon the star-spangled jacket across
+the sea in a stare so set as to be almost terrifying.
+
+True that for a quarter of a century now her sons had followed that
+jacket with sporadic interest. But since the affair at Liverpool, that
+interest had become concentrated, passionate, intense.
+
+Ikey with all his faults was an admirable citizen, beloved in his own
+country and not without cause, as Universities and Public Bodies
+innumerable could testify. For twenty-five years it had been known that
+he had been trying for a goal. At last he had won it--and then John
+Bull!... Ya-as.... American horse--American owner--American jockey!
+Sure....
+
+Brother Jonathon turned in his lips. He did not blame John Bull; he was
+not angry or resentful. But he was determined and above all ironical.
+
+Then, when feeling was at its highest, the Mocassin Song had suddenly
+taken America by storm. Sung first in the Empire Theatre on the Broadway
+by Abe Gideon, the bark-blocks comedian, ten days after the mare's
+victory and defeat, it had raged through the land like a prairie fire.
+Cattle-men on the Mexican Border sung it in the chaparral, and the
+lumber-camps by the Great Lakes echoed it at night. Gramophones carried
+it up and down the Continent from Oyster Bay to Vancouver, and from
+Frisco to New Orleans. Every street-boy whistled it, every organ ground
+it out. It hummed in the heads of Senators in Congress, and teased
+saints upon their knees. It carried the name and fame of Mocassin to
+thousands of pious homes in which horses and racing had been anathema
+in the past, so that Ministers from Salem and Quaker ladies from
+Philadelphia could tell you over tea cups _sotto voce_ something of the
+romantic story of the mare from the Cumberland.
+
+And that was not all.
+
+The Song, raging through the land like a bush-fire, dying down here only
+to burst out in fresh vehemence elsewhere, leapt even oceans in its
+tempestuous course.
+
+The English sang it in their music-halls with fatuous self-complacency.
+Indeed they, too, went Mocassin-mad, and the mare who had once already
+humbled the Old Country in the dust, and would again, became the idol of
+the British Empire.
+
+In shop-windows, on boardings, stamped on the packet of cigarettes you
+bought, the picture of the mare was met, until her keen mouse-head, her
+drooping quarters and great fore-hand, had been impressed on the mind of
+the English Public as clearly as the features of Lord Kitchener.
+Jonathon watched his brother across the Atlantic with cynical amusement.
+
+Honest John Bull, now that he had something up against him that could
+beat his best, what did he do? Admit defeat? Not John! If the mare won
+in the coming struggle he claimed her as his own with tears of unctuous
+joy. If she was beaten--well, what else did you expect?
+
+America's feeling in the matter was summed up in the famous cartoon that
+appeared at Christmas in _Life_, where Jonathon was seen shaking hands
+with John Bull, the mare in the background, and saying:
+
+"I'll believe in you, John, but I'll watch you all the same."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That's God Almighty's Mustang, Chukkers up," said Old Mat. "The Three
+J's think they done it this time. And to read the papers you'd guess
+they was right. She's a good mare, too--I will say that for her; quick
+as a kitten and the heart of a lion. You see her last year yourself at
+Aintree, sir!"
+
+"I did," replied the young man, with deep enthusiasm. "Wonderful! She
+didn't gallop and jump; she flowed and she flew."
+
+"That's it, sir," agreed the other. "Won all the way. Only Chukkers must
+be a bit too clever o' course, and let her down by the dirty."
+
+The old man pursed his lips and nodded confidentially. "Only one thing.
+My little Fo'-Pound's the daddy o' her." He sat down and began to draw
+on his elastic-sided boots with groans.
+
+"Who's going to ride him?" asked Silver.
+
+"That's where it is, sir," panted the old man. "Who _is_ goin' to ride
+him. There's Monkey Brand down on his knees to me for the mount; and he
+don't go so bad with Monkey Brand--when he's that way inclined. But I
+don't know what to say." His efforts successfully ended, he lifted a
+round and crimson face. "See where it is, Mr. Silver; Monkey Brand's
+forty-five, and his ridin' days are pretty nigh over. He reckons he can
+just about win on Fo'-Pound and then retire. That's his notion. And ye
+see it ain't only that, but there's Chukkers and the little bit o'
+bitterness. See it's been goin' on twenty year and it's all square now.
+Chukkers broke Monkey's pelvis for him Boomerang's year, and Monkey
+mixed up Chukkers's inside Cannibal's National. And there it's stood
+ever since. And Monkey wants to get one up afore he takes off his jacket
+for good."
+
+Silver was looking into the fire.
+
+"If Monkey Brand don't ride, what's the alternative?" he asked.
+
+"Only one," replied the trainer. "Albert. He's a honest hoss is
+Fo'-Pound-the-Second, only that fussy as to who he has about him. That's
+the way with bottle-fed uns. They gets spoiled and gives 'emselves airs.
+Albert's his lad, and Monkey's been about him since he was a foal.
+Sometimes he'll work for one, and sometimes for the other; and sometimes
+he won't for eether. One thing certain, he won't stir for no one
+else--only _her_, o' course. No muckin' about with _her_. It's just
+_click!_ and away."
+
+"Pity she can't ride," said Silver.
+
+"If she could ride I'd back him till all was blue," replied the old
+man. "No proposition in a hoss's skin that ever come out of
+Yankee-doodle-land could see the way he'd go."
+
+"Who rode him at Lingfield?" asked Jim.
+
+Just after Christmas Mat had put the young horse into a two-mile
+steeplechase to give him a gallop in public.
+
+"Albert," answered the old man. "Rode him and rode him well. It was just
+touch and go through. Would he or wouldn't he? When he was monkeyin' at
+the post I tell you I sweat, sir. See he'd never faced the starter
+afore. And I thought suppose he's the sort that'll do a good trial and
+chuck it when the money's on. He got well left at the post; but when he
+did get goin' he ran a great horse. It was heavy goin', and he fair
+revelled in it. 'Reg'lar mudlark,' the papers called him. Half-way round
+he'd caught his horses and went through 'em like a knife through butter,
+and he could ha' left 'em smilin'. But that lad, Albert, he's got
+something better'n a sheep's head on his neck. Took to his whip and
+flogg'd his boot a caution. Oh, dear me!--fair sat down to it. All over
+the place, arms and legs, and such a face on him! And little Fo'-Pound
+he winks to 'isself and rolls 'ome at the top of his form just anyhow.
+'Alf a length the judges gave it, and a punishin' finish the papers
+called it. Jaggers didn't see it, and Chukkers wasn't ridin'. So there
+was nobody to tell no tales; an' they're puttin' him in at ten stone."
+
+"And the mare's got twelve-seven," said the young man meditatively.
+
+"Twelve-three," said the trainer. "And she'll carry it, too. But I'll
+back my Berserk against their Iroquois any time o' day this side o'
+'Appy Alleloojah Land."
+
+The hacks were being led out into the yard with a pleasant clatter of
+feet, and Boy was already mounted.
+
+"Come and see for yourself," panted the old man. "I'm goin' to send him
+along to-day. See whether he can reelly get four mile without a fuss. I
+was only waitin' till you come."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+The Fat Man Emerges
+
+
+The old man, the young man, and the girl rode out of the yard into the
+Paddock Close.
+
+"Where's Billy Bluff?" asked Silver. He was on Heart of Oak, she high
+above him, perched like a bird on tall old Silvertail, who looked like a
+spinster and was one. Almost you expected her to look at you over
+spectacles and make an acrid comment on men or things.
+
+"In front with his friend," replied Boy.
+
+"Are you going to pace him?" asked Jim.
+
+"I believe so," replied the girl casually. "Dad's going to send him the
+full course to-day. Jerry and I are to take him over the fences the
+first time round. And then Stanley's to bring him along the flat the
+last two miles."
+
+They travelled up the public path past the church amid the sycamores.
+Mat on his fast-walking cob rode in front, kicking his legs. Boy and Jim
+followed more soberly.
+
+She rode a little behind him that she might see his profile. Suddenly he
+reined back and met her face, his own gleaming with laughter. At such
+moments he looked absurdly young.
+
+"I say, Boy!" he began, dropping his voice.
+
+She snatched her eyes from his face, and then peeped at him warily.
+
+"What?"
+
+He drew up beside her.
+
+"I'm not a gentleman any more."
+
+She looked straight before her. Her fine lips were firm and resisting,
+but about her eyes the light stole and rippled deliciously.
+
+"I'm not sure," she said, half to herself.
+
+He pressed up alongside her, lifting his face.
+
+"I'm not!" he cried. "I'm not!" eager as a boy in his protestations.
+"You can't chuck that up at me any more."
+
+Boy refused to face him or to be convinced.
+
+"I don't," she said. "I don't believe in class. It's the man that
+matters."
+
+"Hear, hear," he cried. "It's the man--not the money. I see it now. I
+haven't got tuppence to my name."
+
+She turned her eyes down on him, brushing aside his coquetry with the
+sweep of her steady gaze.
+
+"D'you mind?" she asked in her direct and simple way as they emerged on
+to the open Downs.
+
+He sobered to her mood.
+
+"Only in this way," he answered, "that it was my father's show, and I
+don't like to have let it down."
+
+The girl deliberated.
+
+"I don't see that you could have helped it," she said after a pause.
+
+"No, _I_ couldn't," he admitted. "_He_ could have. It was a One Man
+show. And when the One Man went it was bound to go in time. However,
+I've let nobody down but myself. And I don't care so much about the
+stuff."
+
+"No," she said. "You don't want all that. Nobody does; and it's not good
+for you."
+
+Preacher Joe had bobbed up suddenly in his fair grand-daughter, as he
+did not seldom. She was deliciously unaware of the old man's presence at
+her side; but Jim Silver welcomed him as a familiar with lurking
+laughter.
+
+"Thank you, sir," he said, and touched his hat. Then he covered his
+daring swiftly. "Except for the horses I wouldn't cuc-care a hang," he
+said loudly. "They were the only things mum-money gave me."
+
+Gravely she peeped at him again.
+
+"Shall you sell the lot?"
+
+"I shall sell the 'chasers," he answered.
+
+"All but one," she corrected.
+
+"Which one?"
+
+She nodded up the hill.
+
+"The one you share with me."
+
+He laughed his resounding laughter.
+
+"I'll sell you my share," he said.
+
+"I won't buy," she answered firmly.
+
+"Very well. Then I'll sell to Jaggers."
+
+Boy tapped Silvertail with such an increase of emphasis that the old
+mare snatched resentfully at her bit.
+
+"You won't," she cried with the old fierce, girlish note in her voice
+which so delighted him.
+
+"_After_ he's won the National," continued the young man calmly.
+
+"We'll see--_after_," replied Boy.
+
+They passed out of the Paddock Close on to the Downs.
+
+"How's he coming on?" asked Jim.
+
+"Monkey Brand says he's streets better than Cannibal," replied the girl.
+"We've never had anything to touch him in my time." This was one of few
+subjects on which the girl sometimes would flow. "Of course he's young
+for a National horse--only five, and she's in her prime. But he's got
+the head of an old horse on the body of a young one. Nothing flurries
+him--once you can get him going."
+
+"And the trouble is there's only one person who can get him going,"
+mused the young man.
+
+"I don't know about that," she answered tartly. "He's only run the once
+in public. And that time he ran rings round his field. Albert was
+riding--not me."
+
+They were nearing the brow.
+
+A man was labouring up the hill in front of them.
+
+Old Mat pulled up, and the pair jogged up alongside him. The trainer
+nodded quietly at the heavy figure in front.
+
+"He's out," he wheezed. "On to it pretty quick, too. Heard we're goin'
+to gallop Fo'-Pound and he's come to see what he can see."
+
+The man drew to one side to let the riders pass.
+
+It was Joses; and he had changed.
+
+There was less of the sow and more of the wolf about him than of old.
+His shaggy whiskers were touched with gray, and there was something hard
+and fierce about his face. The old inflamed and flabby look had been
+hammered out of him in the hard school from which he had just emerged.
+
+He eyed the riders as they passed.
+
+Boy's grave eyes became graver and more self-contained. At once she was
+alert and had locked all her doors. In that firm, courageous face of
+hers there was no curiosity, no unkindness, and least of all no fear.
+The young man glancing at her thought he had never seen such strength
+manifest in any face; and it was not the strength that is based on
+hardness, for she was paler than her wont.
+
+Then she spoke.
+
+Her voice, deep as a bell and very quiet, surprised him in the silence.
+He had not expected it, and yet somehow it seemed to him beautifully
+appropriate.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Joses," said the voice, and that was all; but it
+wrought a miracle.
+
+"Yes," growled the man in the wayside, "it wasn't you: it was Silver."
+
+The young man's face flashed white. He pulled up instantaneously.
+
+"What's that?" he said.
+
+Boy, riding on, called sharply over her shoulder:
+
+"Come on, Mr. Silver!"
+
+Reluctant as a dog to leave an enemy, the young man obeyed, and caught
+up the other two.
+
+"Little bit o' bitter," muttered the old man. He jerked his thumb over
+his shoulder. "I got him five year for himself," he went on querulously.
+"And now he ain't satisfied. No pleasin' some folk."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+The Gallop
+
+
+On the Mare's Back a little group was awaiting the party.
+
+There was Monkey Brand, Albert, and a sheeted horse, patrolling lazily
+up and down; while Billy Bluff lay on the ground hard by and gnawed his
+paw.
+
+Ever since, years back, Joses had struck the paw with a stone Billy had
+bestowed a quite unfair amount of attention on it, spending all his
+spare time doctoring his favourite. There was nothing whatever the
+matter with it, but if he continued his attentions long enough there
+might be some day, and he would then be rewarded for his patient labours
+by having a real injury to mend.
+
+It was somewhat misty up there on the hill, though clear above; the sea
+was wrapt in a white blanket, and the Coastguard Station at the Gap was
+invisible.
+
+A little remote from the others in body and spirit, Jerry, deep in
+philosophic doubt, was walking Lollypop up and down--Lollypop, now a
+sage and rather superior veteran of seven; while on a mound hard by was
+Stanley on the pretty Make-Way-There.
+
+The course was two miles round, running along the top of the hill over
+fences that looked stark and formidable in the gray.
+
+"Strip him," grunted Old Mat.
+
+Albert and Monkey Brand went swiftly to work.
+
+A great brown horse, gaunt and ugly as a mountain-goat, emerged. His
+legs were like palings; his ears long and wide apart, and there was
+something immensely masculine about him. He looked, with his great plain
+head, the embodiment of Work and Character: a piece of old furniture
+designed for use and not for ornament, massive, many-cornered, and
+shining from centuries of work and wear.
+
+That lean head of his, hollow above the eyes, and with a pendent upper
+lip, was so ugly as to be almost laughable; and his lazy and luminous
+eye looked out on the world with a drolling, almost satirical, air, as
+much as to say:
+
+"It's all a great bore, but it might well be worse."
+
+"A thundering great hoss," muttered Old Mat. "I don't know as ever I see
+his equal for power. Cannibal stood as high, but he hadn't the girth on
+him. And Cannibal was a man-eatin' mule, he was. Savage you soon as look
+at you. I never went into his loose-box without a pitchfork. I seen him
+pull his jockey off by the toe of his boot afore now. But him!--he's a
+Christian. A child could go in to him and climb on to his back by way of
+his hind-leg. Look at them 'ocks," he continued in the low, musing voice
+of the mystic. "Lift you over a house. And a head on him like a
+pippopotamus."
+
+Jim Silver's eyes followed the line of the horse's quarters.
+
+"He's come on a lot since Christmas," he remarked. "He's less ragged
+than he was."
+
+"You could hang your hat on him yet, though," said the old man. "Walk
+him round, Brand."
+
+The little jockey, now in the saddle, obeyed.
+
+Four-Pound-the-Second shook his head and, blowing his nose, strode
+round with that wonderful swing from the hocks which made Mr. Haggard
+once say that the horse walked like a Highland regiment marching to the
+pipes.
+
+"He's on C springs," said Mat, watching critically. "See where he puts
+his hind-feet--nigh a foot in front of the marks of his fore; and I
+don't know as I knows a knowin'er hoss. Look at that head-piece. He's
+all the while a-thinkin', that hoss is. That's the way he's bred. If
+they're much with human beings they picks up our tricks, same as dogs.
+He'd take to drink, he would, only he ain't got the cash."
+
+Boy had stripped off her long riding-coat and sat on the tall
+Silvertail, a slight figure in breeches and boots, her white shirt
+fluttering in the wind, her face calm and resolute.
+
+Mat kicked his pony forward.
+
+"Four-mile spin and let him spread himself," he grunted. "I want to see
+him move to-day. And you, Jerry, ride that Lollypop out. He'll save
+himself if you'll let him. First time round over fences, Boy. Then you
+and Jerry'll pull out and Stanley'll pick up the running and take him
+round again over the flat. Now!"
+
+Boy and Jerry set their horses going quietly. The girl's head was on her
+shoulder, watching if the horse she was to pace was coming along.
+
+He was thinking about it. Monkey Brand, handling him with the wonderful
+tact of a nurse with a delicate child, gathered the great horse quietly,
+clicking at him. Four-Pound-the-Second broke into a reluctant canter.
+Billy Bluff began to romp and bark.
+
+The young horse had found the excuse he sought, swung away from his
+leader, and began to buck round in a circle, propping and plunging.
+
+"Put the dog on the lead, Albert," ordered the girl, trotting back.
+
+She and Jerry tried again, cantering past the rebel, calling and
+coaxing.
+
+Four-Pound-the-Second went marching round in a circle, champing at his
+bit, thrashing with his tail, and every now and then flinging a
+make-believe buck, as much as to say:
+
+"I could throw you if I would, but I won't, because I like you too
+much."
+
+Monkey Brand, wise and patient, humoured him.
+
+"Let him take his time," called Boy. "_Steady, lad, steady!_"
+
+Old Mat watched grimly.
+
+"I thought as much," he muttered. "He ain't 'alf a little rogue. 'Tain't
+temper, eether. He's the temper of a h'angel and the constitootion of a
+h'ox. It's that he just won't. For all the world like a great spoilt
+boy. He's _mischeevous_. He wants to give trouble because that amooses
+him. I've known him sulk in his gallop afore now because Billy Bluff
+wasn't up here to watch him. Where it is to-day he wants _her_ to ride
+him. He don't care about nobody else when _she's_ about."
+
+Boy had ridden back to the young horse.
+
+"Steady him," she said quietly. "Get up alongside him, Jerry. Now try
+and get him off the mark with me. All together. Now!"
+
+The manoeuvre failed. Lollypop and Silvertail got well away, but the
+young horse merely pawed the air.
+
+Monkey Brand's face was set.
+
+"Give me that whip, Albert," he said between his teeth.
+
+"No," said the girl. "That's no good."
+
+Old Mat held up his hand.
+
+"He ain't for it," he said masterfully. "Get off him, Brand."
+
+The little jockey glanced at his master, saw he meant business, and
+slipped off the great horse, chagrin in every line of his face.
+
+Albert, unbidden, had already gathered the reins in his hand and was
+preparing to mount.
+
+"No," said Boy authoritatively. "Albert, take Silvertail."
+
+She slipped off the tall old mare.
+
+Her father nodded approval.
+
+"She's right," he muttered. "Never do to try Albert when Brand has
+failed."
+
+"Chuck me up, Brand," said the girl.
+
+The little jockey turned.
+
+"Yes, Miss."
+
+The girl had broken the blow for him, and he tossed her into the saddle
+with a will.
+
+She sat up there on the great horse, ordering her reins with masterful
+delicacy.
+
+Jim Silver's eyes dwelt tenderly upon her face. He longed to dismount
+and kiss the girl's hand. But all he said in matter-of-fact voice was:
+
+"You've got a lot in front of you."
+
+"It's like a glacier," replied Boy.
+
+"She could slide on that shoulder," commented Old Mat. "Like Napoleon on
+the Pyramids."
+
+The young horse began to sidle and plunge.
+
+"Right!" said Boy. "Stand clear!"
+
+The little jockey jumped aside, and mounted Silvertail.
+
+Four-Pound-the-Second gave a great bound. The girl rode him as a yacht
+rides the sea, swinging easily to his motion, and talking to him the
+while. He sprawled around with tiny bucks and little grunts of joy,
+brimming over with energy.
+
+Then, as if by magic, he steadied down and began to walk round with that
+tremendous swing of his, blowing his nose, and playing with his bit.
+David had swept his hand across his harp and the dark spirit had been
+charmed away.
+
+Old Mat nodded and said to himself: "Where it is, is there it is."
+
+Nobody else spoke.
+
+Boy, in her white shirt, her hair radiant against the dull heavens,
+began to feel at her horse's mouth.
+
+Monkey Brand and Jerry watched her closely.
+
+"Keep walking in front of me," called the girl sharply. "And move with
+me."
+
+Both obeyed, eyeing the girl over their shoulders, and slowly gathering
+way.
+
+Then she spoke to her horse; and he stole away, easy and quiet as a
+tide, Boy leaning forward, the two pacing horses, one on either side,
+leading him by half a length.
+
+"Yes," commented Old Mat, as he slung his glasses round and adjusted
+them. "You'd think a little child could ride him be the look of it."
+
+The three rose at the first fence all together, the white shirt
+sandwiched between the dark jackets.
+
+Jim Silver felt a thrill at his heart. That thunder of hoofs moved him
+to his deeps.
+
+"Gallops very wide behind," he remarked casually.
+
+"That's Berserk, that is," muttered the old man, adjusting his glasses.
+"Chucks the mud about a treat, don't he?"
+
+Billy Bluff was straining on his lead, whimpering to be after his big
+friend, while Albert leaned back against the wind, holding him.
+
+The horses had settled to their gallop, their steady, rhythmical stride
+only varied as they rose at their fences, spread themselves, slid
+earthward and went away again with a steady roar of hoofs.
+
+The three kept well together till they swung for home, then the white
+shirt began to bob up against the sky a second before the dark bodies of
+the other two showed.
+
+"Tailin' 'em off," muttered Old Mat. "Ain't 'alf tuckin' into it,
+Four-Pound ain't."
+
+Then Lollypop began to lag, and Jerry's arm was going.
+
+"Stopped him dead," said Silver.
+
+"And he's a good little two-mile hoss, too," replied Old Mat.
+
+Another moment and the white shirt came over the last fence, the brown
+horse soaring like some great eagle.
+
+Silvertail, clinging gamely to her leader, brushed through the fence and
+pecked heavily on landing.
+
+Monkey punished her savagely.
+
+"Ain't in a very pretty temper, Monkey ain't," muttered Old Mat, as the
+little jockey pulled aside and slipped off. "Now Make-Way-There'll take
+it up."
+
+The brown horse came thundering by, steady and strong, his little jockey
+collected as himself, lying out over her horse's neck.
+
+"The fences don't trouble her much," said Silver, his voice calm and
+heart beating.
+
+"See, she's that strong," wheezed Old Mat confidentially. "You wouldn't
+think it, but there's eight stun o' that gal good. It's her bone's so
+big."
+
+The brown horse had swept past them, going wide of the fences for the
+second time round.
+
+Make-Way-There, who had been dancing on his toes away on the left as he
+waited for his cue, chimed in as Four-Pound-the-Second came up alongside
+him.
+
+He settled down to his stride at once and took the lead.
+
+The brown horse, entirely undisturbed by this new rival, held on his
+mighty way.
+
+The two horses swung round the curve, on the outside of the fences,
+Four-Pound-the-Second on the inside berth and close to the quarters of
+his leader.
+
+The horses dropped into a dip, but for some reason the echo of their
+hoofs came reverberating back to the watchers in ever-growing roar. When
+they emerged from the hollow and raced up the opposite slope they were
+still together.
+
+Then they made for home.
+
+Old Mat had edged up alongside Silver.
+
+"When he lays down to it, belly all along the ground!" he whispered, in
+the ecstasy of a connoisseur enjoying a masterpiece.
+
+"Whew!--can't he streak!" cried Albert.
+
+Then a silence fell upon the watchers like a cloud. Their hearts were
+full, their spirits fluttering against the bars of their prison-house.
+
+The horses dropped into a dip again, and only the heads and shoulders of
+the riders were seen surging forward, borne on the crest of a roaring
+avalanche of sound.
+
+As they came up the last hill with shooting feet and knees that buffeted
+the air, they were locked together, the little riders lying over the
+necks of their horses and watching each other jealously.
+
+In the silence there was something terrifying about the tumult of those
+swift, oncoming feet. The earth shook and trembled. Even Billy Bluff was
+awed and quivering.
+
+Jim Silver never took his eyes off that little figure with the
+fluttering white shirt riding the crest of the oncoming storm and
+growing on him with such overwhelming speed. He dwelt with fascinated
+eyes upon the give-and-take of her little hands, the set of her
+shoulders, the swift turn of her head, as she watched the boy at her
+side. His will was firm, his heart high. She seemed to him so fair, so
+slight, and yet so consummately masterful, as to be something more than
+flesh and blood.
+
+A rare voice penetrated to his ears through the tumult.
+
+"That's a little bit o' better."
+
+"Ain't it a cracker?"
+
+"Hold that dog!"
+
+As they came along the flat, the two horses seemed neck and neck.
+
+The dark lad was riding a finish in approved style. Then the girl
+stirred with her hands, and the great brown forged ahead.
+
+As the horses came past the watchers, Make-Way-There tailed off
+suddenly.
+
+Four-Pound-the-Second thundered by like a brown torrent, the stroke of
+his hoofs making a mighty music.
+
+"Gallops like a railway train," said a voice at Silver's side.
+
+It was Joses.
+
+The young man, lifted above himself, did not resent the other's presence
+at his side, did not wonder at it. Indeed, it seemed to him quite
+natural. The wonder of Infinite Power made manifest in flesh rapt the
+beholders out of themselves. They stood bare-headed in the presence of
+the abiding miracle, made one by it.
+
+"Can she hold him?" thought Silver as the horse shot past them.
+
+And either he expressed his thoughts unconsciously in words, or as not
+seldom happens in moments of excitement, Old Mat read his unuttered
+thoughts.
+
+"She can hold him in a snaffle," he said. "She's the only one as can!"
+
+And in fact the young horse was coming back to his rider. She was
+swinging to steady him. At the top of the rise she turned him,
+dismounted, and loosed his girths. Then she led him down the slope back
+to the group, an alert, fair figure, touched to glory by the gallop, the
+great horse blowing uproariously at her side, tossing his head and
+flinging the foam on to his chest and neck, looking like a huge,
+drenched dog wet from the sea.
+
+"Pull at ye?" asked the old man.
+
+"He caught hold a bit as we came up the slope," answered Boy.
+
+Jim Silver had dismounted and laid a hand on the horse's shining neck.
+
+"Great," he said.
+
+The faint colour was in the girl's cheeks, and she was breathing deep as
+she peeped up at him with happy eyes.
+
+"He's not clumsy for a big horse, is he?" she said. "Rug him up, Albert,
+and lead him home. He's hit himself, I see--that off-fore fetlock.
+Better put a boracic bandage on when you get him in."
+
+She put on her long coat and mounted Silvertail.
+
+"Yes, don't stand about," said her father; "or you'll have Mar on to
+me."
+
+The three moved off the hill.
+
+Stanley had already gone on with Make-Way-There, and Albert followed
+with the young horse still snorting and blowing.
+
+Billy Bluff patrolled between his mistress and his friend, doing his
+best to keep the two parties together.
+
+Monkey Brand was left alone.
+
+"Took it 'ard!" muttered Old Mat, jerking his head.
+
+"He'll be all right," said Boy, glancing back. "Give him time to get his
+second wind."
+
+The little jockey went back to pick up a plate Make-Way-There had
+dropped.
+
+Joses strolled up to him with portentous brow.
+
+"Turned you down!" he said. "You're not horseman enough for them, it
+seems."
+
+The little man gathered himself. He was very grim, curling his lips
+inward and whistling between his teeth as though to relieve inward
+pressure.
+
+"How long have you ridden for 'em?" asked the fat man.
+
+"Twenty-five year," the other answered, with the quiet of one labouring
+under a great emotion.
+
+The other rumbled out his ironical laughter.
+
+"And now they chuck you," he said. "Too old at forty. What?"
+
+The little man spat on the ground.
+
+"Blast 'em," he said. "Blast you. Blast the lot. It's a bloody world."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+The Lovers' Quarrel
+
+
+Boy did not appear at dinner.
+
+The midday meal, especially on Sunday, she generally skipped.
+
+Old Mat, Ma, and Silver lunched together and in silence.
+
+The old trainer was absorbed in himself, and there was no question that
+he found himself exceedingly good company. His face became pink and his
+eye wet with the excellence of the joke he was brewing in his deeps. He
+slobbered over his food and spilt it. Mrs. Woodburn watched him with
+amused sympathy.
+
+"You've been up to something you shouldn't, dad," she said. "I know
+you."
+
+He held up a shaking hand in protest.
+
+"Now don't you, Mar!" he said. "I been to church--that's all I done. Mr.
+Haggard preach a booriffle sermon on the 'Oly Innocents. 'There's some
+is saints,' he says, and he looks full glare at me; 'and there's some as
+isn't.' And he looks at his missus. 'There's some as is where they ought
+to be Sundays,' and he looks full glare at me. 'And there's some as
+isn't.' And he stares at the empty seat aside o' me. Yes, my dear,
+you'll cop it on the crumpet to-morrow when he comes to see you, and
+you'll deserve it, too."
+
+After lunch, as the old man left the room, he beckoned mysteriously to
+Silver, and toddled away down the passage with hunched shoulders to his
+sanctum.
+
+The young man followed him with amused eyes. He knew very well what was
+coming.
+
+Once inside his office, Mat closed the door in his most secretive way.
+
+"Only one thing for it," he whispered hoarsely. "The gal must ride."
+
+Silver stared out of the window.
+
+"But will she?"
+
+The old man messed with his papers.
+
+"She mayn't for me," he mumbled. "She might for someone--to help him out
+of a hole. I'll try her anyway. If she will I'll put a thousand on
+myself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later Silver was smoking a cigarette in the darkness of the
+wainscoted dining room, when the door burst open.
+
+Boy came in upon him swift and radiant. She was in her blue skirt and
+blouse again, and her hair was like a halo against the dark wainscoting.
+The glory of the gallop was still upon her.
+
+He rose to her, challenged and challenging.
+
+She crossed the room to him, and stood with her hand on the mantelpiece.
+She did not laugh, she did not even smile, but there was in her the deep
+and quiet ecstasy that causes the thorn to blossom in beauty after a
+winter of reserve. It seemed to him that she was swaying as a rose sways
+in a gale, yet anchored always to the earth in perfect self-possession.
+
+As always, she came straight to the point.
+
+"Do you want me to ride him in the National?" she asked.
+
+"I don't mind," he answered nonchalantly.
+
+"Have you backed him?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Are you going to?"
+
+"I might--if I can get a hundred thousand to a thousand about him."
+
+Her gray eyes searched him. Not a corner of him but her questioning
+spirit ransacked it.
+
+"How much money have you got left?"
+
+"When all's squared? a few thousand, I believe."
+
+She looked into the fire, one little foot poised on the fender. He was
+provoking her. She felt it.
+
+"I could just about win on him," she said. "I think."
+
+"I'm not so sure," he answered.
+
+She became defiant in a flash.
+
+"One thing," she said, "I'm sure nobody else could."
+
+He followed up his advantage deliberately.
+
+"I'm not so sure," he said.
+
+Her eyes sparkled frostily.
+
+She understood.
+
+He was furious because her father had spoken to her; resentful that in
+her hands should be the winning for him of a potential fortune.
+
+She would show him.
+
+"I might think of riding him perhaps," she said slowly, "on one
+condition."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"That you don't bet on him."
+
+He rolled off into deep, ironical laughter.
+
+"Done with you!" he cried, holding out his hand.
+
+She brushed it aside.
+
+"What I said was that I _might think_ of it," she said, and made for the
+door.
+
+He did not pursue.
+
+"Oh, do!" he cried lazily. "Do!"
+
+"I shall see," she answered. "I might and I might not. Probably the
+latter."
+
+She went out with firm lips.
+
+"I see what it is!" he cried after her, still ironical.
+
+She turned about.
+
+"What?"
+
+"You're afraid of Aintree."
+
+The girl, who in many matters was still a child, flared at once.
+
+"Afraid of Aintree!" she cried. "I'll show you whether I'm afraid of
+Aintree or not!"
+
+She marched down the passage, pursued by his mocking laughter, and went
+out into the yard with nodding head and flashing eyes.
+
+Then she walked to the gate and looked across the Paddock Close.
+
+Mr. Haggard was walking slowly up toward the church to take the
+children's service. On the public path by the stile were two figures
+engaged in conversation. She recognized them at once. They were Joses
+and Monkey Brand.
+
+Thoughtfully she crossed into the stable.
+
+It was Sunday afternoon, and there was nobody about but Maudie, who
+departed coldly on the entrance of the girl, suspecting trouble.
+Maudie's suspicions were but too well-founded.
+
+The girl went straight to Four-Pound-the-Second's loose-box and opened
+it. The Monster-without-Manners emerged and greeted his mistress with
+yawns. The brown horse with the tan muzzle shifted slowly toward her.
+She ran her eye over him, adjusted a bandage, and went out into the
+yard.
+
+Billy accompanied her, for he always passed his Sunday afternoons with
+his mistress.
+
+As she left the stable Monkey Brand was entering the yard.
+
+"What was Joses saying, Brand?" she asked sharply.
+
+The little man did not seem to see or hear her. But as he passed her,
+she thought he dropped an eyelid. Then he limped swiftly on into the
+saddle-room.
+
+Boy, balancing on the ladder, looked after him.
+
+Then she went up into the loft, Billy Bluff at her heels trying with
+whimpers to thrust by that he might hold communion with fair Maudie on
+the top rung.
+
+Maudie watched the approaching feet with sullen and apathetic disdain.
+When they were almost on her she rose suddenly. The languid lady with
+the manners of a West-End drawing-room became the screaming fish-wife of
+Wapping. She humped, swore, and scampered away to the loft, there to
+establish herself upon a cross-beam, where she was proof against
+assault.
+
+Boy crossed the loft, entered her room, and closed the door.
+
+She glanced out of the window.
+
+Joses was crossing the Paddock Close toward the cottage where he lodged.
+
+She watched him closely.
+
+He was going to try it on. She was sure of it.
+
+Then she would try it on him; and she would show no mercy.
+
+She looked at herself in the glass, and smiled at what she saw.
+
+Mr. Silver's affront still clouded her face, and the thought of Joses
+struck from the cloud a flash of lightning.
+
+Suddenly an idea came to her. Her eyes sparkled, and she laughed
+merrily.
+
+She let down her hair.
+
+It was short, fine, and thick; massy, Mr. Haggard called it. Then she
+took a pair of scissors and began to snip. Flakes of gold fell on the
+floor and strewed her feet. She stood as on a threshing-floor.
+
+As she worked, the boards of the loft sounded to the tramp of a heavy
+visitor.
+
+Somebody knocked at the door. There came to the girl's eyes a look of
+amused defiance.
+
+"Come in," she said, turning.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn stood in the door, grieved and grim. She saw her
+daughter's face framed in thickets of gold, and the splendid ruin on the
+floor.
+
+Boy crossed to her mother and closed the door quietly behind her. Then
+she led her mother to the bed, and sat down beside her.
+
+The old lady was breathing deeply, and not from the effort of the climb.
+
+The daughter's eyes, full of a tender curiosity, teasing and yet
+compassionate, searched her mother's face, in which there was no
+laughter.
+
+"Are you going to, Boy?" asked the old lady.
+
+"D'you want me not?"
+
+The mother nodded.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Mrs. Woodburn sighed.
+
+"I'd rather not," she said.
+
+"Why not?" persisted Boy.
+
+"It's against the rules."
+
+"Is that all?" with scorn.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why not?"
+
+"It's dangerous."
+
+"Dangerous!" flashed the girl. "So you think I'm a coward, too!"
+
+"I don't, I don't," pleaded the other. "But I don't want you to."
+
+Boy put her hand on the old lady's knee.
+
+Her mother and Mr. Haggard were the only two human beings to whom she
+ever demonstrated affection.
+
+"Will you promise me?" said the mother.
+
+"No," answered Boy.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn tried to rise, but the girl held her down.
+
+"Sit down, mother, please. You never come and see me up here."
+
+Her eyes devoured her mother's face hungrily and with unlaughing eyes.
+
+"Kiss me, mother," she ordered.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn refrained.
+
+"Kiss me, mother," sternly.
+
+The mother obeyed.
+
+"Shall you?" she asked.
+
+"I shan't say," replied Boy.
+
+She rose and went to the window.
+
+Outside under the wood Mr. Silver, pipe in mouth, was sauntering round
+Ragamuffin's grave.
+
+"He said I was afraid!" she muttered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When her mother left the room, the girl went to the window.
+
+The gallop had kindled in her for the moment the flame of her old
+ambition; but the desire had died down swiftly as it had risen.
+
+Boy knew now that she no longer really wanted to ride the Grand National
+Winner. She wanted something else--fiercely.
+
+Cautiously she peeped out of the window.
+
+Mr. Silver, in that old green golf-jacket of his, that clung so finely
+to his clean shoulders, was prowling along the edge of the wood close to
+Ragamuffin's grave, peeping for early nests.
+
+The girl remembered that it was St. Valentine's--the day birds mate.
+
+She turned away.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V
+
+MONKEY BRAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+The Dancer's Son
+
+
+Sebastian Bach Joses was the son of an artist of Portuguese extraction.
+The artist was a waster and a wanderer. In his youth he mated with a
+Marseillaise dancing-girl who had posed as his model. Joses had been the
+result. The father shortly deserted the mother, who took to the
+music-hall stage.
+
+After a brief and somewhat lurid career on the halls in London and
+elsewhere she died.
+
+The lad had as little chance as a human being can have. As a boy, with
+the red-gold mass of hair he inherited from his mother, and a certain
+farouche air, he had been attractive, especially to women. Clever,
+alert, and sensitive, brought up in a Bohemian set, without money, or
+morals, or the steadying factor of position, he had early acquired all
+the tricks of the artist, the parasite, and the adventurer. He could
+play the guitar quite prettily, could sing a song, dabbled with pen and
+brush, and talked with considerable facility of poetry and art.
+
+An old-time admirer of his mother's, on whom that lady when dying had
+fathered the boy, paid for the lad's keep as a child. Later, attracted
+by the boy's beauty, and secretly proud of his putative share in it, he
+had sent him to a college in a south coast watering place and afterward
+to Oxford.
+
+There Joses had swiftly worked his way into a vicious set of stupid rich
+men, morally his equals, intellectually his inferiors, but socially and
+economically vastly his superiors. They were all lads from public
+schools who desired above all to be thought men of the world. Joses, on
+the other hand, was a man of the world who desired above all else to be
+taken for a public-school man.
+
+Each of the two parties to the unwritten contract got what was desired
+from the other. Joses had knocked about the Continent; he knew the
+Quartier Latin, Berlin night-life, and the darker haunts of Naples. His
+rich allies kept horses, hunted, and raced. They learned a good deal
+that Joses was ready to impart; and on his side he acquired from them
+some knowledge of the racing world and an entree into it. His manners
+were good--rather too good; and the touch of the artist and the exotic
+appealed to the coarse and simple minds of his companions. He wore
+longish hair, softish collars, cultivated eccentricities and a slightly
+foreign accent; all of which things the _jeunesse doree_ tolerated with
+a touch of patronage. And Joses was quite content to be patronized so
+long as his patrons would pay.
+
+After two years at Oxford his putative father died. Joses went down
+perforce, leaving behind him many debts, a girl behind a bar who was
+fond of him, and a reputation as a brilliant rogue who might some day
+prove the poet of the sport of kings.
+
+Equipped with the knowledge acquired at the ancient University, he went
+to London and there earned his living as a sporting journalist,
+attending race-meetings, adding to his income by betting, and performing
+certain unlovely services for the more vicious of his Oxford friends.
+
+Handicapped in many ways, he had at least this advantage over the bulk
+of his brother-men: that he was not hampered by scruples, principles,
+or tradition.
+
+At thirty his beauty was already on the wane. He was faded, fat, and
+tarnished; and already he was visibly going to pieces.
+
+The end, which had been preparing in the deeps for years, came suddenly.
+
+The story was an old one: that of one woman and two men. The three had
+driven back from Ascot in a hansom together. There was supper, drink,
+and trouble at the lady's flat. The other man got a knife in him, and
+Joses got five years.
+
+When he came out, he resumed his old haunts and earned a precarious
+living by watching. He was almost the only watcher who could write, and
+his eye for a horse's form was phenomenally good. It was in those days
+that he came into touch with his future employers.
+
+With an acute sense for those who could serve them, the Three J's
+realised at once that this man was on a different level to that of other
+watchers. They financed him liberally, advanced him money, and held a
+cheque to which in a moment of aberration Joses had signed Ikey
+Aaronsohnn's name. And he in his turn served them well if not
+faithfully.
+
+When Chukkers rode the famous International that established him once
+and for all in a class by himself among cross-country riders, snatching
+an astounding victory on Hooka-burra from Lady Golightly, his win and
+the way he rode his race was largely due to Joses's report on the
+favourite's staying power.
+
+"She'll gallop three and three-quarter miles at top speed," he had said,
+"and then bust like a bladder. Bustle her all the way, and yours'll beat
+her from the last fence."
+
+When Joses was put away for incendiarism, the Three J's missed him far
+more than they would have cared to admit. They had two bad seasons in
+succession, and a worse followed. At the end of the third Chukkers, for
+the first time for seven years, no longer headed the list of winning
+jockeys.
+
+Then Ikey carried off his jockey to the States to break his luck.
+
+It was on this visit, at some old-fashioned meeting in the Southern
+States, so the story went, Chukkers discovered the mare from Blue
+Mounds. All the world knows to-day how she re-established her jockey's
+fame and made her own.
+
+When, after an unforgettable season in Australia, he returned to England
+with the American mare, the pair had never been beaten. And in the Old
+Country they repeated the performance of Australia. Together they won
+the Sefton, the International, and last of all the National. And though
+Chukkers had been disqualified in the last race, his fame and hers had
+reached a pinnacle untouched by any horse or man in modern racing
+history.
+
+The star-spangled jacket led the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Joses came out of prison he journeyed down at once to Dewhurst.
+
+Jaggers and Chukkers met him.
+
+It did not take the tout long to get a hang of the situation.
+
+The National was coming on in a few weeks. The mare had to win at all
+costs.
+
+Since her victory and defeat at Aintree in the previous March she had
+never run but once in public, and that time had scattered her field.
+
+Jaggers had been laying her up in lavender all the winter for the great
+race, and she was now at the top of her form.
+
+They took Joses round to her loose-box.
+
+Just back from work she was stripped and sweating, swishing her tail,
+savaging her manger with arched neck, tramping to and fro on swift,
+uneasy feet as her lad laboured at her.
+
+So perfectly compact was she that the tout heard with surprise that she
+stood little short of sixteen hands. The length of her rein compensated
+for the shortness of her back, and her hocks and hind-quarters were
+those of a panther, lengthy and well let-down.
+
+The fat man ran his eye over her fair proportions.
+
+"She's beautiful," he mused.
+
+Indeed, the excellence of her form spoke to the heart of the poet in
+him. He dwelt almost lovingly upon that astonishing fore-hand and the
+mouse-head with the wild eye that revealed the spirit burning within. As
+her lad withdrew from her a moment, she gave that familiar toss of the
+muzzle familiar to thousands, which made a poet say that she was
+fretting always to transcend the restraint of the flesh.
+
+"If she's as good as she looks," said Joses, "she's good enough."
+
+"She's better," said the jockey with the high cheek-bones. He passed his
+hand along the mare's rein. It was said that Chukkers had never cared
+for a horse in his life, and it was certain that many horses had hated
+Chukkers. But it was common knowledge that he was fonder of the mare
+than he had ever been of any living creature.
+
+"She's got nothing up against her as I know of," said Jaggers in his
+austere way. "There's Moonlighter, the Irishman, of course."
+
+"He can't stay," said Chukkers briefly.
+
+"And Gee-Woa-There, the Doncaster horse."
+
+"He can't gallop."
+
+"And Kingfisher, the West country crack."
+
+"He beats himself jumpin'."
+
+"And that's about the lot--only the Putnam horse," continued the
+trainer. "They think I know nothing about him. I know some, and I want
+to know more."
+
+"I'll settle that," said Joses.
+
+The jockey was pulling the mare's ears thoughtfully.
+
+"You'd like to take a little bit of Putnam's, I daresay?" he said.
+
+"I wouldn't mind if I did," replied the tout.
+
+"It was them done you down at the trial," continued the jockey. "Old Mat
+and his Monkey and Silver Mug. The old gang."
+
+"Regular conspiracy," said Jaggers censoriously. "Ought to be ashamed of
+themselves. Doin' down a pore man like that."
+
+The three moved out into the yard.
+
+A little later trainer and jockey stood in the gate of the yard and
+watched Joses shuffle away across the Downs.
+
+"He's all right," said Chukkers, sucking the ivory charm he always
+carried. "Ain't 'alf bitter."
+
+"Changed," smirked Jaggers, "and for the better. They've done 'emselves
+no good, Putnam's haven't, this journey."
+
+Joses established his headquarters as of old at Cuckmere, and he made no
+secret of his presence. Nor would it have been of much avail had he
+attempted concealment. For the Saturday before the trial gallop had
+brought Mat Woodburn a letter from Miller, the station-clerk at
+Arunvale, which was the station for Dewhurst.
+
+The station-clerk had a feud of many years' standing with Jaggers, and
+had moreover substantial reasons of his own for not wishing Mocassin to
+win at Aintree. Along the line of the South Downs to be against Dewhurst
+was to be in with Putnam's, and the telegraph line between Arunvale and
+Cuckmere could tell many interesting secrets of the relations between
+Mat Woodburn and the station-clerk.
+
+The letter in question informed Old Mat that Joses had come straight
+from Portland to Dewhurst; that Chukkers had come down from London by
+the eleven-twenty-seven; that Ikey had been expected but had not turned
+up, and that the six-forty-two had taken Joses on to Cuckmere.
+
+After the trial gallop, and the meeting with the fat man on the hill,
+Old Mat showed the letter to Silver.
+
+"He'll want watching, Mr. Joses will," he said.
+
+"He didn't look very pretty, did he?" said the young man.
+
+"Yes," mused the old man. "A little job o' work for Monkey, that'll be.
+He don't like Chukkers, Monkey don't." He pursed his lips and lifting an
+eye-lid looked at the other from beneath it. His blue eye was dreamy,
+dewy, and twinkling remotely through a mist. "Rogues and rasqueals, Mr.
+Silver!" he said. "Whatebber should we do without um?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+Monkey Sulks
+
+
+On the Sunday after the trial on the Mare's Back Jerry went solemnly
+round the assembled lads before Bible Class, his hat in his hand and in
+the hat a couple of coppers.
+
+"What for?" asked Alf, the cherub.
+
+The lads were used to what they called "levies" in the stable--sometimes
+for a new football or something for the club, sometimes for a pal who
+was in a hole.
+
+"Mr. Silver," answered Jerry. "He's done us proud while he could. Now
+it's our turn to do a bit for him."
+
+"Is it as bad as all that?" asked Alf, wide-eyed.
+
+"It's worse," said Jerry, with dramatic restraint.
+
+The cherub peeped into the hat, fingering a tanner.
+
+He was genuinely concerned for Mr. Silver.
+
+"If I put in a tanner, how'll I know Mr. Silver'll get it?" he asked
+ingenuously.
+
+Stanley jeered, and Jerry shot his chin forward.
+
+"Say, young Alf," he said. "Am I a genelman?--or ain't I?"
+
+"That ain't 'ardly for me to say, Jerry," answered the cherub with
+delicate tact.
+
+Then there might have been trouble but for the interference of the
+lordly Albert.
+
+"Don't you let him pinch nothin' off o' you, Alf," he said. "Mr.
+Silver's all right."
+
+"What ye mean?" asked the indignant Jerry. "Ain't he broke then?"
+
+"He'll be a rich man again by then I done with him," answered Albert
+loftily. "That's what I mean."
+
+"When will you be done with him then?" jeered Jerry.
+
+"After the National," answered Albert. "Yes, my boy, you'll get your
+'alf-dollar at Christmas same as usual--if so be you deserves it."
+
+Jerry sneered.
+
+"Albert thinks _he's_ goin' to get the ride," he cried.
+"Likely!--G-r-r-r!"
+
+Albert was unmoved as a mountain and as coldly majestic.
+
+"I don't think. I knows," he said, folding his arms.
+
+"What do you know then?"
+
+"I knows what I knows," answered Albert, in true sacerdotal style. "And
+I knows more'n them as don't know nothin'."
+
+Albert did really know something, but he did not know more than
+anybody else. In those days, indeed, two facts were common property at
+Putnam's. Everybody knew them, and everybody liked to believe that
+nobody else did. The two facts were that Albert was going to ride
+Four-Pound-the-Second at Aintree, and that Mr. Silver stood to get his
+money back upon the race. There was a third fact, too, that everybody
+knew. It was different from the other two in that not even Albert
+pretended that he alone was aware of it. The third fact was that
+Monkey Brand was sulking.
+
+The lads knew it, the horses knew it, Billy Bluff knew it; Maudie, who
+looked on Monkey as her one true friend in the world, knew it; even the
+fan-tails in the yard had reason to suspect it.
+
+Jim Silver, who had a genuine regard for the little man, and was most
+reluctant to think evil of him or anyone, was aware of it, and unhappy
+accordingly.
+
+The only two who seemed not to know what was obvious to all the rest of
+the world were, of course, the two most concerned--Old Mat and his
+daughter.
+
+They were blind--deliberately so, Silver sometimes thought.
+
+The young man became at length so disturbed that he ventured to suggest
+to the trainer that all was not well.
+
+The old man listened, his head a-cock, and his blue eyes sheathed.
+
+"I dessay," was all he said. "Men is men accordin' to my experience of
+'em." He added: "And monkies monkies. Same as the Psalmist said in his
+knowin' little way."
+
+Beaten back here, the young man, dogged as always, approached Boy in the
+matter.
+
+He was countered with an ice-cold monosyllable.
+
+"Indeed," was all she said.
+
+The young man persisted in spite of his stutter.
+
+She flashed round on him.
+
+"So you think Monkey's selling us?" she said.
+
+Jim Silver looked sheepish and sullen.
+
+But whether the girl's attitude was due to the fact that he was still in
+disgrace or to her resentment that he should be telling tales, he did
+not know.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The young man's affairs in London were almost wound up, and he was
+making his home at Putnam's.
+
+About the place, early and late, he became aware that Joses was
+haunting the barns and out-houses. More than once in the lengthening
+days he saw the fat man vanishing round a corner in the dusk.
+
+Taking the bull by the horns, he spoke to Monkey Brand about it.
+
+"Why not turn Billy Bluff loose after dark?" he suggested.
+
+Monkey was stubborn.
+
+"Can't be done, sir."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Can't leave Four-Pound's box, sir," the jockey answered, turning in his
+lips. "Else the 'orse frets himself into a sweat."
+
+Silver was dissatisfied. He was still more so when two days later after
+dark he came on two men in close communion in the lane at the back of
+the Lads' Barn.
+
+They were standing in the shadow of the Barn out of the moon. But that
+his senses were alert, and his suspicions roused, he would not have
+detected them, for they hushed into sudden silence as he passed.
+
+He flashed an electric torch on to them.
+
+The two were Joses and Monkey Brand.
+
+He was not surprised, nor, it seemed, were they.
+
+Monkey Brand touched his hat.
+
+"Good-night, sir," he said cordially.
+
+"Good-night," said Silver coldly. "Good-night, Mr. Joses!"
+
+The tout rumbled ironically.
+
+Silver passed on into the yard, and the two were left together in the
+dark.
+
+"On the bubble," said Joses.
+
+"I don't wonder, eether," answered Monkey. "Four-Pound's got to win it
+for him."
+
+"Hundred thousand, isn't it?" said the fat man.
+
+"That is it," said Monkey. "Guv'nor won't part for less."
+
+"What's that?" asked Joses, stupefied.
+
+"Silver!" answered Monkey. "He's got to put a hundred thousand down, or
+he don't get her. Old man's no mug."
+
+"Don't get who?" asked the other.
+
+"Minie," shortly.
+
+The fat man absorbed the news.
+
+"Hundred thousand down," continued Monkey. "That's the contrak--writ out
+in red ink on parchment. It's a fortune."
+
+Joses was recovering himself.
+
+"It's nothing to what the mare'll carry all said," he mused. "American's
+bankin' on her to the last dollar, let alone the Three J's.... There's
+more in it than money, too. There's pride and sentiment, the old
+animosities." He added after a pause--"Half a million's a lot of money
+though. There'll be pickings, too--for those that deserve them."
+
+Monkey moved restlessly.
+
+"I daresay," he said irritably. "Not as it matters to me. Not as nothin'
+matters to me now. Work you to the bone while you can work, and scrap
+you when they've wore you out. It's a bloody world, as I've said afore."
+
+"Come!" cried the fat man. "The game's not up. There's more masters than
+one in the world!"
+
+The little man was not to be consoled.
+
+"See where it is, Mr. Joses: I'm too old to start afresh."
+
+"Have they sacked you then?"
+
+The other shook his head.
+
+"They'll keep me on till after the National. He's not everybody's
+'orse, Four-Pound ain't. If they was to make a change now, he might go
+back on himself."
+
+The tout's breathing came a little quicker in the darkness.
+
+"D'you see to him?"
+
+"Me and Albert."
+
+"Is Albert goin' to ride him?"
+
+"Don't you believe it?" mocked the little jockey.
+
+The tout drew closer.
+
+"Who is, then?"
+
+Monkey ducked his head and patted the back of it.
+
+"Never!" cried Joses.
+
+The other raised a deprecatory hand and turned away.
+
+"You know best, o' course, Mr. Joses," he said. "You've the run o'
+Putnam's same as me. And you're an eddicated man from Oxford College,
+where they knows all there is to know."
+
+He was limping away.
+
+Joses hung on his heels.
+
+"Steady on, old sport," he said. "D'you mean that?"
+
+Monkey swung about.
+
+"See here, Mr. Joses," he whispered. "When a gal's out to win a man
+she'll do _funny_ things."
+
+The fat man breathed heavily.
+
+Then he began to laugh.
+
+"And it's win the National or lose the man!" he said. "Quite a
+romance!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+The Early Bird
+
+
+Next Sunday found Joses among the earliest and most attentive of the
+worshippers at church.
+
+Boy Woodburn entered later, walked slowly up the aisle, and took her
+place in the front pew. As she bowed her head in her hands, the fat man,
+watching with all his eyes, learned what he had come to learn.
+
+After service he waited outside.
+
+As he stood among the tomb-stones, the girl passed, not seeing him.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Woodburn," he said ironically.
+
+She looked up suddenly, resentfully.
+
+His presence there clearly surprised and even startled the girl.
+
+She passed on without a word and with the faintest nod of
+acknowledgment.
+
+The fat man, with a chuckle, thought he could diagnose the cause of her
+annoyance.
+
+Next morning he met Boy in the village.
+
+She was wearing a close-fitting woollen cap, that covered her hair, and
+the collar of her coat was turned up.
+
+The collar of the girl's coat was always turned up now, he remarked
+sardonically, though the sun was gaining daily in power and the wind
+losing its nip.
+
+She sauntered past him, and seemed even ready for a chat.
+
+Never slow to seize a chance, the fat man closed with her at once.
+
+"How goes it, Miss Woodburn?" he said.
+
+"Very well, thank you."
+
+"So you're going to win the National?"
+
+"Are we?"
+
+"He's good enough, isn't he?"
+
+The girl shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Who's going to ride him?"
+
+"Albert, I suppose," replied the girl casually. "There's nobody else."
+
+"Not Monkey Brand?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Too old," she said.
+
+"Will he gallop for Albert?" asked the other.
+
+"Depends on his mood," replied the girl.
+
+The fat man laughed.
+
+"There's only one person he will gallop for--certain," he said.
+
+Boy looked away.
+
+"Who's that?" nonchalantly.
+
+Joses bowed and smirked and became very gallant.
+
+Flattery never moved the girl to anything but resentment.
+
+"Thank you," she said.
+
+"Pity you can't," pursued the other.
+
+"Yes," she said. "I should have liked the ride."
+
+His roaming eye settled on her.
+
+"You'd have won, too," he said with assurance.
+
+"Think so?"
+
+"I'm sure so," he answered. "You've only One against you."
+
+"Perhaps," she admitted. "But the One's a caution."
+
+"A good big un'll always beat a good little un," said the fat man.
+
+"Besides, he's a baby," replied the girl. "Chances his fences too much."
+
+"Sprawls a bit," admitted the other. "But he jumps so big it doesn't
+make much odds. And he gets away like a deer."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joses was now very much alert; and he had to be. For, as he reported to
+Jaggers, Putnam's gave away as little as a dead man in the dark.
+
+One thing, however, became clear as the time slipped away and the
+National drew ever nearer: that to the girl had been entrusted the
+winding up of the young horse, and Albert was her henchman in the
+matter.
+
+Monkey was the fat man's informant on the point. Joses would never have
+believed the little jockey for a moment, but that his own eyes daily
+confirmed the report.
+
+The window of his room looked out over the Paddock Close, and every
+morning, before the world was astir, while the dew was still heavy on
+the grass, the earth reeking, and the mists thick in the coombes, the
+great sheeted horse, who marched like a Highland regiment and looked
+like a mountain ram, was to be seen swinging up the hill on to the
+Downs.
+
+There were two little figures always with him: one riding, one trotting
+at his side. Seen across the Close at that hour in the morning, there
+was no distinguishing between the two. Both were slight, bare-headed,
+fair; and both were dressed much alike. So much might be seen, and
+little more at that distance.
+
+One morning, therefore, found Joses established on the hill before the
+horse and his two attendants had arrived.
+
+He had no desire to be seen.
+
+He squirmed his way with many pants through the gorse to the edge of the
+gallop, adjusted his glasses, and watched the little group of three
+ascend the brow half a mile away.
+
+One of the two attendant sprites slung the other up on to the back of
+the phantom horse tossing against the sky.
+
+Then without a thought of fuss the phantom settled to his stride and
+came down the slope, butting the mists away from his giant chest, the
+rhythmical beat of his hoofs rising to a terrifying roar as he gathered
+way.
+
+Joses dropped on to his hands and huddled against the soaking ground as
+the pair came thundering by. He need not have feared detection: the
+rider's head was low over the horse's neck, the rider's face averted.
+All he saw was the back of a fair head, close-cropped.
+
+Kneeling up, he turned his glasses once again on the little figure
+waiting now alone upon the brow.
+
+As he stared, he heard the quiet footfall of a horse climbing the hill
+behind him.
+
+He dropped his glasses and looked round.
+
+Silver on Heart of Oak had come to a halt close by and was looking at
+him.
+
+"Early bird," said the young man. "Looking for worms, I suppose."
+
+Joses grinned as he closed his glasses, and rising to his feet brushed
+his sopping knees.
+
+"Yes," he said. "And finding 'em."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+Ikey's Own
+
+
+Maudie was not the only one who had cause to complain that life at
+Putnam's was changed now greatly for the worse.
+
+It all centred round that great, calm, munching creature in the
+loose-box, with the big blue dog curled underneath the manger.
+
+Monkey Brand was moody; Old Mat irritable; his daughter curt; Silver
+puzzled, and Mrs. Woodburn perturbed.
+
+For once in her life that habitually tranquil lady was restless, and
+betrayed her trouble.
+
+The young man marked it and was genuinely sorry for her.
+
+She saw it and appealed to him.
+
+"Mr. Silver," she said, taking him suddenly, "is she going to ride?"
+
+The other met her with clearly honest eyes.
+
+"I don't know," he said.
+
+The old lady's distress was obvious.
+
+"Mr. Silver," she said, "please tell me. Do _you_ want her to ride?"
+
+"No!" he cried, almost with indignation. "Of course I don't. I've seen
+too many Nationals."
+
+"Have you asked her not to?"
+
+He grinned a little sheepishly.
+
+"The truth is I've annoyed her," he said. "And she's all spikes when I
+touch her."
+
+Mrs. Woodburn appealed to her husband, but got nothing out of him.
+
+"It's no good comin' to me, Mar. I don't know nothin' at all about it,"
+he said shortly. "She's trainin' the hoss. If I so much as looks at him
+I gets my nose bit off."
+
+The old lady's distress was such that at length the young man took his
+courage in his hands and approached the girl.
+
+"Boy," he said, "are you going to ride him? _Please_ tell me."
+
+The girl set her lips.
+
+"You think I'm afraid of Aintree," she said deeply.
+
+"I don't," he pleaded. "I swear to you I don't."
+
+She was not to be appeased.
+
+"You do," she answered mercilessly. "You said you did."
+
+"If I ever did I was only chaffing."
+
+"I know why you don't want me to ride," she laughed hardly.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because then you'll be free to win your hundred thousand. That's all
+you care about. But you won't. If I don't ride him, he won't win. If I
+do, you can't bet."
+
+The young man was miserable.
+
+"Hang my hundred thousand!" he cried. "As if I care a rap for that." He
+made a final appeal. "If I've done wrong, I can only say I'm most
+_awfully_ sorry, Boy."
+
+"You've done _very_ wrong," replied the girl ruthlessly. "And when we've
+done wrong we've got to pay for it," added Preacher Joe.
+
+"Damn him!" muttered the other.
+
+"_What!_" flashed the girl.
+
+"Sorry," mumbled the young man, and fled with his tail between his legs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That afternoon a telegram came for Old Mat.
+
+He showed it to Silver.
+
+"That's from Miller, the station-master at Arunvale," he said. "They're
+goin' to gallop the mare. Would you like to step over and see what you
+can make of her?"
+
+The young man agreed willingly.
+
+"No good my comin'," said Mat. "But you might take Monkey Brand
+along--if he'll go."
+
+But the little jockey, when approached, refused.
+
+"Why not?" asked Silver, determined to save the little man's soul if it
+was to be saved.
+
+"I'm too fond o' Monkey, sir," the other answered, his face inscrutable.
+
+"What d'you mean?"
+
+"Why, sir, if they was to catch Monkey in Chukkers's country they'd flay
+him."
+
+"Who would?"
+
+"The Ikey's Own."
+
+Silver stared at him.
+
+"Who are the Ikey's Own?"
+
+"They're _Them!_" said Monkey with emphasis. "That's what they are--and
+no mistake about it."
+
+          _We are coming. Uncle Ikey, coming fifty million strong,
+          For to see the haughty English don't do our Ikey wrong._
+
+"He slipped 'em over special last back-end. Chose 'em for the job.
+Bowery toughs; scrubs from Colorado; old man o' the mountains;
+cattle-lifters from Mexico; miners from the west; Arizona sharps. Don't
+matter who, only so long as they'll draw a gun on you soon as smile.
+Come across the ocean to see fair play for the mare. They're campin'
+round her--rigiments of 'em. If a sparrer goes too near her, they lays
+it out. _No blanky hanky-panky this time_--that's their motter."
+
+The young man went alone.
+
+At Arunvale the station-master beckoned him into the office.
+
+"It's right, sir," he said keenly. "Chukkers and Ikey come down this
+morning. Two-thirty's the time accordin' to my information. I've got a
+trap waitin' for you outside. Ginger Harris'll drive you. He was a lad
+at Putnam's one time o' day. Now he keeps the Three Cocks by the bridge.
+He don't like Jaggers any better than me. Only lay low and mind your
+eye. Arunvale's stiff with 'em."
+
+Silver wished to know more, but he was not to be gratified.
+
+The station-clerk, as full of mystery as Monkey Brand himself, bustled
+him out of the office, finger to his lips.
+
+"Trap's outside, sir," he whispered. "I won't come with you. There's
+eyes everywhere--tongues, too."
+
+Outside was a gig, and in it sat a red-faced fly-man in a bottle-green
+coat and old top-hat, who made room for the young man at his side.
+
+They drove over the bridge through the town, up the steep, into the vast
+rolling Park with the clumps of brown beech-woods that ran down to the
+river and the herds of red deer dotting the deep valleys.
+
+As they passed through the north gate of the Park, Ginger slowed down to
+a walk.
+
+"If I've time it right," he said, "she should be doin' her gallop while
+we walks along the ridge. Don't show too keen, sir."
+
+A long sallow man sitting on the roadside at the edge of the wood eyed
+them.
+
+The driver nudged his companion.
+
+"One of 'em," he said. "Ikey's Own. Know by the cut of 'em."
+
+"Many about?" asked Silver.
+
+"Been all over us since Christmas," answered the other. "Cargo of 'em
+landed at Liverpool Bank 'oliday. All sorts. All chose for the job. Stop
+at nothin'. If they suspicion you they move you on or put you out. They
+watch her same as if she was the Queen of England. And I don't wonder.
+Nobody knows the millions she'll carry."
+
+When they were well past the man at the roadside he whistled. There came
+an answering call from the wood in front.
+
+As they emerged on to the open Downs, Ginger pulled up short.
+
+"They've done us, sir," he said shortly.
+
+A hundred yards ahead of them a sheeted chestnut was coming toward them
+on the grass alongside the road.
+
+Jim Silver had only seen the Waler mare once--on the occasion of her
+famous victory and defeat at Aintree the previous year; but once seen
+Mocassin was never forgotten.
+
+She came along at that swift, pattering walk of hers, her nose in the
+air, and ears twitching.
+
+"Always the same," whispered Ginger. "In a terrible hurry to get there."
+
+He had the true Putnam feeling about Jaggers; but that passion of
+devotion for the mare, which had inspired the English-speaking race for
+the past year, had not left him untouched. Jim Silver felt the little
+prosaic man thrilling at his side, and thrilled in his turn. He felt as
+he had felt when as a Lower Boy at Eton the Captain of the Boats had
+spoken to him--a swimming in the eyes, a brimming of the heart, a
+gulping at the throat.
+
+"Is that Mocassin?" he called to the lad riding the mare.
+
+"That's the Queen o' Kentucky, sir," replied the other cockily. "Never
+was beaten, and never will be--given fair play."
+
+"Done your gallop?"
+
+"Half an hour since."
+
+Ginger drove on discreetly.
+
+On a knoll, three hundred yards away, four men were standing.
+
+"There they are!" said Ginger. "Pretty, ain't they?--specially Chukkers.
+I don't know who that fat feller is along of 'em."
+
+But Silver knew very well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+The Queen of Kentucky
+
+
+The little group on the knoll came off the grass on to the road, close
+in talk.
+
+Jaggers was tall and attenuated. He had the look of a self-righteous
+ascetic, and dressed with puritanical austerity. No smile ever
+irradiated his gaunt face and remorseless eyes. His forehead was
+unusually high and white; his manners high, too; and if his morals were
+not white, his cravat, that was like a parson's, more than made up for
+the defect. It was not surprising then that among the fraternity he was
+known as His Reverence, because his bearing gave the impression of a
+Nonconformist Minister about to conduct a teetotal campaign.
+
+Chukkers, who was wearing the familiar jodhpores which he always
+affected, was quite a different type. A big man for a jockey, he rarely
+rode under eleven stone, though he carried never an ounce of flesh.
+Sporting journalists were in the habit of referring to him as a Samson
+in the saddle, so large of bone and square of build was he. His success,
+indeed, was largely due to his extraordinary strength. It was said that
+once in a moment of temper he had crushed a horse's ribs in, while it
+was an undeniable fact that he could make a horse squeal by the pressure
+of his legs.
+
+He was clearly a Mongol, some said a Chinaman by origin; and certainly
+his great bowed shins, his dirty complexion, his high cheek-bones, and
+that impassive Oriental face of his, gave authority to the legend. When
+you met him you marked at once that his eyes were reluctant to catch
+yours; and when they did you saw two little gashes opening on
+sullen-twinkling muddy waters.
+
+The worst of us have our redeeming features. And Chukkers with
+all his crude defects possessed at least one outstanding
+virtue--faithfulness--to the man who had made him. Ikey had brought
+him as a lad into the country where he had made his name; Ikey had
+given him his chance; to Ikey for twenty-five years now he had stuck
+with unswerving devotion, in spite of temptation manifold,
+often-repeated, and aggravated. The relations between the two men were
+the subject of much gossip. They never talked of each other; and
+though often together, very rarely spoke. Chukkers was never known to
+express admiration or affection or even respect for his master. But
+the bond between them was intimate and profound. It was notorious that
+the jockey would throw over the Heir to the Throne himself at the last
+moment to ride for the little Levantine. And of late years it had been
+increasingly rare for him to sport any but the star-spangled jacket.
+
+Ikey Aaronsohnn, the third of the famous Three, walked between the other
+two, as befitted the brain and purse of the concern. He was a typical
+Levantine, Semitic, even Simian, small-featured, and dark. In his youth
+he must have been pretty, and there was still a certain charm about him.
+He had qualities, inherent and super-imposed, entirely lacking to his
+two colleagues. A man of education and some natural refinement, he had a
+delicious sense of humour which helped him to an enjoyment of life and
+such a genial appreciation of his own malpractices and those of others
+as to make him the best of company and far the most popular of the Three
+J's.
+
+If Chukkers was little more than an animal-riding animal, and Jaggers an
+artistic fraud, Ikey was a rascal of a highly differentiated and
+engaging type. A man of admirable tenacity he had clung for twenty-five
+years to the ideal which Chukkers's discovery of Mocassin two years
+since had brought within his grasp.
+
+The disqualification of the mare at Liverpool last year after the great
+race had served only to whet his appetite and kindle his faith.
+
+A quarter of a century before he had set himself to find the horse that
+would beat the English thoroughbred at Aintree. And in Mocassin he had
+at last achieved his aim.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If a cloud of romance hung about the mare, veiling in part her past,
+some points at least stood out clear.
+
+It was known that her dam was a Virginian mare of the stately kind which
+of late years has filled the eye in the sale-ring at Newmarket and held
+its own between the flags. And piquancy was added by the fact, recorded
+in the Kentucky stud-book, that the dam traced her origin direct to
+Iroquois who in the Derby of 1881 had lowered the English colours to the
+dust.
+
+Again there was no doubt that the mare had been born in a yellow-pine
+shack in the Cumberlands, on an old homestead--made familiar to millions
+in both continents by the picture papers--known as Blue Mounds, and
+owned by a Quaker farmer who was himself the great-grandson of a pioneer
+Friend, who in the last years of the eighteenth century had crossed the
+mountains with his family and flocks, like Abraham of old, and had won
+for himself this clearing from the primeval forest, driving farther west
+its ancient denizens.
+
+So much, not even the arrogant English dared to dispute.
+
+But the rest was mystery. It was said that Jaggers himself did not know
+who was Mocassin's sire; and that Ikey and Chukkers, the only two who
+did, were so close that they never let on even to each other. True the
+English, with characteristic bluff, when they discovered that they had
+found their mistress in the mare, took it for granted that her sire was
+an imported English horse and even named him. But Ikey and Chukkers both
+denied the importation with emphasis.
+
+Then there were those who traced her origin to a horse from the Bombay
+Arab stables. These swore they could detect the Prophet's Thumb on the
+mare's auburn neck. The Waler School had many backers; and there were
+even a few cranks who suggested for the place of honour a curly-eared
+Kathiawar horse. But the All-American School, dominant in the States and
+Southern Republic, maintained with truculence that a Spanish stallion
+from the Pampas was the only sire for God Almighty's Mustang. The wild
+horse theory, as it was called, appealed to popular sentiment, however
+remote from the fact, and helped to build the legend of the mare. And in
+support of the theory, it must be said that Mocassin, in spite of her
+lovableness, had in her more of the jaguar than of the domestic cat,
+grown indolent, selfish, and fat through centuries of security and
+sleep.
+
+"Wild as the wildman and sweet as the briar-rose," was the saying they
+had about her in the homestead where she was bred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ikey got into his car and rolled away through the dust toward Brighton.
+
+The other three men strolled back to the yard.
+
+"Bar accidents, there's only one you've got to fear," said Joses.
+
+"And that's the Putnam horse," put in Jaggers.
+
+"How's he comin' along?" asked the jockey.
+
+"Great guns," the fat man replied.
+
+"Think he's a Berserk?" asked Jaggers.
+
+"I know it," said Joses. "Stolen jump. The stable-lads let him out on
+that old man for a lark. He's the spit of the old horse, only bigger."
+
+"He must be a big un then," said Jaggers.
+
+"He is," Chukkers answered. "And he's in at ten stun. The mare's givin'
+him a ton o' weight. And weight is weight at Liverpool."
+
+"She'll do it," said Jaggers confidently. "I'll back my Iroquois against
+their Berserk--if Berserk he is."
+
+"He's Berserk," said Chukkers doggedly. "A blind man at midnight could
+tell that from his fencing. Goes at 'em like a lion. Such a lift to him,
+too! Is Monkey Brand goin' to ride him?" he asked Joses.
+
+"No. Turned down. Too old."
+
+"Then the lad as rode him at Lingfield will," said Chukkers. "Sooner him
+than Monkey anyway. If Monkey couldn't win himself he'd see I didn't.
+Ride me down and ram me. The lad wouldn't 'ave the nerve. Face like a
+girl."
+
+"Monkey ain't the only one," muttered Joses. "Silver's in it, too--up to
+the neck."
+
+When Joses left to catch his train Jaggers accompanied him across the
+yard.
+
+"Yes," he said, "if she wins there'll be plenty for all."
+
+The tout hovered in the gate.
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," he said, with emphasis. "_Very_ glad."
+
+Jaggers threw up his head in that free, frank way of his.
+
+"What, Joses?" he said. "You're not short?"
+
+"Things aren't too flush with me, Mr. Jaggers," muttered the fat man.
+
+Jaggers stared out over the Downs.
+
+"If that Putnam horse was not to start it would be worth a monkey to
+you," he said, cold and casual.
+
+The other shot a swift and surreptitious glance at him.
+
+Jaggers had on his best pulpit air.
+
+"Don't start," mused Joses. "That's a tall order."
+
+The trainer picked his teeth.
+
+"A monkey's money," he said.
+
+The fat man sniggered.
+
+"It's worth money, too," he remarked.
+
+"Give you a new start in a new country," continued Jaggers. "Quite the
+capitalist."
+
+Joses's eyes wandered.
+
+"I don't say it mightn't fix it," he said at last cautiously. "But it'd
+mean cash. Could you give me something on account?"
+
+His Reverence was prepared.
+
+He took a leather case out of his pocket and handed over five
+bank-notes.
+
+"There's a pony," he said. "Now I don't want to see you till after the
+race. You know me. Me word's me bond. It's all out this time."
+
+With a proud and priestly air he strode back to the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+Man and Woman
+
+
+Silver and Joses went back to Cuckmere by the same train from Brighton.
+
+The young man was well-established in a first-class smoker, and the
+train was about to start when the fat man came puffing along the
+platform. He was very hot; and out of his pocket bulged a brown paper
+parcel. The paper had burst and the head of a wooden mallet was exposed.
+
+Silver, quiet in his corner, remarked that mallet.
+
+That night he took a round of the stable-buildings before he went to
+bed, as his custom had been of late. There was nobody stirring but
+Maudie, meandering around like a ghost who did not feel well.
+
+He went to the back of the Lads' Barn, and looked across the Paddock
+Close. A light in the window of a cottage shone out solitary in the
+darkness.
+
+It was the cottage in which Joses lived, and the light came from an
+upper window.
+
+Silver strolled along the back of the stable-buildings toward it.
+
+Under Boy's window he paused, as was his wont.
+
+A light within showed that the girl was in her eyrie. Then the light
+went out, and the window opened quietly.
+
+Shyness overcame the young man. He moved away and went back to the
+corner in the saddle-room he had made his own--partly because he could
+smoke there undisturbed, and far more because it was directly under the
+girl's room, and he loved to hear her stirring above him.
+
+He lit his pipe, settled himself, and began to brood.
+
+The girl was still there--he could tell by the sound; and still at the
+window.
+
+A vague curiosity possessed him as to what attracted her. Then she
+crossed the floor with that determined step of hers, and went along the
+loft, the planks betraying her.
+
+He heard her swift feet on the ladder, and coming down the gangway
+toward the saddle-room.
+
+In another moment she stood before him. A woolly cap was on her head,
+and a long muffler flung about her throat. It was clear that she was
+going out. He noticed with surprise that her race-glasses were slung
+over her shoulders.
+
+"I came for the electric torch," she remarked.
+
+He rose and pocketed it.
+
+"Right," he said. "Whither away?"
+
+"I don't want you," she answered.
+
+"I'm coming along, though."
+
+"You can't," coldly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I'm going spying."
+
+"Good," he answered cheerfully.
+
+She led out into the night. He followed her.
+
+In the yard she paused again.
+
+"And spying's only for people like me," she continued daintily. "It's
+not work for the gentry."
+
+They were walking across the Paddock Close now under dim heavens toward
+the light in the cottage across the way.
+
+"I suppose not," he answered imperturbably. "I'm glad I'm not one."
+
+"Oh, but you are," with quiet insistence. "Your father could have been a
+peer. You've told us about it many a time."
+
+Jim Silver was roused. He surged up alongside the girl in the night, and
+pinched her arm above the elbow.
+
+"Now look here, little woman!" he said.
+
+She released her arm.
+
+"Not so loud," she ordered. "And don't creak so."
+
+They walked delicately in the darkness, the light guiding them, till
+they came to the ragged hedge at the foot of a long strip of cottage
+garden.
+
+The night was very warm, the blinds up, the windows wide.
+
+Joses, in his shirt-sleeves, was busy within working at something.
+
+The girl watched awhile through her glasses and then withdrew quietly.
+
+"He's whittling at wooden pegs," she whispered, keen as a knife.
+
+"Obviously."
+
+"What was that coil on the table?"
+
+"Wire."
+
+"And the thing beside it?"
+
+"Mallet."
+
+She glanced up at him in the dusk.
+
+"You're short," she said.
+
+The stables showed before them, long and black against the sky.
+
+They were nearly off the grass. In another moment their feet would take
+the cobbles with a noise.
+
+The girl paused and put her hand on her companion's arm.
+
+"Thank you for coming," she said.
+
+The resistance died out of him at once. He stood breathing deeply at her
+side.
+
+She lifted her face to his.
+
+"Mr. Silver!"
+
+"Sweetheart!"
+
+He loomed above her like a great shadow; and she felt his love beating
+all about her as with wings.
+
+"Bend your head!"
+
+His face drew down to hers in the dusk.
+
+Then his arms stole about her lithe body; and his laughter was in her
+ear soft as the cooing of a dove.
+
+"Don't kiss me," she said.
+
+"You deserve it," he replied.
+
+Her hands rested light as birds upon his shoulders; her eyes were steady
+in his, and very close.
+
+"D'you love me?" she asked, her voice so calm, so pure, somehow so like
+a singing star.
+
+He choked.
+
+"A bit--sometimes."
+
+"Then I'll whisper you," she said.
+
+Her beautiful little arms, wreathing about his neck, drew his ear to her
+lips.
+
+She whispered.
+
+He chuckled deeply.
+
+"Good," he said, and added--"Is that all?"
+
+She released him and withdrew.
+
+"For the present," she said.
+
+They entered the yard. The light of the great stable-lantern brought
+them back from the land of dreams.
+
+They cleared their throats and trod the cobbles aggressively.
+
+She went toward the ladder. He turned off for the house.
+
+"What time d'you take the hill?" he called.
+
+"Six sharp."
+
+"Right."
+
+"Shall you be there?"
+
+She spoke from the door of the loft, at the top of the ladder.
+
+"Might," he said, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+The Spider's Web
+
+
+It was Monkey Brand's cause of complaint against the young man that he
+was too simple; but if his suspicions were difficult to rouse, once
+roused they were not easily appeased.
+
+He was up and away next morning before even Boy and Albert were about.
+
+Dressed in a sweater and gray flannel trousers, he swung up the hill. As
+he reached the summit he looked back and saw the brown horse and his
+attendant beginning the ascent.
+
+Swiftly he walked along the gallop, his eyes everywhere, suspecting he
+knew not what. The gorse grew close and dark on either side the naked
+course. He watched it closely as he went, and the occasional shrill
+spurt of a bird betrayed movement in the covert--it might be of a
+weasel, a fox, or a man.
+
+The morning was chill and misty, the turf sodden and shining. At one
+spot the gorse marched in close-ranked upon the green until only a
+passage of some thirty yards was left. As he walked down the narrow way
+something flashed at his feet, and caught him smartly across the shin.
+He tripped and fell.
+
+A wire was stretched across the gallop some four inches above the
+ground. It was taut and stout, and shone like a gossamer in the mist. He
+rose and followed it. It ran right athwart the course and lost itself in
+the gorse on either side. Silver searched and found the wire was bound
+about two wooden pegs that had been hammered into the earth.
+
+The pegs were so fast that his fall against the wire had not shifted
+them.
+
+He looked back along the way he had come.
+
+The horse had not yet made his appearance on the brow.
+
+Bending over a peg, and bowing his back, the young man heaved, twisted,
+and lurched. It took him all his time to uproot it, but he did so at
+last.
+
+Then he glanced up.
+
+Four-Pound-the-Second had topped the brow half a mile away.
+
+Silver took the peg and began to roll up the wire leisurely. As he did
+so he was aware of a man standing in the gorse on the other side of the
+gallop watching him. Silver did not raise his eyes, but had no doubt as
+to the man's identity.
+
+It was the other who opened the conversation, coming out of the gorse on
+to the track.
+
+"That's an ugly bit of wire," he said. "Now how did that get there, I
+wonder?"
+
+"Spider spun it, I guess," answered the young man laconically.
+
+"What!" laughed the other. "Gossamer is it?"
+
+"Yes," said Silver. "And not bad gossamer at that." He looked up
+suddenly. "Where did you get it from?--the same place you bought the
+mallet in Brighton?"
+
+The tout swaggered across the green.
+
+"See here, Silver," he said. "None of that. You're not in the position
+to come it over me now you've joined the great company of
+gentlemen-adventurers. There's nothing in it since the Bank broke. We
+both stand together on the common quicksands of economic insecurity."
+
+Silver wound up the wire.
+
+"Common quicksands of economic insecurity is good," he said
+deliberately. "Distinctly good."
+
+"Yes," replied the other. "I learned it at Oxford, where I learned a lot
+besides. Or to put it straight, we're both naked men now--stripped to
+the world. And I'm as good a man as you are."
+
+Silver dropped the wire and advanced leisurely.
+
+"Are you?" he said. "I doubt it. But we'll soon see."
+
+The fat man produced a mallet from behind his back.
+
+"No ---- nonsense," he snarled.
+
+"I thought you said we were both naked men," replied Silver, folding his
+arms.
+
+"Never mind what I said," the other answered. "Keep your ---- distance,
+or I'll puddle you into a pulp."
+
+Jim regarded the other with admiring eyes.
+
+"You learned more at Oxford than I did," he said. "Learned to express
+yourself at least. If I'd that command of language I'd be in the pulpit
+or in Parliament to-morrow."
+
+There was the sound of a horse's feet behind them.
+
+Boy was walking Four-Pound-the-Second toward them.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Woodburn," called Joses cheerily. "So _you're_ up
+to-day."
+
+"Yes," said the girl.
+
+"Going to take him for a spin?"
+
+Boy did not answer.
+
+"Mr. Joses has been doing the spinning this morning," interposed Silver
+urbanely, holding up the wire.
+
+"Oh," said the fat man. "I'll leave him to spin his yarn, Miss Woodburn.
+But don't you believe all he says. You'll hear the truth when I bring
+the case into court. He'll want all the money _you_ can win him by the
+time I've done with him."
+
+He disappeared down the hillside.
+
+The girl came close and leaned down over the shoulder of the great
+horse.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+Jim Silver showed her.
+
+"Only this," he said. "Right across the track."
+
+The girl took it as all in the day's work.
+
+"Did you catch him at it?" she asked.
+
+"No; he was lying doggo near by--to watch results."
+
+She examined the wire.
+
+"He means business all right," she said. "We must look a bit lively.
+I'll have the track patrolled."
+
+"I shall patrol it," said Jim.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+The Doper
+
+
+In her darker moods Maudie held that the world to-day only possessed one
+man who could take his place beside the knights of old; and that man, to
+be sure, was Monkey Brand.
+
+The lads teased or ignored her; the various Four-legs were uncouth to a
+degree; and the Monster-without-Manners was, of course, just himself.
+
+Therefore Maudie passed all the time she could on the shoulder of
+Putnam's Only Gentleman. Perched up there, aloof, lofty, and disdainful,
+she would purr away like a kettle on the simmer.
+
+That evening she was enthroned in Paradise, when Joses shambled by.
+
+Monkey Brand, stroking her back as he stood at the gate of the yard
+exchanging greetings with the passers-by in the road, shook his head
+disapprovingly as Joses passed.
+
+"Mug's game, Mr. Joses," he said _sotto voce_.
+
+The fat man, who had not seen the jockey in the dusk, drew up short.
+
+"What's that?" he said keenly.
+
+"That wire business," continued the little man in the same monotonous
+undertone without moving his lips. "Ought to be able to do a little
+better than that with an edication like yours. Where's the good of
+Oxford else?"
+
+Joses came closer swiftly.
+
+"See here, Monkey Brand," he said. "Do you mean business, or don't you?"
+
+The jockey's face was inscrutable.
+
+"I never said no to _good_ business yet," he answered.
+
+"This is good business all right," laughed the tout. "Big money, and
+safe as houses."
+
+At the moment a voice called from the office.
+
+"Comin,' sir," answered the little jockey. "_That's the Gov'nor. Back o'
+Lads' Barn. Eight o'clock_," he whispered, and was gone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joses kept the tryst, and went straight to the point.
+
+He had burned his boats now.
+
+"When do they box him to Liverpool?" he asked.
+
+"Monday," answered the other, who seemed very surly. "If you want to do
+anything, you must move sharp, Mr. Joses. It's here or nowhere, mind.
+You won't get no chance at Aintree. Too many cops around."
+
+"Who's watching him at night?"
+
+"Monkey."
+
+"Does Monkey ever nod?"
+
+The little man looked at the stars.
+
+"No sayin' but he might--if he was to took a drop o' soothin' syrup."
+
+"What about the dog?"
+
+"He could 'ave some soothin' syrup, too. 'Elp him with his teethin'."
+
+The tout turned his back with a somewhat unnecessary regard for decency,
+produced a bank-note and flourished it.
+
+"What's that?" asked Monkey.
+
+"Little bit o' crumpled paper."
+
+"Let's see it."
+
+"You may smell it. Only don't touch."
+
+"Will it drop to pieces?"
+
+Joses swept away the other's appropriating hand.
+
+"Might burn your fingers," he said. "That's what I'm thinking of. That's
+to buy you a bottle of Mother Siegel's soothing syrup. There's only one
+thing," he went on, brandishing the note in the moon. "Looks a wistful
+little thing, don't you think? That's because he's lonely. He's left
+four little brothers and sisters same as himself at home. And he's
+pining for 'em to join him. And join him they will to-morrow night--if
+you'll let me in to his loose-box."
+
+Jaggers at his best never looked more self-righteous than Monkey Brand
+as he made reply:
+
+"I couldn't let you into his loose-box, Mr. Joses," he said quietly.
+"Wouldn't be right. Only the door'll be on the latch, and if you choose
+to come in--why, who's to stop you?"
+
+"Right," laughed the other. "I'm an artist, I am, as you may recall. I'd
+like to paint you in your sleep. Study of Innocence I should call it."
+
+He dropped away into the darkness.
+
+A whistle stopped him.
+
+The little jockey was limping after him.
+
+"Say to-night," he said.
+
+"No," said the fat man. "To-morrow night. Sunday night. That's the night
+for good deeds."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At ten that night Jim Silver escorted Boy Woodburn across the yard to
+the foot of the ladder.
+
+For a moment the two stood at the foot of the ladder in talk. Then the
+girl disappeared into the loft.
+
+As Silver turned away he was whistling.
+
+Monkey Brand, who was standing in the stable-door near by, lantern in
+hand, preparatory to taking up his watch in the young horse's box,
+coughed.
+
+Silver turned and saw him.
+
+"Good-night," he said.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the little man, gazing up at the moon. "There _is_ some
+good in him after all. _Some_ good in us all, I s'poses."
+
+Jim Silver approached him. He knew the little man well enough by now to
+know that he was always most round-about in his methods when he had
+something of importance to convey.
+
+"In who?" he asked.
+
+Monkey looked surprised and somewhat resentful.
+
+"Why, Mr. Joses, o' cos."
+
+"What's he done now?" asked the young man.
+
+Monkey withdrew into the shadow of the door.
+
+"That," he said, producing the five-pound note.
+
+Jim handled it.
+
+"What did he give you that for?"
+
+"Why, for lookin' down me nose and sayin A-a men. The rest's to follow
+to-morrow midnight--five of 'em--if I'm a good boy, as I 'opes to be.
+Goin' to drop into me lap same as manners from the ceilin' when Moses
+was around--while I sleeps like a suckin' innocent."
+
+The young man thought.
+
+"Have you told Mr. Woodburn?"
+
+"No, sir. I told no one--only you."
+
+"Shall you tell the police?"
+
+"Never!" cried Monkey, genuinely indignant. "Are I a copper's nark?"
+
+Whether because of childhood memories, or for some other reason, the
+copper was still for Monkey Brand the enemy of the human race; and the
+little jockey had his own code of honour, to which he scrupulously
+adhered.
+
+"What shall you do?" asked Jim.
+
+The jockey jerked his head mysteriously. Then he limped away down the
+gangway, behind sleeping horses, into the loose-box at the end where
+stood Four-Pound-the-Second.
+
+Carefully he closed the door behind the young man and put his lantern
+down.
+
+"See, you thought I was on the crook, didn't you, sir?" he said
+ironically, pursing his eye-lids.
+
+"So you are," replied the young man.
+
+Monkey wagged his head sententiously.
+
+"Oh, I'm on the crook all right in a manner o' speakin'," he admitted.
+"Only where it is, there's crooks and crooks. There's crooks that is on
+the straight--"
+
+"And there's straights that is on the crook," interposed Jim. "As per
+item, Monkey Brand."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning Silver went to see Old Mat in his office and opened to him
+a tale; but the trainer, who seemed very sleepy these days, refused to
+hear him.
+
+"I knows nothin' about nothin'," he said almost querulously, pursing his
+lips, and sheathing his eyes. "As to rogues and rasqueals, you knows my
+views by now, Mr. Silver. Same as the Psalmist's, as I've said afore. As
+for the rest, I'm an old man--older nor I can recollect. All I asks is
+to lay down and die quiet and peaceable with nothin' on me conscience
+only last night's cheese."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+The Loose-box
+
+
+Next night Boy Woodburn was unusually late to bed.
+
+Sunday nights she always devoted to preparing the Bible-lesson for next
+week.
+
+Of old she had always retired to her room in the loft after supper on
+Sunday to wrestle with her labours; but as her mother grew into years,
+the girl had adopted the habit of working in the parlour.
+
+On this Sunday she worked on long after her father and mother had gone
+to bed, reading and making notes. Once the door opened, and she was
+dimly aware of Mr. Silver standing in it. He departed quietly as he had
+come without a word, but her subconsciousness noted vaguely and with
+surprise that he was wearing a greatcoat and muffler as if he was going
+out.
+
+It was eleven o'clock when she closed her book and crossed the yard.
+
+Under the ladder to the loft a door led to a woodshed at the end of the
+stable.
+
+As she went up the ladder she heard somebody moving in the shed.
+
+"Who's that?" she asked sharply.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+She descended and tried the door.
+
+It was locked.
+
+"That's all right, Boy," called a quiet voice. "It's only me."
+
+"Mr. Silver," she cried. "What on earth are you up to?"
+
+"After a rat."
+
+"A queer time to choose."
+
+"Yes," he said. "He's a big 'un. I'm sitting for him."
+
+"Good-night then," she called, and ran up the ladder, heralded by the
+swift and ghostly Maudie.
+
+The trap-door over Four-Pound-the-Second's box was open as always. She
+peeped down on to the back of the horse and Monkey Brand, busy by the
+light of his lantern, arranging a pile of horse-blankets in the corner
+on which to sleep.
+
+"Where's Billy Bluff?" she asked.
+
+"Just gone outside a minute, Miss."
+
+Four-Pound-the-Second moved restlessly.
+
+"Give him some water," she directed, "and settle him down as soon as you
+can."
+
+"Very good, Miss," the little jockey answered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was an hour later that the stable-door clicked and Joses entered.
+
+He was wearing rope-soled shoes, and he moved softly behind the long
+line of horses.
+
+In his slouch hat and loose cloak he looked like a stage conspirator.
+
+Monkey Brand was nodding on an upturned bucket.
+
+As the fat man entered the loose-box, the great horse turned a shining
+eye on him and whinnied.
+
+Monkey blinked, stirred, and grunted:
+
+"'Ello!"
+
+He smelt strongly of whiskey.
+
+The tout, unheeding him, produced a twitch.
+
+But Monkey rose with heavy eyes and jerked it irritably out of the
+other's hand.
+
+"None o' that," he said.
+
+He nodded to the open trap-door overhead.
+
+"She sleeps up there, don't she?" whispered the fat man.
+
+"She never sleeps," muttered the other. "Got the stuff?" he asked
+drowsily.
+
+Joses produced a bottle from the pocket of his cloak.
+
+Monkey looked around.
+
+"Where's a blurry bucket?" he asked, and with faltering hands inverted
+the one on which he had been sitting.
+
+"Put a drop of water in," urged the fat man.
+
+The little man obeyed, moving uncertainly.
+
+"Is he dry?" asked Joses.
+
+"I wish I'd only 'alf his thirst," drowsed the other.
+
+The fat man removed the cork from the bottle. Monkey seized it rudely
+and sniffed it.
+
+"What is it?" he asked sullenly.
+
+"Nothing to hurt him," said Joses soothingly. "Just take the shine out
+of him for a day or two."
+
+The jockey was so drunk that he needed humouring. The tout cursed his
+faulty judgment in having given the little man money to spend before the
+deed had been done.
+
+Monkey let his heavy-lidded eyes rest on the other. He was breathing
+almost stertorously. Then he pushed the bottle back toward Joses.
+
+"I mush trush you," he said, "same as you trush me. You wouldn't deceive
+me, Oxford genelman and all."
+
+"What d'you take me for?" answered Joses.
+
+He poured the stuff into the bucket that Monkey held. It was dark and
+sweet-smelling. Four-Pound-the-Second sniffed with inflated nostrils.
+
+"Hist!" cried Monkey.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Somebury at the door."
+
+"The door's all right. I locked it."
+
+"He's got a key."
+
+"Who has?"
+
+"Silver."
+
+"Is he on the ramp?"
+
+"Ain't he?" snorted Monkey. "Hundred thousand--and the gal." He added
+with a snort: "Thought I were a copper's nark. Good as told me so."
+
+Joses stole down the gangway to the door.
+
+When he came back Monkey was holding the bucket to
+Four-Pound-the-Second, who was drinking noisily.
+
+"It was only the cat," he said. "I heard her scuttle."
+
+"Don't it smell funny?" whispered Monkey, swirling the bucket gently
+under the horse's muzzle.
+
+Joses patted the drinking horse.
+
+"There's the beauty," he said. "Suck it down. It'll give you pleasant
+dreams."
+
+Four-Pound-the-Second had his fill by now and moved away.
+
+Joses picked up his twitch and made for the door.
+
+Monkey placed himself between the fat man and the exit, heavy-lidded,
+stertorous, and menacing.
+
+"One thing," he said.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Them little bits o' paper there was some talk about."
+
+"Oh, aye, I was forgettin' them."
+
+"Was you, then? I wasn't," said Monkey brutally. "Dole 'em out."
+
+The fat man obeyed with a snigger; then shuffled softly down the passage
+and out.
+
+Monkey Brand heard him open the door and cross the yard.
+
+Then a voice called:
+
+"Hi at him!"
+
+There was a scurry of pursuing feet, a scuffle, and a yell.
+
+The jockey rushed out into the yard.
+
+Joses was disappearing over the gate, flinging something behind him, and
+Billy Bluff was smothered in a cape which he was worrying.
+
+Jim Silver, racing across the yard, snatched the cape from the dog.
+
+A window flung open.
+
+Boy looked out.
+
+"What is it?" she cried.
+
+"It's all right, Miss," answered Monkey. "No 'arm done."
+
+The girl came swiftly down the ladder in the moonlight. She was in her
+wrapper, her short hair massed.
+
+"Is the horse all right?" she cried.
+
+"Yes, Miss."
+
+"Where's Billy Bluff?"
+
+"There."
+
+Silver turned his electric torch on to a far corner of the yard, where
+the dog was seen chewing a lump of meat.
+
+Boy flung herself on him and tore it away.
+
+"Hold him!" she cried to Jim. "Between your knees! Force his mouth open!
+Mind yourself now."
+
+She brought the stable-hose to bear upon the dog's extended mouth. He
+wrestled hugely in the grip of the young man's knees, gasping,
+spluttering, whining for mercy. But mercy there was none. The girl
+drenched him with the hose, and the man who was holding him.
+
+"Go and get the tandem whip!" she cried.
+
+Monkey ran.
+
+"Now stand at the gates, both of you, and don't let him through."
+
+Boy seized the whip and hunted the dog about the yard. He fled madly.
+For five minutes the girl pursued him remorselessly. Then he was
+violently sick.
+
+"That's better," panted the girl. "Bring that meat, Brand."
+
+She led the way into Four-Pound-the-Second's horse-box, followed by
+Silver, torch in hand.
+
+"_He's_ not taken much harm," she said, patting the horse in her
+deliberate way.
+
+A delicious little figure she made in her striped pyjamas, her wrapper
+girt about her, her feet bare in shining black pumps, and her short hair
+thick and curling about her neck.
+
+Suddenly she was aware of her companion and withdrew into herself as she
+felt him watching her.
+
+"Sweetheart honey," he purred, reaching out tender hands toward her.
+
+She put up a warning finger.
+
+"There's no one looking," he answered her.
+
+"Yes, there is."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Four-Pound."
+
+"He don't matter."
+
+"I'm not sure," she answered gravely. "He's a funny little look in his
+eye."
+
+He was making passes close to her face and throat. She restrained him.
+
+"Wait," she said gently.
+
+He dropped his hands.
+
+"I shall go back to bed now," she continued. "You'd better turn in,
+too--now you've caught your rat."
+
+"I've cut off his tail anyway," laughed the young man, showing the
+cloak.
+
+Swathed in her light wrapper, the little creature shuffled swiftly down
+the gangway behind the line of sleeping horses, her pumps, too big for
+her bare feet, clacking on the pavement.
+
+He followed her heavily, his eyes brimming laughter and delight.
+
+A few minutes later Silver joined Monkey Brand in the loose-box.
+
+"Good little try-on, sir," said the jockey busily. "Funny smelling stuff
+though."
+
+Removing a rug, he produced a bucket hidden beneath and held it to the
+other's nose.
+
+"Chuck it down the drain," said the young man.
+
+"'Alf a mo, sir," protested Monkey Brand. "Let me fill me bottle first."
+
+He looked up at the young man with extraordinary cunning.
+
+"Ever know'd a monkey get squiffy?" he asked confidentially. "No. Nor me
+neever."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+Monkey Brand Gets the Sack
+
+
+Joses was lying on his bed in the gray of dawn, looking curiously livid,
+when somebody whistled beneath his window.
+
+He rose and looked out.
+
+Monkey was standing morosely in the garden underneath.
+
+The fat man beckoned him in, and returned to his bed.
+
+The little jockey entered.
+
+He was dark, sullen, dangerous.
+
+"Well?" said the tout, lying in disarray upon the bed.
+
+"I thought you'd done a get-away," said Monkey surlily.
+
+"I've been queer," answered the other. "Has the stuff worked?"
+
+"Worked!" cried the jockey, with smothered fury. "It's worked _my_ trick
+all right. Never touched the 'orse. Run through him like so much water.
+The chemist who made up that stuff doped you and not the 'orse--and done
+me."
+
+"What they done to you?"
+
+"Took the cash off me, and give me the ---- boot instead."
+
+The tout considered.
+
+"He's fit, is he?"
+
+"Fit?" snorted the little man. "He's throwin' back-somersaults in his
+box. That's all."
+
+"When do they box him for Liverpool?"
+
+"Twelve-fifteen train."
+
+Joses gathered himself with difficulty.
+
+"See here, Brand," he said. "Are you straight?"
+
+"Straight!" shouted Monkey. "Would I ha' sold the guv'nor I serve for
+twenty year if I wasn't straight."
+
+The fat man pulled on his boots.
+
+"Never say die till you're dead," he said. "We must go north, too.
+There's the last card and we must play it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nobody but those immediately concerned were at Polefax station to see
+the local National horse boxed for Liverpool.
+
+Albert was there, and Boy, her collar about her ears, and Billy Bluff
+looking unusually dejected.
+
+Old Mat, it was remarked by the porters, was not present; and Monkey
+Brand, it was also remarked, though at the station, took no part in the
+proceedings, huddling over the fire in the waiting-room, a desolate
+little figure of woe.
+
+As the young horse entered his box at a siding, the train from Brighton
+came into the station.
+
+Silver stepped out of it, a cloak over his arm.
+
+He did not join the little group busy about the box, but made for the
+solitary figure watching from the far end of the platform.
+
+"Your cloak, Mr. Joses," he said pleasantly.
+
+"Thank you," replied the fat man, cold and casual. "I shall want it at
+Liverpool."
+
+"You left it behind you last night."
+
+"I did," admitted the other. "I was having a chat with Monkey Brand.
+And that brute of a dog came for me as I left."
+
+"The bottle you brought's in the pocket," continued Silver.
+
+"Good," said Joses. "I hope there's something in it."
+
+"Nothing now."
+
+"Ah, shame! You shouldn't hold out false hopes."
+
+Silver's chin became aggressive.
+
+"Doping's a crime, Mr. Joses."
+
+"Is that so, Mr. Silver?"
+
+"Your attempt to dope that horse last night puts you within the grip of
+the law."
+
+"Who says I attempted to dope him?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Any evidence to support your libellous statement?"
+
+"What about the notes you gave Monkey Brand?"
+
+The fat man laughed.
+
+"So Monkey Brand's implicated, is he?" he said. "He took money from me
+to settle your horse, and leaked when he was in liquor. That's the
+story, is it?" He lifted his voice. "D'you hear that, Brand?"
+
+"I hear," came the little sodden voice from the waiting-room. "And I
+says nothing. There's One Above'll see me right."
+
+Joses shook his curls at Silver.
+
+"Won't wash," he said. "Really it won't. What the lawyers call
+collusion. You didn't know I was trained for the Bar, did you? Another
+little surprise packet for you. Come, Mr. Silver, you must do a little
+better than that--an old hand like you."
+
+The young man observed him with slow, admiring eyes.
+
+"Joses," he said deliberately, "you're a clever rogue."
+
+The fat man's eye became almost genial. He looked warily round, and then
+came a step closer.
+
+"Ain't I?" he whispered.
+
+Silver, laughing gently, handed him his cloak.
+
+"Here it is," he said. "I'm keeping the little bit of paper that was in
+the pocket."
+
+The other's pupils contracted.
+
+"What paper's that?"
+
+"The prescription of the dope mixture you handed in to Burgess and
+Williams, the Brighton chemists, yesterday morning. They put their stamp
+on it and the date. I've just come back from a chat with them."
+
+The fat man watched the other as a rabbit watches a weasel.
+
+"Are you going to peach?" he said.
+
+"I'll tell you after the National," replied the other.
+
+Joses dropped his voice into his boots.
+
+"Make it a monkey and I'll quit," he muttered. "She's worth it," he
+added cunningly.
+
+Silver looked at him.
+
+The tout came a sudden step closer.
+
+"I _know_," he whispered.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI
+
+MOCASSIN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+Aintree
+
+
+The Grand National is always the great event of the chasing year. This
+year it was something more. As the American Ambassador in England,
+speaking at the Pilgrim's Club a week before the race, said, it was an
+international affair fraught with possibilities for two great peoples,
+one in blood and tongue and history, whom an unhappy accident had parted
+for a moment in the past.
+
+The mare indeed was a magnet. At the time that England is loud with the
+voice of lambs, and the arabis in Sussex gardens begins to attract the
+bees, she was drawing men to her from all the ends of the earth.
+
+They came hurrying across the seas in their thousands to see the Hope of
+the Young Countries triumphant, and above all to compel fair play for
+their champion.
+
+Indeed, there was an undeniable touch of defiance about the attitude of
+most of them. Last year the old folks at home--God bless em!--John Bull,
+the leariest of frank-spoken rogues!--had done her in.
+
+The mare had won and had been disqualified. Those were the simple facts;
+and no casuistry by the cleverest of London lawyers could get away from
+them.
+
+On the question of Chukkers and the Bully Boys, as the English cheap
+press called them, showed themselves eminently reasonable.
+
+As they said themselves not without grimness, "Gee!--Don't we know
+Chukkers?--Didn't we riz him? His father was a Frisco Chink, and his
+mother a Mexican half-breed. You can tell us nothing about him we don't
+know. We admit it all. Wipe it out. If she'd been ridden by the
+straightest feller that ever sat in the pigskin the result'd have been
+the same. Are you going to give America best in your big race? Is John
+Bull a bleatin' baa-lamb?"
+
+And so _Hands off and no Hanky-Panky_ was the war-chaunt of the young
+American bloods whom great Cunarders vomited on to the docks at
+Liverpool and P.-and-O.'s landed at Tilbury to join the Ikey's Own, who
+had been on watch throughout the winter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The National always takes place on the Friday of Aintree week.
+
+All the week special trains were running Liverpool-ward from the ends of
+the British Isles. London, Glasgow, Cardiff, and Plymouth each sent
+their contingents speeding north on the same engrossing errand. All day
+and night people were turning out in their thousands, hanging over
+bridges, lining railway embankments, to see the great engines with the
+Kangaroo bound to their buffer-plates coming through, yes, and cheering
+them.
+
+The Boys in the corridor trains stood at the windows with folded arms,
+watched the waving crowds grimly, and winked at each other.
+
+They had a profound admiration for John Bull's capacity for roguery, and
+an equally profound belief in their own ability to go one better.
+
+Last year J.B. had bested them--and they thought all the better of him
+for it. This year they meant to get their own back--and a bit more.
+
+          _We are coming, Uncle Ikey, we are coming millions strong,
+          For to see the haughty English don't do our Ikey wrong,_
+
+they sang out of the windows with provocative enjoyment.
+
+The people waving on the embankments were in fact innocent of crime,
+committed or conceived. They had no champion of their own, and with a
+certain large simplicity they hailed as theirs the mare who had crossed
+the seas to trample on them.
+
+Liverpool made holiday for the occasion.
+
+The Corporation feasted its American visitors, while the big ship-owners
+gave a dance at the Wellington Rooms.
+
+The Adelphi Hotel was the headquarters of the Beyond-the-Seas folk, and
+it was full to overflowing. In the huge dining-room, where every year
+the Waterloo Cup dinner is held, there was an immense muster the night
+before the race. Lord Milburn, the Prime Minister, was there, with the
+Mayor of Liverpool on his left, and the American Ambassador upon his
+right. One famous Ex-President of the Great Republic was present, and
+many of the most distinguished citizens of the two countries; Ikey
+Aaronsohnn with his eternal twinkle, was there, and Jaggers looking like
+a Church of England Bishop. Chukkers alone was absent. And he was lying
+low upstairs, it was said, with one of Ikey's Own at his bedside, and
+another over his door, to see that no harm befell him before the great
+day dawned. America might not like the great jockey, but she meant him
+to ride her mare to victory.
+
+Lord Milburn, a somewhat ponderous gentleman, well-known with the Quorn,
+a representative Imperialist statesman, was at his best. And if his
+best was never very good, at least his references to Mocassin brought
+down the house.
+
+"She is something moa than the best steeplechaser that ever looked
+through a bridle-ah," he announced in his somewhat portentous way. "She
+is--in my judgment--the realization of a dream. In her have met once
+more the two great streams of the Anglo-Saxon race. You have every right
+to be proud of hah; and so, I venture to say, have we. For we of the old
+country claim our share in the mare. She comes, I say, in the last
+resort--the last resort--of English thoroughbred stock. (Cheers,
+Counter-cheers.) And if she wins to-morrah--as she will (cheers), 'Given
+fair play'" came a voice from the back. "_That_ she will get--(cheers
+and boos)--the people of this country will rejoice that another edifice
+has been laid to the mighty brick--ah of Anglo-Saxon fellowship on which
+the hope, and I think I may say, the happiness of the world depends."
+
+The evening ended, as the Liverpool _Herald_ reported, at two in the
+morning, when Abe Gideon, the bark-blocks comedian, was hoisted on to
+the table and sang the _Mocassin Song_ to a chorus that set the water in
+the docks rocking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+The Sefton Arms
+
+
+Old Mat never stopped in Liverpool for the big race.
+
+That was partly because everybody else did, and partly because he always
+preferred The Sefton Arms upon the course. When his little daughter
+first took to accompanying her dad to the National she used to stay the
+night with a Methodist cousin of her mother's and join her father on the
+course next morning.
+
+This time she refused point-blank to favour Cousin Agatha, and further
+refused to argue the matter. She was going with her father to The Sefton
+Arms. Mrs. Woodburn was genuinely distressed, so much so indeed that
+Silver heard her hold forth for the first time in his knowledge of her
+on the modern mother's favourite theme--the daughter of to-day.
+
+Old Mat gave her little sympathy.
+
+"She's said she's goin', so goin' she is," he grunted matter-of-factly.
+"No argifyin's no good when she's said that. You might know that by now,
+Mar."
+
+He added, to assuage his wife, that Mr. Silver was going to stop with
+them at The Sefton Arms.
+
+"He's better than some," said the old lady almost vengefully.
+
+"Now then, Mar-r-r!" cried the old man, "You're gettin' a reg'lar old
+woman, you are."
+
+When his wife had left the room in dudgeon:
+
+"It's silly," grunted the trainer. "'Course she wants to be on the
+course. It's only in Natur. It's her hoss, and her race. She ain't goin'
+to run no risks. And I don't blame her neether. There's only one way o'
+seein' a thing through as I've ever know'd, and that's seein' it through
+yourself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Woodburn's good-bye to her daughter was cold as it was wistful.
+
+At the garden-gate Boy turned and waved.
+
+"Cheer, mum!" she cried.
+
+Her mother, standing austerely on the steps of the house, did not
+respond.
+
+"I shall be back on Saturday," called the girl as she climbed into the
+buggy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was on the Monday.
+
+On that day Boy and Albert and Billy Bluff took the young horse north,
+travelling all the way in his box.
+
+At Euston it was evident something out of the way was forward. There was
+hardly a crowd at the station, but expectant folk were gathered here and
+there in knots and there were more police than usual about.
+
+The secret was soon out.
+
+Jaggers, with the air of the Grand Inquisitor, appeared on the platform
+with his head-lad, Rushton. The trainer entered into talk with a man
+whom Albert informed his mistress was a cop in plain clothes.
+
+"Place swarms with 'em," the youth whispered. "And Ikey's Own. They're
+takin' no chances."
+
+In fact, Mocassin and her two stable-companions were travelling on the
+same train as the Putnam horse.
+
+As Albert remarked, not without complacency:
+
+"One thing. If there's a smash we're all in it."
+
+At Aintree the crowd, which somehow always knows, had gathered to see
+the crack. They didn't see much but four chestnut legs and a long tail;
+but what they saw was enough to satisfy them. You could swaddle her like
+a corpse from muzzle to hocks, and from withers to fetlock, but the
+Queen of Kentucky's walk was not to be mistaken. And as she came out of
+her box on to the platform, treading daintily, the little gathering
+raised the familiar slogan that told she was betrayed.
+
+Boy let the favourite get well away before she unboxed her horse. There
+was nobody about by then but a small urchin who jeered:
+
+"Say, lydy! is yon what they call a camel-leopard?"
+
+The little party had the road to themselves, and passed unheeded.
+
+The Billjim Guard were escorting the favourite to the yard, and the
+crowd were escorting the Billjims.
+
+When Four-Pound-the-Second reached the yard with his three satellites
+twenty minutes later, the backwash of the crowd still eddied and swirled
+about the entrance.
+
+The policeman on the gate made a fuss about admitting Billy Bluff. But
+the head yard-man, who knew Mat Woodburn's daughter almost as well as he
+knew his own, interfered on her behalf.
+
+"He'll sleep in my horse's box," Boy explained.
+
+"Won't your horse sleep without him, Miss?" grinned the yard-man.
+
+"Not so well," answered the girl.
+
+"Oh, let him in," said the other. "Pity to spoil that horse's beauty
+sleep. Might lose his looks."
+
+Boy could never bring herself to titter at the jokes of those whom it
+was expedient to placate. Happily Albert was at hand to make amends, and
+he, to be sure, had no qualms of conscience.
+
+The little procession entered, Billy Bluff at the heels of the great
+horse, striking fire in the dusk from the cobbled yard.
+
+"He's to look after Chukkers, I suppose," said the yard-man grimly,
+pleased at his own generosity, well satisfied with his wit, and fairly
+so with Albert's tribute to it.
+
+"He's to look after my horse," said Boy resolutely.
+
+"He looks he could look after himself, Miss," replied the witty
+yard-man.
+
+"So he can, sir, with you to help him," said the swift and tactful
+Albert.
+
+The yard-man, who could tell you stories of Boomerang's National, and
+Cannibal's victory, that not even Monkey Brand could surpass, knew of
+old the feeling between Putnam's and the Dewhurst stable, and had placed
+the boxes of the two horses far apart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All through the week the excitement grew.
+
+The Sefton Arms was seething; the bar a slowly heaving mass of
+racing-men, jockeys, touts, habitues.
+
+Once or twice there were rows between Ikey's Own--the Yankee doodlers,
+as the local wits called them--and the English silver-ring bookies; and
+the cause of the quarrels was invariably the same--the treatment of the
+mare at last year's National.
+
+Throughout the week Boy went her quiet, strenuous way, unconscious of
+the commotion about her, or careless of it.
+
+Jim Silver escorted her to and from the yard. Most people knew Old
+Mat's daughter and respected her; and those who did not, respected the
+grave-faced young giant who was her constant attendant.
+
+When the pair passed swiftly through the bar, an observer would have
+noticed that a hush fell on the drinkers, accompanied by surreptitious
+elbow-nudgings and significant winks.
+
+It was clear that the young couple were of secret interest to the dingy
+crowd. And in fact there were rumours afloat about them--sensational
+stories not a few about what they stood to win in love upon the race.
+
+Monkey Brand and Joses were always drinking together in the bar as
+Silver walked through. Once he passed quite close to them. The little
+jockey's glassy eye rested meaninglessly on the young man's face and
+wandered away. When the other had moved on, he dropped his eyelid and
+muttered to his pal:
+
+"Wants the ---- kybosh puttin' on him. Good as called me a copper's
+nark."
+
+"Hundred thousand in the pot," grinned the fat man. "And a dainty bit o'
+white meat. I don't blame him." He licked his lips.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were few more familiar figures at the bar of The Sefton Arms at
+National time than that of Monkey Brand, and this year few more pathetic
+ones.
+
+It was soon bruited abroad that Old Mat and his head-lad had parted
+after more years of association than many cared to recall. And it was
+clear that the little man felt the rupture. He wandered morosely through
+the crowd in the train of his fat familiar like a lost soul outside the
+gates of Paradise. Usually a merry sprite, the life and soul of every
+group he joined, he was under the weather, as the saying went, and what
+was still more remarkable he showed it.
+
+Everybody was aware of the facts, though nobody knew the story.
+
+The Duke, who was genuinely fond of the little jockey, and full of
+vulgar curiosity, coming upon him two nights before the race, stopped
+him.
+
+"I'm sorry to hear you and Mr. Woodburn have parted after all these
+years, Brand," he said in his gruff way.
+
+"Thank you, your Grace," said the little jockey, pinching his lips.
+
+The Duke waited. Nothing happened, but Monkey poked his chin in the air,
+and swallowed.
+
+"I thought you were set for life," continued the Duke slowly.
+
+"I thought so, too, your Grace," answered the jockey. "But the human
+'eart's a funny affair--very funny, as the sayin' is."
+
+Long ago he had acquired the trick of moralizing from his old master.
+
+"What's the trouble, then?" grunted the Duke.
+
+He was greatly curious and honestly concerned.
+
+"Thought I were sellin' him," muttered Monkey.
+
+The Duke bent shaggy brows upon the little man.
+
+"Were you?" he asked.
+
+For a moment the old merry Monkey rose from the dead and twinkled. Then
+he stiffened like a dead man, touched his hat, and turned away.
+
+The Duke clung to him.
+
+He, too, had heard a story, and wished to know the rights and wrongs of
+it.
+
+"Well, well," he said. "We must all hope the Putnam horse wins--for Mr.
+Silver's sake. Eh, what?"
+
+"Yes, your Grace," replied the uncommunicative Monkey.
+
+The night before the race the Duke, still hunting the trail tenaciously,
+stumbled, according to his own account, on Old Mat, and reported the
+substance of his interview with Monkey in that ingenuous way of his,
+half simple, half brutal, and all with an astonishing _savoir-faire_ you
+would never have given him credit for.
+
+"One thing," he ended, "he ain't blackguardin' you."
+
+Mat seemed lost in memories.
+
+"I wep' a tear. I did reely," he said at last. Then he shook a sorrowful
+head. "I ain't one o' yer whitewings meself," he said. "Not by no means.
+But he shock me, Monkey do. He does reely." He dabbed his eye. "Rogues
+and rasqueals, yer Grace," he said. "All very well. But there is a
+limit, as the Psalmist very proply remarked."
+
+The Duke turned to go, his curiosity still unsatisfied.
+
+"Where's Boy?" he asked gruffly. "I've seen nothing of her this time."
+
+"She's kep' busy, your Grace--nursin' the baby."
+
+"How is he?"
+
+"Keeps a-crowin'," said the old man, "from all I hears of it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+On the Course
+
+
+Next morning was gray with gleams of sun: an ideal day, old hands said,
+for the great race of the year.
+
+Mat found his way to the Paddock early and alone.
+
+At Aintree everything is known about the notables by everybody, and
+there were few more familiar figures than that of the old man with the
+broad shoulders, the pink face, and the difficulty in drawing breath.
+
+It was twenty odd years since Cannibal had won the big race for him; and
+this year it was known that he had only come up to see the sport. True
+he had a horse running, down on the card as Four-Pound-the-Second, brown
+gelding, five years old, green jacket and cap, ten stone; but he was an
+any-price outsider, only entered because for something like fifty years
+there had never been a National in which a Putnam horse had not played a
+part. And rumour had it that Four-Pound was a rum un even for Putnam's.
+
+As Mat entered the Paddock, he was looking round him--for his missing
+daughter, observers said.
+
+Jaggers and Ikey Aaronsohnn marked him from afar and told off a couple
+of the Boys to track him from a respectful distance.
+
+The old man's familiar figure, his queer clothes, and reputation as a
+character, drew others toward him. He lilted heavily across the Paddock
+with a word to one, a nod to another, a wink for a third, talking all
+the time and breathing like a grampus, with a little crowd of tittering
+nondescripts swirling in his wake and hanging on his words.
+
+"Don't 'ave nothin' to do wi' me. That's my adwice to you. I'm Old Mat.
+You oughter know that by this. No, I ain't goin' to walk round the
+course this year. As I says, the course don't change, but I does. If the
+course wants me to see it, it must walk round me. I've done the proper
+thing be the course this sixty year. Now it's the course's turn. _Good
+morning, Mr. Jaggers_. Yes, I see him, and he see me--only he look the
+other way. Pretty little thing, ain't he? Reminds me of that foreign
+chap went on the religious ramp in Italy. I seen his picture at Mr.
+Haggard's. Savierollher, wasn't it? They burnt him; and I don't blame
+'em. He was Jaggers's father I _'ave_ 'eard. Only you mustn't 'and it
+on, else you might get me into trouble."
+
+He crossed the course, looked at the water opposite the Grand Stand, and
+examined the first fence lugubriously.
+
+"Time was I could ha' hop it off one foot," he said. "Something's
+'appened. Must 'ave."
+
+Then he returned to the Paddock, passing a bookie with uplifted hand of
+protest.
+
+"Get away from me, Satan," he said. "Don't tempt an old man what's never
+fell yet."
+
+"I know all about that, Mr. Woodburn," grinned the bookie.
+
+"I got my principles same as them as 'asn't," continued the old man,
+marching firmly on. "You go and tell that to the Three J's, Mr.
+Buckland. There they are be the Grand Stand. No, when I gets back to
+Mar there'll be nothin' to show her only a blank bettin' book." He
+stopped quite suddenly and dropped his voice to a whisper: "Anything
+doin', Mr. Buckland?"
+
+His little following roared.
+
+"Favourite fours. Nothing else wanted, Mr. Woodburn," said the amused
+man. "It's just the day for the mare."
+
+"Fours," said the old man. "Price shorter nor ever I remember it since
+Cloister's year. It's a cert. for the Three J's. What about my little
+ride-a-cock-horse, Mr. Buckland?"
+
+The bookmaker referred to his card.
+
+"Four-Pound-the-Second," he said. "Give you forties."
+
+"Forties!" guffawed Old Mat. "A young giraffe like him, dropped this
+spring in the Sarah desert under a cocoanut shy. Four _hundred_ and
+forties I thought you was goin' to say. 'Ark to him!" He appealed to the
+delighted crowd. "Offers me forties against my pantomime colt, and ain't
+ashamed of himself. I'd ha' left him at home in the menadgeree along o'
+the two-'eaded calf and the boy with blue hair if I'd known."
+
+"He's a powerful great horse, Mr. Woodburn," smiled the bookie.
+
+"Hoss!" cried the outraged old man. "'Ave you seen him? He ain't a hoss
+at all. He's a he-goat. Only I've shave the top of him to took you all
+in. He's comin' on at the 'alls to-night after the race. Goin' to sit on
+a stool and sing _The Wop 'em Opossum_, specially composed by me and Mar
+for this occasion only."
+
+He lilted on his way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By noon the Paddock was filling, and the Carriage Enclosure becoming
+packed.
+
+People began to blacken the railway embankment, to gather in knots all
+round the course at likely places, to line the Canal.
+
+In the crowd you could hear the dialects of every county in England
+mingling with accents of the young countries beyond the seas.
+
+At noon the Duke and his party crossed the Paddock.
+
+"You won't join us, Mat?" he called. "I've got a saloon on the
+Embankment."
+
+"No, sir, thank you," said the old man. "Mat's corner in the Grand
+Stand'll find me at home as usual come three o'clock."
+
+The Duke paused. He was still hunting the trail.
+
+"If you see Boy before the race, tell her we'll be glad if she cares to
+join us."
+
+The trainer shook his head.
+
+"Thank you kindly, your Grace. She always goes to the Stand by the Canal
+Turn when Chukkers is riding."
+
+There was a chuckle from the bystanders.
+
+"He's ridin' this time' all right, from all I hear," said the Duke
+grimly.
+
+"You're right, sir," answered the old man. "Last night he was countin'
+his dead in his sleep. The policeman what was over his door to see no
+lady kidnap him for his looks heard him and tell me."
+
+The jockey, who was passing at the moment, stopped.
+
+"Say it agin," he cried fiercely.
+
+The old trainer was face to face with one of the only two men in the
+world to whom he felt unkindly.
+
+"Ain't once enough, then?" he asked tartly.
+
+The jockey walked on his way.
+
+"Ah, you're an old man, Mr. Woodburn," he called back. "_You_ take
+advantage."
+
+"I may be old, but I am _white_," called the old man after him, his blue
+eye lighting.
+
+"Oh, come, come!" cried the Duke, delighted, as he hurried after his
+party. "Where's Mrs. Woodburn?"
+
+Chukkers joined the two J's, who were hobnobbing with some of Ikey's Own
+under the Grand Stand.
+
+Monkey Brand and Joses stood together on the outskirts of the group.
+
+Jaggers, austere as the Mogul Emperor, approached the tout.
+
+"You're a monkey down, Joses," he said, cold and quiet. "The Putnam
+horse is starting."
+
+The other smiled.
+
+"He's starting, sir," he said. "But he's not winning."
+
+Jaggers blinked at him.
+
+"What d'you mean?"
+
+"I mean the race isn't lost yet, and mayn't be--even if the mare don't
+win."
+
+He moved away, and Monkey followed him.
+
+Jaggers joined his colleagues.
+
+"What did he say?" asked Ikey in his eager yet wary way.
+
+The trainer told him.
+
+"Thinks he knows something," muttered the little Levantine, his brown
+face thoughtful.
+
+"Kiddin' he do," grunted Chukkers, sucking his charm.
+
+Ikey looked after the retreating fat man.
+
+"He's collared Monkey Brand anyway," he said.
+
+"If Monkey ain't collared him," retorted the jockey.
+
+The moods of the three men were various and characteristic: Jaggers glum
+and uncertain, Ikey confident, Chukkers grim.
+
+"Who's riding the Putnam horse?" asked Ikey.
+
+"Albert Edward," Jaggers replied.
+
+Chukkers removed his charm from his mouth.
+
+"I ain't afraid o' him," he said. "He's never rode this course afore.
+It'll size him up."
+
+"What's the price o' Four-Pound?" asked Ikey.
+
+"Forties," answered Chukkers, biting home.
+
+The little Levantine was surprised, as those Simian eyebrows of his
+revealed.
+
+"Forties!" he said. "I thought he was a hundred to one."
+
+"So he were a week since," answered Chukkers surlily. "Silver's been
+plankin' the dollars on."
+
+"Ah, that ain't all," said Jaggers gloomily. "The Ring knows something.
+Here, Rushton, go and see what they're layin' Four-Pound."
+
+The head-lad went and returned immediately.
+
+"Thirties offered, sir. No takers."
+
+Jaggers shook his head.
+
+"I don't like it," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All morning, carriages, coaches, silent-moving motorcars, char-a-bancs
+with rowdy parties, moke-carts, people on bicycles and afoot, streamed
+out of Liverpool.
+
+By one o'clock people were taking their places in the Grand Stand.
+Everywhere America was in the ascendant, good-humoured, a thought
+aggressive. Phalanxes of the Boys linked arm to arm were sweeping up
+and down the course, singing with genial turbulence
+
+          _Hands off and no hanky-panky._
+
+To an impartial onlooker the attitude of the two great peoples toward
+each other was an interesting study. Both were wary, ironical,
+provocative, and perfect tempered. They were as brothers, rivals in the
+arena, who having known each other from nursery days, cherish no
+romantic and sentimental regard for each other, are aware of each
+other's tricks, and watchful for them while still maintaining a certain
+measure of mutual respect and even affection.
+
+When the American crowd surged up and down the course roaring
+magnificently,
+
+          _The star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
+          O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave,_
+
+the counter-marching Englishmen met them with the challenging,
+
+          _The land of Hope and Glory
+          The Mother of the Free._
+
+With any other peoples rioting and bloodshed would have ensued. Here,
+apart from an occasional cut-and-dry battle between two enthusiastic
+individuals in the fringes of the crowd, there was never any need for
+police interference.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were two flat races before the National. The horses were gathering
+for the first when Albert in his shirt sleeves bustled across the
+Paddock.
+
+A whistle stopped him and he turned.
+
+"'Ullo, Mr. Brand!"
+
+"Where are you off to?"
+
+"I'm goin' to dress now."
+
+"You're early."
+
+"First race is starting."
+
+"How's the horse?"
+
+"Keeps a-lingerin' along."
+
+"Who's with him?"
+
+"Mr. Silver."
+
+The fat man chimed in:
+
+"Where's the lady, then?"
+
+Albert looked blank.
+
+"I ain't seen her," he said. "Believe she's walking round the course."
+
+Joses laughed.
+
+"I should have thought you'd have been the one to walk round the
+course," he said.
+
+"I been," replied the lad keenly.
+
+"And what d'you think of it?" asked Monkey.
+
+The youth rubbed his stomach with the most delicate consideration.
+
+"Pore Albert," he said. "That's what I think. They're a yard through
+some of 'em. You clears 'em clean or--it's amen, so be it, good-bye to
+the totties, and no flowers by request."
+
+He bustled on his way.
+
+Monkey nudged his mate.
+
+"Keeps it up," he muttered.
+
+"Proper," the other answered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The second race was run and won. Two o'clock came and went. The jockeys
+began to emerge from the dressing-room under the Grand Stand. Monkey
+Brand and Joses watched the door.
+
+"Where's green then?" muttered the tout, as the expected failed to show.
+
+"'Ush!" said Monkey at his elbow.
+
+The fat man turned.
+
+At the far side of the Paddock, by the gate, the looked-for jockey had
+appeared out of nowhere.
+
+The green of his cap betrayed him, and the fact that old Mat was in
+close conversation with him.
+
+He wore a long racing-coat, and his collar was turned up. Indeed, apart
+from his peaked cap drawn down over his eyes and his spurs, little but
+coat was to be seen of him.
+
+"Where did he spring from?" asked Joses, and began to move toward the
+jockey.
+
+His companion stayed him suddenly.
+
+Billy Bluff, who had evaded the police, and dodged his way into the
+Paddock, raced up to the jockey and began to squirm about him, half
+triumphant, half ashamed.
+
+The fat man stopped dead and stared, with his bulging eyes.
+
+"Straight!" he cried, and smote his hands together.
+
+The jockey cut at the dog with his whip, and then the police came up and
+hunted him back into the road.
+
+At the moment the band struck up the National Anthem, and the Knowsley
+party, including the King, the American Ambassador, and Lord Milburn,
+crossed the Paddock swiftly toward Lord Derby's box.
+
+Suddenly the strains of the band were drowned by an immense roar of
+cheering.
+
+Mocassin was being led into the Paddock.
+
+Nothing could be seen of her. Ikey's Own had formed a close-linked
+phalanx about her. No Englishman might penetrate that jealous barrier or
+help to form it. Within its sacred circle the mare was being stripped
+and saddled.
+
+Then there came another roar.
+
+Chukkers was up in the star-spangled jacket.
+
+The famous jockey sat above the heads of the crowd, and indulged in the
+little piece of swagger he always permitted himself. Very deliberately
+he tied the riband of his cap over the peak while the eyes of thousands
+watched him. As he did so the crowd about him stirred and parted. A girl
+passed through. It was the American Ambassador's daughter. She handed
+the jockey a tricolour cockade, which he fixed gallantly in front of his
+cap. It was clear that he was in the best of humours, for he exchanged
+chaff with his admirers, adding a word to Jaggers as he gathered his
+reins.
+
+Settling in the saddle, he squeezed the mare.
+
+She reared a little as though to gratify the desire of those at the back
+for a peep at her.
+
+As she left the Paddock and entered the course, the people rose to her
+_en masse_. Storms of cheers greeted her and went bellowing round the
+course. The Canal tossed them back to the Grand Stand, and the
+Embankment was white with waving handkerchiefs.
+
+          _Mocassin! Mocassin! Mocassin!_
+
+All eyes were on the mare, and the great brown horse, in the far corner
+of the Paddock, was stripped, and his jockey astride, before half a
+dozen people were aware of his presence.
+
+By the time Jaggers and Ikey had observed him, he was on the move.
+
+The two J's, Monkey Brand and Joses, crossed toward him, but there was
+no getting near that tumultuous earth-shaker in brown. Jim Silver was at
+his head, and, strong as the young man was, he had all his work cut out
+to hold the horse as he bounced across the Paddock, scattering his crowd
+with far-reaching heels.
+
+"'Ware horse!" rose the cry.
+
+"Give him room!"
+
+"Look out for his heels!"
+
+"Steady the beauty!"
+
+Plunging across the Paddock, to the disturbance of everybody but the
+little jockey with the fair hair, who swung to his motions as a flower,
+fast in earth, swings to the wind, he tore out of the Paddock amid the
+jeers and laughter of some and the curses of others.
+
+"Smart!" said Joses.
+
+"My eye!" answered Monkey Brand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jim Silver, panting after his run, joined Old Mat.
+
+The two made toward the Grand Stand.
+
+In front of them a middle-aged man, soberly dressed, and a tall girl
+were walking.
+
+"That's the American Ambassador," muttered the old man as they passed.
+"Come with Lord Derby's party. Great scholar, they say. That's his
+daughter."
+
+The tall Ambassador with the stoop paused to let the other couple go by.
+
+Then he nodded at the young man's back.
+
+"Mr. Silver," he murmured in his daughter's ear. "And the old
+gentleman's _her_ father."
+
+The girl was alert at once. She, too, had heard the tales.
+
+"Is it?" she cried. "Where's she?"
+
+"I don't know," the other answered.
+
+"I _hope_ they win," said the girl--"in some ways."
+
+Her father smiled.
+
+"You're no American," he scoffed. "You're a woman. That's all you are."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+The Star-Spangled Jacket
+
+
+As the two men took their places, the parade in front of the Grand Stand
+was in full swing.
+
+There was a big field: some thirty starters in all.
+
+The favourite, as the top weight, led them by at a walk.
+
+She was quite at her ease, yet on fire as always, snatching at her bit
+in characteristic style. Chukkers rode her with long and easy rein, as
+though to show he trusted her. As she came by, the Grand Stand began to
+sing with one voice:
+
+    _The maid of our mountains--
+      Mocassin's her name!
+    The speed of the panther;
+      The heart of the flame;
+    The Belle of the Blue Ridge,
+      The hope of the plain,
+    The Queen of Kentucky,
+      O, lift her again--_
+
+Chanted thus by tens of thousands of voices, singing round the course
+and up into the heavens, and culminating in the roaring slogan--
+
+
+          _Mocassin! Mocassin! Mocassin!_
+
+the simple song became for the moment clothed in vicarious majesty.
+
+Jim Silver felt the thrill of it, as did his companion.
+
+"Mar'd like that," said Old Mat sentimentally. "She's same as me. She
+likes hymns."
+
+The object of the enthusiasm seemed unconscious of it.
+
+She came by at that swift pattering walk of hers--like a girl going
+marketing as her lovers said--amid the comments of her admirers.
+
+"She's all right, sure!"
+
+"Don't she nip along?"
+
+"He looks grim, Chukkers do."
+
+"Yes; he's for it this time."
+
+"They've injected her--American style."
+
+"Never!"
+
+"They have, my son. Trust Jaggers. Can't leave it to Nature. Must always
+go one better."
+
+"Ikey's got two other horses in."
+
+"Which?"
+
+"There's old Jackaroo--in the purple and gold, Rushton riding."
+
+"Which is the second Dewhurst horse?"
+
+"This in the canary. Flibberty-gibbet. Little Boy Braithwaite."
+
+"He's only a nipper."
+
+"He can ride, though."
+
+"They're to nurse the crack through the squeeze."
+
+"She'll want nursing."
+
+"She's all right if she stands up till Beecher's Brook."
+
+"She'll stand up. Trust Chukkers."
+
+"He's got nothing to beat."
+
+"Only Moonlighter."
+
+"Which _is_ the Irish horse?"
+
+"The gray there. Cerise and white."
+
+"Flashy thing."
+
+"Yes. He'll give no trouble though. Three mile and a half is his limit."
+
+"Here's Gee-Woa, the Yorkshireman."
+
+"Looks an old-fashioned sort."
+
+"He can jump a haystack and stay all day; but he can't get a move on."
+
+"If there's grief enough he might get home, though."
+
+"There's Kingfisher. The West-country crack. Bay and two white ducks."
+
+Last but one came Four-Pound-the-Second with his little fair jockey up.
+The horse was so big, and the jockey so small, that a laugh went up as
+the pair came by.
+
+"What's this in green, then?"
+
+"Old Mat's horse. Four-Pound-the-Second. Ten stun."
+
+"Anything known of him?"
+
+"Won a small race at Lingfield."
+
+"Who's riding?"
+
+"One o' the Putnam lads. Carries his prayer-book in his pocket. Mar
+makes 'em--for luck!"
+
+"He can foot it."
+
+"I'd like to see a walkin'-race between that mare and the big un. What's
+his price?" He leaned over to the ring below and asked.
+
+"Twenties," came the answer.
+
+Jaggers heard and nudged Ikey.
+
+The Putnam horse marched by, blowing his nose, and in front of the Grand
+Stand gave a playful little buck as much as to say: "I would if I could,
+but I won't."
+
+Then Chukkers swung round and led the horses back to the
+starting-point.
+
+"Only one thing I wish," muttered Old Mat in his companion's ear. "I
+wish there'd been rain in the night. Twelve-stun-three'd steady Miss
+Mustang through the dirt."
+
+"Our horse has got a little bit in hand," replied the young man.
+
+"You're right, sir," answered the other.
+
+The gossip came and went about the pair. Neither heard nor indeed heeded
+it. The old man was easy, almost nonchalant; the young man quiet and
+self-contained.
+
+The horses drew up to the right, their backs to the Grand Stand, a long,
+swaying line of silken jackets shimmering in the sun.
+
+Old Mat's face became quietly radiant.
+
+"Pretty, ain't it?" he said. "Like a bed o' toolups swaying in the wind.
+I wish Mar could see that. Worst o' principles, they cuts you off so
+much."
+
+He raised his glasses.
+
+"Where's Chukkers? Oh, I see. In the middle, and his buffer-hosses not
+too fur on eether side of him. That's lucky for Chukkers. One thing, my
+little baa-lamb'll take a bit o' knockin' out."
+
+"Where is he?" asked Silver.
+
+"Away on the right there," answered the old man. "Doin' a cake-walk on
+the next hoss's toes."
+
+There was very little trouble at the post. The starter got his field
+away well together at the first drop of the flag.
+
+Only one was left, and that was green.
+
+The great horse who had been sparring with the air as the flag fell came
+down from aloft and got going a long six lengths behind the field.
+
+Neither he nor his rider seemed the least concerned.
+
+"That's my little beauty," muttered Old Mat. "He'll start his own time,
+he will. Maybe to-day; maybe to-morrow; maybe not at all. One thing,
+though: he _has_ started."
+
+The brown horse was pulling out to the right to lie on the outside.
+
+The old trainer nodded approvingly.
+
+"That's right, my boy," he said. "You let 'em rattle 'emselves to bits,
+while you lays easy behind. There'll be plenty o' room in front in a
+moment or two."
+
+An old hand in a white top-hat just in front turned round.
+
+"That lad o' yours rides cunning, Mr. Woodburn," he said.
+
+"He's a fair card, he is," replied the old man enigmatically.
+
+"Was it deliberate?" asked an ingenious youth.
+
+"Who shall say, my son?" replied the old trainer. "Only the grass-'opper
+what walketh the tiles by night--same as the Psalmist says."
+
+The scramble and scrimmage at the first few fences resulted in plenty of
+grief. Jockeys were rising from the ground and running off the course,
+and loose horses were pursuing their perilous way alone.
+
+Behind the first flight, in the centre of the course, showed conspicuous
+the Star-spangled Jacket of the favourite.
+
+Chukkers, too, was taking his time, running no risks, his eyes
+everywhere, calculating his chances, fending off dangers as they loomed
+up on him one after the other. He was drawing in to the rails on his
+left flank for security from cannoning horses.
+
+The first few fences behind him, the danger of a knock-out would be
+greatly lessened. Till then it was most grave. Chukkers was aware of it;
+so were the tens of thousands watching; so were his stable-mates.
+
+As Chukkers crossed to the rails Jackaroo, who lay in front on the
+inside, drew away to let the favourite up under his lee.
+Flibberty-gibbet, on the other hand, the second Dewhurst horse, had been
+bumped at the first fence, and pecked heavily on landing. Little Boy
+Braithwaite in the canary jacket had been unshipped, and was scrambling
+about on his horse's neck. He lay now a distance behind. Chukkers was
+signalling furiously with his elbow for the boy to come up on his right;
+and he had cause.
+
+For Kingfisher, the West-country horse, riderless and with trailing
+reins, was careering alongside him like a rudderless ship in full sail.
+
+For two fences the loose horse and the favourite rose side by side; and
+the watchers held their breath.
+
+Then the bay began to close in.
+
+Chukkers turned and screamed over his shoulder. Rushton on Jackaroo
+still two lengths in front looked round and saw he could do nothing.
+
+Little Boy Braithwaite, who had at last recovered his seat, came up like
+thunder on the quarters of the mare. The lad drove the filly at the
+loose horse and rammed him in the flank.
+
+A groan went up from the assembled thousands.
+
+"Good boy!" roared the Americans.
+
+"Dead boy, ye mean," muttered Old Mat. "He's got it."
+
+Horse and boy went down together in headlong ruin. Flibberty-gibbet rose
+with difficulty and limped away with broken leg and nodding head. The
+boy rolled over on his face and lay still under the heavens, his canary
+jacket like a blob of mustard on the green.
+
+The women in the crowd caught their breath.
+
+"Yes, he's done," muttered Mat, "Saved the Three J's a quarter of a
+million, though."
+
+"But she's through," commented Silver.
+
+"Don't you believe it," grumbled the old man.
+
+The sacrifice, indeed, seemed to have been in vain. Kingfisher staggered
+under the shock, recovered, and came sailing up once more, as it might
+have been deliberately, alongside the mare.
+
+Chukkers leaned far out and slashed the oncoming bay across the face;
+and the crowds on the Embankment and in the saloon-carriages on the
+railway heard distinctly the swish-swish of the falling whip.
+
+A groan of satisfaction went up from the taut onlookers. Chukkers's
+action had cleared him. Indeed he had killed two birds with one stone,
+and nearly a third. Kingfisher shied away over the course and crossed
+the path of Gee-Woa, who was going steady on the right. Both horses went
+down. Surging along behind the Yorkshireman, calm and unconcerned by the
+flurry and rush and confusion in front, came a great brown horse, the
+last of the galloping rout. He flew the ruin of men and horses broadcast
+before him on the grass, bounced twice, as Old Mat said, and cleared the
+fence in front with a foot to spare.
+
+"Double!" roared the crowd, applauding horse and horseman alike.
+
+Jim Silver sighed.
+
+"Nearly bounced you, Mr. Woodburn," said the White Hat in front. "That
+lad of yours can ride."
+
+"Bounce is the boy," answered the old man. "Nothing like it. Now there's
+more room."
+
+"Where's Miss Woodburn?" asked the garrulous White Hat.
+
+"In heaven, my lord, I 'opes," answered the other, wiping his eye.
+
+The old gentleman looked foolish and made a face.
+
+"Oh, dear. I'm sorry. I hadn't heard."
+
+"No 'arm done, sir," replied the trainer gently. "These things will
+'appen. Seems we're most of us mortal when our time comes." He adjusted
+his glasses. "Yes. Mare's through now. Layin' down to it nice."
+
+Indeed, the troubles of the favourite were over for the present. Either
+Jackaroo was coming back to her, or she was coming up with the old
+horse. The star-spangled jacket and the purple and gold were together,
+the mare lying between the rails and her stable-companion.
+
+As the field swung left-handed and passed parallel to the Grand Stand on
+the far side of the course, the light-weights were still well together
+in front and bunched like a covey of partridges. Then came the favourite
+and her stable-companion, rising fence for fence; after them a chain of
+stragglers; and bringing up the rear, rollicking along with his head in
+his chest, revelling in his work, the twenty-to-one outsider.
+
+"So far so good," said Mat, "as the man said when he was 'alf-way
+through cuttin' his throat."
+
+The American contingent breathed afresh, and the bookies were looking
+glum. Once over Beecher's Brook the first time round, with half the
+field down, the chance of a knock-out reduced, and Gee-Woa and
+Kingfisher grazing peacefully under the Embankment, the favourite's
+chances had greatly increased.
+
+True, the gray Moonlighter in the cerise and white was in the lead and
+going like a snowstorm; but not a man among the tens of thousands on the
+course who did not know that four miles and a half was a mile too much
+for the Irishman.
+
+"What price the favourite?" roared the Boys.
+
+"Threes," said the bookies, and gave them grudgingly.
+
+"They're settlin' down to it now," muttered Old Mat. "Favourite's goin'
+strong. Gallops like a engine, don't she? I like to see her."
+
+Those who were watching through their glasses marked that a fence before
+the Canal Turn the star-spangled jacket and the purple and gold seemed
+to be taking council together.
+
+"Goin' to turn on the tap now, you'll see," said the old man.
+
+He was right.
+
+Chukkers, indeed, never varied the way he rode his races on the mare. In
+truth, part of his greatness as a jockey lay in the fact that he adapted
+his methods to his horse. Very early in his connection with Mocassin he
+had discovered the unfailing way to make the most of her. It was said of
+him that he always won his victories on her in the first half-mile. That
+was an exaggeration; but it was the fact that he invariably sat down to
+race at a time when other jockeys were just settling in their saddles.
+At Liverpool he always began to ride the mare after Valentine's Brook
+first time round, and had beaten his field and won his race long before
+he began the second lap.
+
+As it chanced, too, the mare's fiery spirit suited exactly the daring
+temperament of the great horseman. The invincible couple waited behind
+till the ranks began to thin and then came through with the hurricane
+rush that had become famous. A consummate judge of pace, sure of
+himself, sure of his mount, Chukkers never feared to wait in front; and
+the mare, indeed, was never happy elsewhere. Once established in the
+pride of place, the fret and fever left her, she settled down to gallop
+and jump, and jump and gallop, steady as the Gulf Stream, strong as a
+spring-tide, till she had pounded her field to pieces.
+
+The thousands waiting for the Mocassin rush were not disappointed.
+
+The turn for home once made, and Valentine's Brook with its fatal drop
+left behind, the mare and her stable-mate came away like arrows from the
+bow.
+
+She lay on the rails, her guardian angel hard on her right.
+
+Jackaroo might be old, but he was still as good a two-miler as any in
+England.
+
+The pair caught their horses one after one and left them standing; and
+the roar of the multitude was like that of the sea as the defeated host
+melted away behind.
+
+At last only the Irish horse refused to give place to the importunate
+pair. Twice they challenged, and twice the gray shook them off. They
+came again; and for a while the star-spangled jacket, the purple and
+gold, the cerise and white, rose at their fences like one.
+
+The Irish division were in screaming ecstasies.
+
+Then the roar of New England, overwhelming all else, told that the mare
+was making good.
+
+Moonlighter's jockey saw he was beaten for the moment at least and took
+a pull.
+
+As Mocassin's swift bobbing head swung round the corner on to the
+straight, she was alone save for her stable-companion, and his work was
+done.
+
+"He's seen her through," muttered Old Mat. "Now he can go home to bed."
+
+Indeed, as Jackaroo sprawled down the straight, still hanging to the
+quarters of the mare, he looked like a towel-rail on which wet clothes
+had been hung, and Rushton had ceased to ride.
+
+The mare, fresh as the old horse was failing, came along in front of the
+Grand Stand, clipping the grass with that swift, rhythmical stroke of
+hers and little fretful snatch at the reins, neat and swift and strong
+as a startled deer.
+
+Chukkers sat still and absorbed as a cat waiting over a mouse's hole.
+
+All eyes were on him. Nothing else was seen. His race was won. Last
+year's defeat had been avenged. America had made good. A roar as of an
+avalanche boomed and billowed about him. The thousands on the stands
+yelled, stamped and cooeyed.
+
+"Hail, Columbia!" bellowed the triumphant Boys.
+
+"Stand down, England!"
+
+"What price the Yankee-doodlers?"
+
+"Who gives the Mustang best?"
+
+In that tumult of sound, individual voices were lost. The yells of the
+bookies were indistinguishable. Men saw things through a mist, and more
+than one woman fainted.
+
+Then through the terrific boom came the discordant blare of a megaphone,
+faint at first but swiftly overbearing the noise of the tempest.
+
+"Watch it, ye ----!" it screamed. "He's catchin' ye!"
+
+It was the voice of Jaggers.
+
+The thousands heard and hushed. They recognised the voice and the note
+of terror in it.
+
+Chukkers heard, too, turned, and had a glimpse of a green jacket surging
+up wide on his right.
+
+There was the sound of a soughing wind as the crowd drew its breath.
+
+What was this great owl-like enemy swooping up out of nowhere?
+
+Chukkers, his head on his shoulders, took the situation in.
+
+What he saw he didn't like.
+
+The mare was going strong beneath him, but the brown horse on his
+quarter was only beginning: so much his expert eye told him at a glance.
+Four-Pound-the-Second was coming along like a cataract, easy as an eagle
+in flight; his great buffeting shoulders were sprayed with foam, his
+gaping nostrils drinking in oceans of air and spouting them out again
+with the rhythmical regularity of a steam-pump; and his little jockey
+sat on his back still as a mouse--a pale face, a gleam of fair hair, and
+two little brown fists that gave and took with each stride of the
+galloping horse.
+
+Chukkers was not the only one who seized the situation.
+
+The bookies absorbed it in a flash--the outsider's form, the jockey's
+colours, the significance of both. It was Old Mat's horse--Old Mat who
+had sprung surprises on the ring so often in his time. Rumour had always
+said that the horse was by Berserker. Then they had disbelieved.
+Now--well, he looked it.
+
+Suddenly the ring went mad.
+
+"Six to four the favourite!" the bookies roared. "Seven to four on the
+field!"
+
+The English, too, woke to the fact that they had a champion at last. A
+thirst for vengeance, after all they had endured at the hands of the
+contumelious foe, carried them away. They stood up and howled. The
+Americans, who had seen the cup of victory brought to their lips and
+snatched away again, roused by the threat to their favourite, responded
+wrathfully. Roar answered roar; New England thundered against Old.
+
+Chukkers, as always, had steadied the mare after her rush. Now he
+changed his tactics to meet the new situation. As the horses made for
+the water, the mare on the rails, and the outsider wide on the right,
+Chukkers began to nibble at her. The action was faint, yet most
+significant.
+
+"He ain't _ridin'_," muttered Old Mat, watching closely through his
+glasses--"not yet. I won't say that. But he's spinnin' her."
+
+Indeed it was so. The crowd saw it; the Boys, gnawing their thumbs, saw
+it; the bookies, red-faced from screaming, saw it, too.
+
+The crowd bellowed their comments.
+
+"She's held!"
+
+"The mare's beat!"
+
+"Brown's only cantering!"
+
+"She's all out!"
+
+In all that riot of voices, and storm of tossing figures, two men kept
+calm.
+
+Old Mat was genial; Silver still, his chest heaving beneath his folded
+arms.
+
+"Like a hare and a greyhound," muttered the old man, apt as always.
+
+"Got it all to themselves now," said Silver. "And the best horse wins."
+
+"Bar the dirty," suggested the trainer.
+
+The warning was timely.
+
+[Illustration: AINTREE: Plan of Course]
+
+Just before the water Rushton pulled out suddenly right across the brown
+horse.
+
+It was a deliberate foul, ably executed.
+
+The crowd saw it and howled, and the bookmakers screamed at the
+offending jockey as he rode off the course into the Paddock.
+
+"Plucky little effort!" shouted Old Mat in Silver's ear. "He deserved to
+pull it off."
+
+No harm, in fact, had been done.
+
+Four-Pound-the-Second had missed Jackaroo's quarters by half a length;
+but the big horse never faltered in his stride, charging on like a
+bull-buffalo, and rising at the water as the mare landed over it.
+
+The old man dropped his glasses, and settled back on his heels.
+
+"What next?" he said.
+
+"Can't do much now, I guess," answered Silver comfortably.
+
+Old Mat turned in his lips.
+
+"Watch it, sir," he said. "There's millions in it."
+
+As the favourite and the outsider swept away for the second round in a
+pursuing roar, the width of the course lay between them. The mare hugged
+the rails; the brown horse swung wide on the right.
+
+"You're giving her plenty of room, Mr. Woodburn," said the White Hat in
+front.
+
+"Yes, my lord," Mat answered. "'Don't crowd her,' I says. 'She likes a
+lot o' room. So do Chukkers.'"
+
+Just clear of the course outside the rails, under the Embankment, a
+little group of police made a dark blue knot about the stretcher on
+which Boy Braithwaite had been taken from the course. As the brown horse
+swept hard by the group a blob of yellow thrust up suddenly above the
+rails amid the blue. It was too much even for Four-Pound. He shied away
+and crashed into his fence. Only his weight and the speed at which he
+was travelling carried him through. A soughing groan went up from the
+Grand Stand, changing to a roar, as the great horse, quick as a goat,
+recovered himself and settled unconcernedly to his stride again.
+
+"Riz from the dead to do us in," muttered Old Mat. "Now he's goin' 'ome
+again," as the blob of yellow collapsed once more. "P'raps he'll stop
+this time."
+
+"I think it was an accident," said Silver.
+
+"I know them accidents," answered Old Mat. "There's more to come."
+
+For the moment it seemed to the watchers as if the mare was forging
+ahead; and the Americans took heart once again. But the green jacket and
+the star-spangled rose at Beecher's Brook together; and the young horse,
+as though chastened by his escape, was fencing like a veteran.
+
+As the horses turned to the left at the Corner, something white detached
+itself from the stragglers on the Embankment and shot down the slope at
+the galloping horses like a scurry of foam.
+
+"Dog this time," grunted Old Mat, watching through his glasses.
+"Lurcher, big as a bull-calf."
+
+Whatever it was, it missed its mark and flashed across the course just
+clear of the heels of the Putnam horse. He went striding along,
+magnificently unmoved.
+
+Old Mat nodded grimly.
+
+"You can't upset my little Fo'-Pound--bar only risin's from the dead,
+which ain't 'ardly accordin' not under National Hunt Rules anyway," he
+said. "If a tiger was to lep in his backside and chaw him a nice piece,
+it wouldn't move _him_ any."
+
+Many on the Grand Stand had not marked the incident. They were watching
+now with all their eyes for a more familiar sensation.
+
+Chukkers was leaving the rails to swing for the Canal Turn.
+
+The Englishmen and bookies, their hands to their mouths, were screaming
+exhortations, warnings, advice, to the little fair jockey far away.
+
+"Canal Turn!"
+
+"Dirty Dago!"
+
+"The old game!"
+
+"Watch him, lad!"
+
+"His only chance!"
+
+"Riding for the bump!"
+
+Old Mat paid no heed.
+
+"Mouse bump a mountain," he grunted. "But Chukkers won't get the
+chance."
+
+And it seemed he was right.
+
+The fence before the Turn the brown horse was leading by a length and
+drawing steadily away, as the voices of the triumphant English and the
+faces of the Americans proclaimed.
+
+Mat stared through his glasses.
+
+"Chukkers is talkin'," he announced. "And he's got somefin to talk about
+from all I can see of it."
+
+Any danger there might have been had, in fact, been averted by the
+pressing tactics of the Putnam jockey.
+
+The two horses came round the Turn almost together, the inside berth
+having brought the mare level again.
+
+Side by side they came over Valentine's Brook, moving together almost
+automatically, their fore-legs shooting out straight as a cascade, their
+jockeys swinging back together as though one; stride for stride they
+came along the green in a roar so steady and enduring that it seemed
+almost natural as a silence.
+
+Old Mat shut his glasses, clasped his hands behind him, and steadied on
+his feet.
+
+"Now," he said comfortably. "Ding-dong. 'Ammer and tongs. 'Ow I likes to
+see it."
+
+He peeped up at the young man, who did not seem to hear. Silver stood
+unmoved by the uproar all around him, apparently unconscious of it. He
+was away, dwelling in a far city of pride on heights of snow. His spirit
+was in his eyes, and his eyes on that bobbing speck of green flowing
+swiftly toward him with sudden lurches and forward flings at the fences.
+
+All around him men were raging, cheering, and stamping. What the bookies
+were yelling nobody could hear; but it was clear from their faces that
+they believed the favourite was beat.
+
+And their faith was based upon reality, since Chukkers for the first
+time in the history of the mare was using his whip.
+
+Once it fell, and again, in terrible earnest. There was a gasp from the
+gathered multitudes as they saw and understood. That swift, relentless
+hand was sounding the knell of doom to the hopes of thousands.
+
+Indeed, it was clear that Chukkers was riding now as he had never ridden
+before.
+
+And the boy on the brown never moved.
+
+Three fences from home Chukkers rallied the mare and called on her for a
+final effort.
+
+Game to the last drop, she answered him.
+
+But the outsider held his own without an effort.
+
+Then the note of the thundering multitudes changed again with dramatic
+suddenness. Hope, that had died away, and Fear, that had vanished
+utterly, were a-wing once more. In the air they met and clashed
+tumultuously. America was soaring into the blue; England fluttering
+earthward again. And the cause was not far to seek.
+
+The boy on the brown was tiring. He was swaying in his saddle.
+
+A thousand glasses fixed on his face confirmed the impression.
+
+"Nipper's beat for the distance!" came the cry.
+
+"Brown horse wins! Green jacket loses!"
+
+The Grand Stand saw it. Chukkers saw it, too. His eyes were fixed on his
+rival's face like the talons of a vulture in his prey. They never
+stirred; they never lifted. He came pressing up alongside his
+enemy--insistent, clinging, ruthless as a stoat. Silver could have
+screamed. That foul, insistent creature was the Evil One pouring his
+poisonous suggestions into the ears of Innocence, undoing her,
+fascinating her, thrusting in upon her virgin mind, invading the
+sanctuary, polluting the Holy of Holies, seizing it, obsessing it.
+
+And the emotion roused was not peculiar to the young man alone. It
+seemed to be contagious. Swift as it was unseen, it ran from mind to
+mind, infecting all with a horror of fear and loathing.
+
+"He's swearing at him!" cried the White Hat, aghast.
+
+"B---- shame!" shouted another.
+
+"Tryin' to rattle the lad!"
+
+And a howl of indignation went up to the unheeding heavens.
+
+To Silver it was no longer a race: it was the world-struggle, old as
+time--Right against Wrong, Light against Dark. He was watching it like
+God; and, like God, he could do nothing. His voice was lost in his
+throat. Outwardly calm, he was dumb, tormented, and heaving like a sea
+in travail. A tumult of waters surged and trampled and foamed within
+him.
+
+Then the nightmare passed.
+
+The boy on the brown rallied; and, it seemed, a fainting nation rallied
+with him.
+
+He steadied himself, sat still as a cloud for a moment, and then stirred
+deliberately and of set purpose.
+
+He was asking his horse the question. There was no doubt of the reply.
+
+Four-Pound shot to the front like a long-dammed stream.
+
+His vampire enemy clung for a desperate moment, and then faded away
+behind amid the groans of his maddened supporters and the acclamations
+of the triumphant Englishmen.
+
+"Got her dead to the world!" cried Old Mat, a note of battle resounding
+deeply through his voice. "What price Putnam's now!" And he thumped the
+rail.
+
+But the end was not even yet. The great English horse came moving like a
+flood round the corner and swooped gloriously over the last fence.
+
+The roar that had held the air toppled away into a sound as of a
+world-avalanche, shot with screams.
+
+The jockey in green had pitched forward as his horse landed.
+
+He scrambled for a moment, and somehow wriggled back into his
+seat--short of his whip.
+
+The Grand Stand became a maelstrom.
+
+Men were fighting, women fainting. The Americans were screaming to
+Chukkers to press; the English yelling to the nipper to ride--for the
+Almighty's sake.
+
+The brown horse and his jockey came past the Open Ditch and down the
+straight in a hurricane that might not have been, so little did either
+heed it.
+
+The little jockey was far away, riding as in a death-swoon, his face
+silvery beneath his cap. His reins were in both hands, and he was
+stirring with them faintly as one who would ride a finish and cannot.
+
+"That's a little bit o' better," said Old Mat cheerfully, preparing to
+move. "My little Fo'-Pound'll see us 'ome."
+
+And indeed the young horse, with the judgment of a veteran who knows to
+a yard when he may shut up, had eased away into a canter, and broke into
+a trot as he passed the post.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+The Last Card
+
+
+Chukkers was beaten out of sight. The Oriental in him blurted to the
+top. He lost his head and his temper and began to butcher his mount.
+
+As he drove the mare down the run home, foaming and bloody, he was
+flaying her.
+
+The Americans had all lost money, some of them fortunes: that didn't
+matter so much. Their idol had been beaten fair and square: that
+mattered a great deal. But she was still their idol, and Chukkers had
+butchered her before their eyes.
+
+And he was Chukkers!--the greaser!
+
+They rose up in wrath like a vast, avenging cloud, and went raving over
+the barrier on to the course in tumultuous black flood. The ruck of
+beaten horses, bobbing home one by one, crashed into them. The mob,
+without regard for its shattered atoms, moved on like one. A roaring sea
+of humanity swung on its blind way. Above the dark waters jockeys in
+silken jackets and on sweating thoroughbreds drifted to and fro like
+helpless butterflies. While in contrast to these many-coloured creatures
+of faerie, the great-coated and helmeted police in blue, on horses,
+hairy and solid as themselves, butted their way through the clamorous
+deeps, as they made for the rock round which the angry waves were
+breaking.
+
+They had their work cut out, and used their bludgeons with a will.
+
+Round the man upon the beaten favourite the mob swirled and screamed
+like a hyena-pack at the kill.
+
+Chukkers was a brute; but to do him justice he was not a coward.
+
+The high-cheeked Mongolian, yellow with anger and chagrin, was using his
+whip without mercy.
+
+The hub-bub was as of a battle the most horrible, for there were women
+in it, screaming for blood.
+
+"Lynch him!" came the roar.
+
+"Pull him off!"
+
+"Trample him!"
+
+"Stick him with this!"
+
+Monkey Brand, who had suddenly come to life, had hold of the winner,
+sweating, amiable, entirely unmoved by the pandemonium around, and was
+leading him away into the Paddock through the outskirts of the howling
+mob.
+
+The crowd was too maddened to pay attention to the little man and his
+great charge. Those who were not bent on murdering Chukkers were
+absorbed in watching those who were.
+
+Old Mat, trotting at Silver's side, was chuckling and cooing to himself
+like a complacent baby, as the pair descended the Grand Stand and made
+for the Paddock.
+
+"Yes," he was saying, "my bankers'll be please--very please, they will.
+And good cause why. That's a hundud thousand quid, Mr. Silver, in my
+pocket--all a-jinglin' and a-tinglin'. 'Ark to em!--like 'erald angels
+on the go." He paused, touched the other's arm, and panted huskily:
+"Funny thing! A minute since it was in the h'air--ewaporated, as the
+sayin' is. Now it's here--froze tight." He slapped his pocket. "Makes
+the 'ead to think and the 'eart to rejoice, as the Psalmist said on much
+a similar occasion. Only we'd best not tell Mar. Wonderful woman, Mar,
+Mr. Silver, and grows all the while more wonderfulerer. Only where it is
+is--there it is." He lifted his rogue-eye to the young man's face and
+cried in an ecstasy of glee. "Oh, how glorioushly does the wicked
+flourish--if only so be they'll keep their eyeballs skinned!"
+
+At the gate the White Hat stopped him.
+
+"So you've got up on 'em again, Mr. Woodburn," he said.
+"Congratulations, Mr. Silver."
+
+On the course the pair ran into Monkey Brand, leading the winner home.
+
+"Here, sir!" he cried, seeming excited for the first time in his life.
+"All O.K. Bit giddified like. That's all. Take the horse. The Three J's
+mean business, I tell ye. I must be moving."
+
+Silver looked up at the little jockey perched aloft upon the brown.
+
+"All right?" he asked keenly.
+
+The other, whose peaked cap was drawn far over his eyes, nodded down
+through the tumult, saying no word.
+
+At the moment Jaggers ran past, trying to get at his jockey. Joses,
+slobbering at the mouth, was shouting in the trainer's ear.
+
+Both men plunged into the vortex.
+
+"Easy all!" came Jaggers's priest-like voice. "Give him a chance, boys.
+We aren't beat yet."
+
+"Win, tie, or wrangle!" muttered Old Mat. "That's the Three J's all
+right."
+
+The mounted police were shepherding Chukkers off the course into the
+Paddock. There was murder in his face. He swung about and showed his
+yellow fangs like a mobbed wolf at the pack baying at his heels.
+
+Once inside the Paddock he was just going to dismount, when Jaggers,
+Joses, and Ikey Aaronsohnn rushed at him and held him on.
+
+"Stick to her!" screamed Joses.
+
+The little group drifted past Old Mat and Jim Silver, who was holding
+the winner. Four-Pound-the Second's jockey had already disappeared into
+the weighing-room.
+
+"Ain't done yet," screamed the jockey vengefully as he passed.
+
+"You're never done," said Silver quietly, as he stroked the muzzle of
+the reeking brown. "Never could take a licking like a gentleman!"
+
+The jockey, beside himself, leaned out toward the other.
+
+"Want it across the ---- mug, do ye, Silver?" he yelled. "One way o'
+winnin'!"
+
+"Come, then, Mr. Woodburn. This won't do!" cried Jaggers austerely as he
+passed.
+
+"Of course it won't," answered Old Mat. "Dropped a rare packet among
+you, ain't you? Think you're goin' to let that pass without tryin' on
+the dirty?"
+
+The White Hat leaned down from the Grand Stand.
+
+"What's the trouble, Mr. Jaggers?" he cried.
+
+"Miss Woodburn rode the winner, my lord," answered the trainer at the
+top of his voice.
+
+The words ran like a flame along the top of the crowd.
+
+They leapt from mouth to mouth, out of the Paddock, on to the course,
+and round it. And where they fell there was instant hush followed by a
+roar, in which a new note sounded: _All was not lost._ The Americans,
+cast down to earth a moment since, rose like a wild-maned breaker
+towering before it falls in thunder and foam upon the beach. There was
+wrath still in their clamour; but their cry now was for Justice and not
+for Revenge.
+
+John Bull had been at it again. The fair jockey was a girl. Some had
+known it all along. Others had guessed it from the first. All had been
+sure there would be hanky-panky.
+
+As they came shoving off the course into the Paddock, and heaved about
+the weighing-room, the howl subdued into a buzz as of a swarm of angry
+bees.
+
+The thousands were waiting for a sign, and the growl that rose from them
+was broken only by groans, cat-calls, whistles, and vengeful bursts of
+
+          _Hands off and no hanky-panky!_
+
+Old Mat, Jim Silver, and the great horse stood on the edge of the
+throng, quite unconcerned.
+
+Many noticed them; not a few essayed enquiries.
+
+"Is your jockey a gal, Mr. Woodburn?"
+
+"So they says," answered Old Mat.
+
+"Where's Miss Woodburn then?"
+
+"Inside, they tell me."
+
+He nodded to the door of the weighing-room, which opened at the moment.
+
+In it, above the crowd, appeared the jockey with the green jacket, his
+cap well over his eyes.
+
+There was an instant hush. Then English and Americans, bookies and
+backers, began to bawl against each other.
+
+"Are you a gal?" screamed some one in the crowd.
+
+"No, I ain't," came the shrill, defiant answer.
+
+The voice did not satisfy the crowd.
+
+"Take off your cap, Miss!" yelled another.
+
+"Let's see your face!"
+
+Joses, who was standing by the steps that led up to the weighing-room,
+leapt on to them and snatched the cap from the jockey's head.
+
+He stood displayed before them, fair-haired, close-cropped, shy, and a
+little sullen.
+
+There was a moment's pause. Then divergent voices shot heavenward and
+clashed against each other.
+
+"It is!"
+
+"It's her!"
+
+"That's Miss Woodburn!"
+
+"No, it ain't!"
+
+Words were becoming blows, and there were altercations everywhere, when
+the Clerk of the Scales appeared on the steps and held up his hand for
+silence.
+
+"Where _is_ Miss Woodburn?" he called.
+
+The words confirmed suspicion, and brought forth a roar of cheering from
+the Americans.
+
+"Here, sir!" panted a voice.
+
+Monkey Brand was forcing his way through the crowd, heralded by the
+police. Behind him followed a slight figure in dark blue.
+
+"Is that Miss Woodburn?" called the Clerk.
+
+"Yes," replied a deep voice. "Here I am."
+
+"Would you step up here?"
+
+The girl ran up the steps, and took her place by the little jockey.
+Whoever else was disconcerted, it was not she.
+
+A sound that was not quite a groan rose from the watching crowd and died
+away.
+
+The girl gave her hand to the jockey.
+
+"Well ridden, Albert," she said, and in the silence her words were heard
+by thousands.
+
+The lad touched his forehead, and took her hand sheepishly.
+
+"Thank you, Miss," he answered.
+
+Then the storm broke, and the bookies who had made millions over the
+defeat of the favourite led the roar.
+
+There was no mistaking the matter now. The Boys had been sold again.
+
+The rougher elements amongst Ikey's Own sought a scape-goat.
+
+They found him in Joses.
+
+Chukkers came out of the weighing-room and deliberately struck the fat
+man. That started it: the crowd did the rest.
+
+Old Mat and Jim Silver waited on the outskirts of the hub-bub.
+
+The American Ambassador and his tall dark daughter stood near by.
+
+"What stories they tell," said the great man in his gentle way.
+
+"Don't they, sir?" answered Old Mat, wiping an innocent blue eye. "And
+they gets no better as the years go by. They saddens me and Mar. They
+does reelly."
+
+Boy Woodburn, making her way through the crowd, joined the little group.
+
+"Congratulations, Miss Woodburn," said the Ambassador's daughter shyly.
+"The best horse won."
+
+The fair girl beamed on the dark.
+
+"Thank you, Miss Whitney," she answered. "A good race. You were giving
+us a ton of weight."
+
+Perhaps the girl was a little paler than her wont; but there was no
+touch of lyrical excitement about her. Outwardly she was the
+least-moved person in the Paddock.
+
+Jim Silver's eyes were shining down on her.
+
+"Well," he said.
+
+She led away. He followed at her shoulder, the horse's bridle over his
+arm.
+
+"You've won your hundred thousand," she said.
+
+His eyes were wistful and smiling as they dwelt upon her figure that
+drooped a little.
+
+"Hadn't a bean on," he said.
+
+She did not seem surprised.
+
+Her hand was on the wet neck of the horse, her eyes on her hand.
+
+Then she raised them to his, and they were shining with rainbow beauty.
+
+"I know you hadn't," she said.
+
+Her hand touched his.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Close by them a black mass was seething round something upon the ground.
+
+"That's Joses," she said. "Stop the worry, will you?--and send Monkey
+Brand to take the horse."
+
+Jim Silver turned. Somewhere in the middle of that tossing mass was a
+human being.
+
+Using his strength remorselessly, the young man broke his way through.
+By the time he reached the centre of the maelstrom the police had
+cleared a space round the fallen man.
+
+He lay panting in the mud, a desolate and dreadful figure, his waistcoat
+burst open, and shirt protruding, his shock of red hair a-loose on the
+ground.
+
+Jim was not the first to get to the fallen man.
+
+Monkey Brand was already kneeling at his side, bottle in hand.
+
+"Oh, my! Mr. Joses, my!" the little jockey was saying. "What you want is
+just a drop o' comfort out o' me bottle. Open a little, and I'll pour."
+
+Silver was just in time.
+
+"That'll do, Brand," he said. "I'll see to this. Give me the bottle. You
+go to Miss Boy."
+
+A doctor was called in and reported that the fat man's condition was
+serious. An ambulance was brought, and Joses removed.
+
+Silver saw it off the ground.
+
+As it came to the gate, Chukkers, on his way to his motor, passed it.
+
+"He deserves all he's got," he said. "He's a bad un."
+
+"He's served you pretty well, anyway," answered Jim angrily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+The Fat Man Takes His Ticket
+
+
+In Cuckmere, that quiet village between the Weald and the sea, in which
+there was the normal amount of lying, thieving, drunkenness, low-living,
+back-biting, and slander, there dwelt two souls who had fought
+steadfastly and unobtrusively for twenty years to raise the moral and
+material standards of the community.
+
+One was the vicar of the parish, and the other Mrs. Woodburn. The two
+worked together for the common end unknown except to each other and
+those they helped.
+
+Mr. Haggard was something of a saint and something of a scholar. Mrs.
+Woodburn had been born among the people, knew them, their family
+histories, and failings; was wise, tolerant, and liberal alike in purse
+and judgment. Her practical capacity made a good counterpoise to the
+other's benevolence and generous impetuosity.
+
+When the vicar was in trouble about a case, he always went to Mrs.
+Woodburn long before he went to the Duke; and he rarely went in vain.
+
+The parlour at Putnam's had seen much intimate communion between these
+two high and tranquil spirits over causes that were going ill and souls
+reluctant to be saved. The vicar always came to Putnam's: Mrs. Woodburn
+never went to the Vicarage. That was partly because the vicar's wife was
+a stout and strenuous churchwoman who cherished a genuine horror of
+what she called "chapel" as the most insidious and deadly foe of the
+spirit, and still more because Mrs. Haggard was a woman, and a jealous
+one at that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a few days after the National that the vicar made one of his
+calls at Putnam's.
+
+"What is it?" asked Mrs. Woodburn in her direct and simple way after the
+first greeting.
+
+She knew he never came except on business.
+
+"It's that wretched fellow Joses," he answered. "He's been in some
+scrape at the National, I gather, and got himself knocked about. Somehow
+he crawled back to his earth. I rather believe Mr. Silver paid his
+train-fare and saw him through."
+
+"Is he dying?" asked Mrs. Woodburn.
+
+The vicar replied that the parish nurse thought he was in a very bad
+way.
+
+"Is she seeing to him?"
+
+"She's doing what she can."
+
+"We'd better ask Dr. Pollock to go round and look at him," said Mrs.
+Woodburn. "Don't you bother any more, Mr. Haggard. I'll see that the
+best is done."
+
+She telephoned to the Polefax doctor.
+
+That afternoon he called at Putnam's and made his report.
+
+"He's in a very bad way, Mrs. Woodburn," he said. "Advanced arterial
+deterioration. And the condition is complicated by some deep-seated
+fear-complex."
+
+The doctor was young, up-to-date, and dabbling in psycho-therapy.
+
+"Fear of death?" asked Mrs. Woodburn.
+
+"Fear of life, I think," the other answered. "He wouldn't talk to me.
+And I can't, of course, attempt a mental analysis."
+
+Mrs. Woodburn had no notion what he meant, and believed, perhaps
+rightly, that he did not know himself.
+
+"He's been unfortunate," she said.
+
+"So I guessed," answered the young man. "He asked me who sent me, and
+when I told him said he'd be grateful if you'd call on him."
+
+"I'll go round."
+
+Toward evening she called at the cottage.
+
+Mrs. Boam showed her up.
+
+Joses lay on a bed under the slope of the roof, his head at the window
+so that he could look out.
+
+His face was faintly livid, and he breathed with difficulty.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn's heart went out to him at the first glance.
+
+"I'm sorry to see you like this, Mr. Joses," she said gently. "You
+wanted to see me?"
+
+"Well," he answered, "it was _Miss_ Woodburn I wanted to see." He looked
+at her wistfully out of eyes that women had once held beautiful. "D'you
+think she'd come?"
+
+"I'm sure she will," the other answered reassuringly.
+
+Joses lay with his mop of red hair like a dingy and graying aureole
+against the pillow.
+
+"D'you mind?" he asked.
+
+Her eyes filled with kindness. He seemed to her so much a child.
+
+"What! Her coming to see you here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She smiled at him in her large and loving way.
+
+"Of course I don't," she said, and added almost archly: "And if I did
+I'm not sure it would make much difference."
+
+He found himself laughing.
+
+She moved about the room, ordering it.
+
+Then she returned to Putnam's to seek her daughter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the National Boy had emerged from the cloud which had long covered
+her.
+
+She returned home, radiant and impenitent.
+
+"I've been thinking things over," she said on the morning after her
+return. "And I'll forgive you, mother, for your lack of faith."
+
+"Thank you, my dear," replied the other laconically.
+
+"This once," added Boy firmly. "Now, mind!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Woodburn now gave her daughter Joses's message.
+
+The girl said nothing, but visited the cottage next morning.
+
+She stood in the door, firm and fresh, the colour in her hair, the bloom
+on her cheeks, and looked at that mass of decaying man upon the bed.
+
+"Are you bad?" she asked, anxious as a child.
+
+"I suppose I'm not very good," he answered.
+
+She snatched her eyes away.
+
+"Well, I congratulate you," he said at last, quietly.
+
+She sought for irony in his voice and eyes, and detected none.
+
+"What on?"
+
+"Your victory."
+
+Her face softened.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"You deserved to win," continued the other, with genuine admiration.
+"You rode a great race. I couldn't have believed a girl could have got
+the course if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes." His gaze met hers
+quite honestly. "You see I didn't count on the double fake. I knew you
+were going to ride as Albert, but I'd quite forgotten the
+corollary--that Albert might dress as you. That's where you beat me."
+
+The girl's chest was rising and falling.
+
+"Mr. Joses," she said, "I didn't ride the horse."
+
+His eyes sought hers, dissatisfied, and then wandered to the window.
+
+"Well, well," he said. "We won't argue about it. Anyway, you won."
+
+Boy looked out of the window.
+
+"I _did_ try and deceive you into thinking I was going to ride," she
+said with a quake in her voice. "That was partly deviltry and partly to
+put you off. I thought if you believed you could get back on us _after_
+the race you'd not try it on before. Besides, I could never ride the
+course. Three miles was my limit over fences at racing speed when I was
+at my best, and that's some years since."
+
+He was quite unconvinced.
+
+"I give you best, Miss Woodburn," he said. "But Albert could never have
+ridden that race. Never! It was a good win. And you deserved it. But it
+wasn't that I wanted to see you about." He looked round the little room.
+"It's not much of a place perhaps, you may think. But there's the
+window, and the sight of grass, and cows grazing and folks passing on
+the path. And in this house there's Mrs. Boam, and Jenny, and the
+pussy-cat. I should miss it." He lifted those suffering eyes of his. "I
+don't want to pass what little time I've left in the cage."
+
+"But they won't hurt you now," cried Boy. "They couldn't."
+
+The other laughed his dreadful laughter.
+
+"Couldn't they?" he said. "You don't know 'em. It's the cat-and-mouse
+business all the time. I'm the mouse. I've been there."
+
+"But you've done nothing," said Boy.
+
+Joses moved his head on the pillow.
+
+"There's just one thing," he said, dropping his voice. "Mr. Silver's got
+a little bit of paper that might make trouble for me."
+
+"But he shall give it up!" cried the girl.
+
+"Will he?" grunted the other.
+
+"Of course he will. He's as kind as kind."
+
+Joses shook a dubious head.
+
+"Men are men," he said. "And when men get across each other they are
+tigers."
+
+"He's a tame one," said the girl. "I'll see to that."
+
+"He might be," muttered the other. "In the hands of the right tamer."
+
+Boy went straight back to Putnam's and discovered Mr. Silver smoking in
+the saddle-room.
+
+She told him what had passed.
+
+"I know," he said. "Here it is." He produced the bit of paper. "I'll
+burn it," and he held it to the bowl of his pipe.
+
+"No!" cried the girl. "Give it me."
+
+She took it straight back to the sick man.
+
+He lit a match and watched it burn with eyes that were almost covetous.
+
+"That's the last of 'em," he said. "Now I shall die in the open like a
+gentleman."
+
+He was, in fact, dying very fast.
+
+It did not need Dr. Pollock's assurance to make the girl aware of that.
+
+She longed to help him.
+
+"Would you like to see Mr. Haggard?" she asked awkwardly.
+
+He shook his head, amused.
+
+"He'd come the parson over me."
+
+"I don't think he would."
+
+"He couldn't help it if he was true to his cloth."
+
+"I'm not sure he is," said Boy doubtfully.
+
+"You're the same," he said.
+
+She glanced up at him swiftly.
+
+His eyes were mischievous, almost roguish.
+
+"What d'you mean?"
+
+"You want me to repent."
+
+She coloured guiltily, and he laughed like a boy, delighted with his own
+cleverness.
+
+"There's one thing Mr. Haggard might do for me," he said. "Lend me
+Clutton Brock's _Shelley_, if he would. He's got it, I know."
+
+The girl made a mental note, wrinkling her brow.
+
+"Shelley's _Clutton Brock_," she said. "I'll remember."
+
+She sat beside his bed. His eyes dwelt on her keen, earnest young face,
+and the blue eyes gazing thoughtfully out of the window.
+
+"You're a Philistine," he said at last. "But you're clean. Philistines
+are. That's the best of them."
+
+"What's a Philistine?" she asked.
+
+He did not answer her.
+
+"You're the cleanest thing I've met," he continued. "There's a flame
+burning in you all the time that devours all your rubbish. Mine
+accumulates and corrupts."
+
+"I don't like you to talk like that," said the girl, withdrawing.
+
+"There's only one thing that'll purge me," the other continued.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Fire."
+
+The girl's eyes darkened.
+
+"Are you afraid?" she asked swiftly.
+
+"Of Hell with a large H?"
+
+She nodded, and he laughed.
+
+"What I've had I've paid for across the counter and got the receipt
+stamped and signed by the Almighty. No, it's not the fires of Hell; it's
+the power of the old sun working on my vile body through the ages
+that'll renew me with beauty and youth in time. Life's eternal, sure
+enough; but not on the lines the parsons tell us."
+
+A little later she rose to go.
+
+He detained her.
+
+"Shall you come and see me again?" he asked her.
+
+She gave him a shy and brilliant smile.
+
+"Rather," she said. "So'll mother."
+
+He kissed her hand, and there was beauty in his eyes.
+
+Next day she called with the book from Mr. Haggard.
+
+Dr. Pollock was coming down the path.
+
+"He's out of pain," he said gravely.
+
+Boy returned to Putnam's and picked some violets.
+
+Then she came back to the cottage.
+
+Mrs. Boam was weeping as she opened.
+
+"May I see him?" said the girl.
+
+"Yes, Miss," answered the other. "We shall miss him, Jenny and me. He
+were that lovable."
+
+Boy went upstairs and entered.
+
+Joses was at peace: the dignity of death upon him.
+
+She laid the violets on his breast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+Old Mat on Heaven and Earth
+
+
+When Old Mat returned home from Liverpool he hung his hat on the peg and
+informed Silver that he had undergone conversion--for good this time.
+
+"Nebber no more," he announced solemnly. "I done with bettin'--now I got
+the cash. Always promised Mar I'd be God's good man soon as I could
+afford it. Moreover, besides I might lose some o' what I made. And then
+I might have another backslide." He settled himself in his leather
+chair, drew his feet out of his slippers, and his pass-book out of his
+pocket.
+
+"It's cash spells conwersion, Mr. Silver," he panted. "I've often seen
+it in others, and now I knows it for meself. A noo-er, tru-er and
+bootifler h'outlook upon life, as Mr. 'Aggard said last Sunday--hall the
+houtcome o' cash in 'and. Yes, sir, if you wants to conwert the world,
+the way's clear--_Pay cash down._ That's why these 'ere Socialists are
+on the grow; because they talks common-sense. 'It's dollars as does it,'
+they says. 'Give every chap a bankin'-account, and you'll see.' What's
+Church h'up and h'answer to that? Church says: 'It's all in conwersion.
+Bank on conwersion. Cash is but wrath and must that corrupts,' says the
+clergy. 'Leave the cash to us,' they says. 'We'll see to that for you,
+while you keeps out o' temptation and saves your souls alive.'"
+
+When Mrs. Woodburn told the old man the news about Joses, he received it
+gravely.
+
+"Moved on, has he?" he said. "I'm sorry. I shall miss him. I always
+misses that sort. Shouldn't feel at home like without some of them
+around. Well, Mar, we shall all meet in the yappy yappy land, plea Gob
+in his goodness." He burst into a sort of chaunt, wagging his head, and
+beating time with his fist--
+
+          "_Ho, won't that be jiy-ful?
+          Jam for the fythe-ful._
+
+I wouldn't miss that meetin', Mar, not for all the nuts on Iceland's
+greasy mountains, the Psalmist made the song about. I sees it all like
+in a wision." His eyes closed, and his hands and feet swam vaguely. "Me
+and Monkey o' the one side, and the Three J's o' tother, pitchin' the
+tale a treat at tops of our voices." He opened his eyes slowly, ogled
+Ma, tapped her knee, winked, and ended confidentially: "One thing, old
+dear. I'll lay they'll give Putnam's best same there as here. Now
+then!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+Putnam's Once More
+
+
+It was Sunday morning at Putnam's, and in Maudie's estimation things
+were more _comme il faut_ than they had been for long past.
+
+About a fortnight since there had been trouble in the yard during the
+night, and after it, for some hours before he went away, the
+Monster-without-Manners had been subdued almost to gentlemanliness.
+
+Then two of the fan-tails had been taken ill. Maudie from the top of the
+ladder had watched their dying contortions with the cynical interest of
+a Roman matron criticizing the death-agonies of a gladiator in the
+arena. When after staggering about the fan-tails turned over on their
+backs and flopped, Maudie descended from her perch and toyed with them
+daintily during their last moments, finally carrying their corpses up
+into the loft.
+
+After that, Maudie felt queer herself, and not only from the results of
+a stricken conscience. Indeed, but for the urgent and instant
+ministrations of Putnam's Only Gentleman she would have followed where
+the good fan-tails had gone.
+
+Thereafter, for a space of a week, there had fallen on the yard a
+hallowed time of peace very different from the period of oppression and
+irritable energy which had preceded it. Maudie attributed the change to
+the absence of the Monster-without-Manners who had departed quietly with
+the Four-legs there was all the fuss about.
+
+True, both had now returned, but in chastened mood, the result perhaps
+of well-deserved affliction experienced in foreign lands.
+
+This morning things were much as of old. The fan-tails puffed and pouted
+and sidled on the roofs. Across the Paddock Close came the sound of
+church-bells, and from the Lads' Barn the voices of the boys singing a
+hymn.
+
+The Bible Class was in full swing.
+
+All the lads were there but one. That one was Albert. He stood in lofty
+isolation in the door of the stable, a cigarette in his mouth, his arms
+folded and his face stiff with the self-consciousness that had obsessed
+him since his ride in the National. Jerry and Stanley, once the friends
+of Albert, and now his critics, swore that he never took that look off
+even when he went to bed.
+
+"Wears it in his sleep," said Jerry, "same as his pidgearmours."
+
+But the loftiest of us cannot live forever on the Heights of
+Make-Believe. And Albert, as he breathed the Spring, and remembered that
+no one was by to see, relaxed, became himself, and began to warble not
+unmelodiously--
+
+          "_When the ruddy sun-shine
+          Beats the ruddy rain,
+          Then the ruddy sparrow
+          'Gins to chirp again._"
+
+Mr. Silver came out of the house.
+
+Albert straightway resumed his air of a Roman Emperor turned stable-boy.
+
+The other listened to the singing that came from the barn.
+
+"Not inside, then, Albert?" he said.
+
+"No, sir," answered the other. "I leave that to the lads."
+
+Mr. Silver looked at his watch.
+
+"You'd better do a bolt before Miss Boy catches you," he said.
+
+Albert redoubled his frozen Emperor mien.
+
+The other passed into the saddle-room; and Albert revealed the
+bitterness of his soul to Maudie on the ladder.
+
+"He's all right now," he told his confidante. "Goin' to start the Bank
+again, and all on what I won him. And all the return he can make is to
+insultify me. That's the way of 'em, that is."
+
+A door opened at the back, and a rush of sound emerged.
+
+The lads were tumbling out of the Barn.
+
+Boy Woodburn came swiftly into the yard, her troop at her heels.
+
+She marked the truant in the door.
+
+"Well, Albert," she said. "We missed you."
+
+"He's too stuck up wiv 'isself to pray to Gob any more," mocked Jerry,
+stopping while the girl went on into the stable.
+
+"He thinks he can do it all on his own wivout no 'elp from no one,"
+sneered Stanley. "Albert does."
+
+Albert swaggered forward.
+
+"Say!" he said to Jerry. "Was it you or me won the National?"
+
+"Neever," answered Jerry. "It was Miss Boy."
+
+"Did she ride him, then?" asked Albert.
+
+Jerry shot his face forward. All the other lads were at his back.
+
+"She did then," he said.
+
+Albert was white and blinking, but in complete control of himself.
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"Everyone. You're a plucky fine actor and a mighty pore 'orseman, Albert
+Edward," continued the tormentor.
+
+Albert was a lad of character. He had sworn to his mistress that if he
+won the race he would henceforth drop the boy and don the man. And the
+sign of his emancipation was to be that never again would he use his
+dukes except in self-defence. Now in the hour of trial he was true to
+his word.
+
+Happily the strain was relieved, for at the moment Boy, scenting
+trouble, came out into the yard. Monkey Brand with her.
+
+Albert approached her.
+
+"Beg pardon, Miss, was it you or me won the National?" he asked. "These
+'ere genelmen say it was you."
+
+"It was neither," replied the girl. "It was Four-Pound-the-Second. Come
+in with me, Albert. I want to change his bandages."
+
+She reentered the stable.
+
+Albert followed at a distance, slow and sullen.
+
+Boy entered the loose-box, and Billy Bluff rose to greet her with a
+yawn.
+
+The door of the loose-box closed.
+
+The girl bent to her task.
+
+A hand was laid upon her shoulder.
+
+She looked up sharply.
+
+Jim Silver was standing above her, and the door was shut.
+
+"It's you, is it?" she said.
+
+He took her quivering life into his arms.
+
+"Now," she sighed.
+
+She raised her lips, and he laid his own upon them.
+
+"Again," she said with closed eyes.
+
+His own drank in her face.
+
+"You've been a patient old man," she whispered.
+
+"It was worth it," he answered.
+
+"I'll make it so," she said. "Please God!" she added with delightful
+inconsequence. "I'm glad you didn't bet."
+
+The great brown horse turned his head and breathed on them.
+
+Boy disengaged, patting her hair. "I'm glad you didn't bet," she
+repeated.
+
+"We shall have enough to farm on without that," he said. "And to breed a
+few 'chasers."
+
+Her hand was moving up and down the horse's smooth, hard neck.
+
+"I don't want to breed 'chasers," she said.
+
+He laughed softly.
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"No," she said. "I'm tired of it. I'm like mother. It's all right when
+you're quite young. But it doesn't last--if you've got anything in you.
+It's froth."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"You're right," he said. "What shall we breed?"
+
+"Shire horses," the girl replied. "Great, strong, useful creatures
+that'll work all day and every day--"
+
+"Bar Sunday," he said. "Remember grand-pa, please."
+
+"--without a fuss," she continued, ignoring his impertinence, "shifting
+trucks, drawing the plough, and carrying the wheat, and come home tired
+of evenings with wet coats and healthy appetites."
+
+"My old love," he said. "You're right, my dear, of course. But he's a
+beauty all the same."
+
+"He is that," replied Boy, with a friendly slap.
+
+They left the loose-box, Billy Bluff attending them.
+
+Monkey Brand, his back ostentatiously toward them, was on watch at the
+door.
+
+He heard them coming down the gangway and turned shyly.
+
+Then he touched his hat.
+
+The girl took his hand and shook it with a will.
+
+Jim Silver followed suit.
+
+"Very please, Miss, I'm sure," gulped the old jockey.
+
+The little man drew Silver mysteriously aside.
+
+"Only one thing, sir," he said. "That little mistake o' yours about the
+copper's nark. I'm goin' to forget _all_ about that now."
+
+"Thank you, Brand," answered Jim earnestly. "We all make mistakes, don't
+we?"
+
+"That's right, sir," said Monkey. "Only that's a mistake I never
+made--and never would."
+
+Some of the lads were still hanging about the yard. They knew, too.
+Maudie knew. Even the fan-tails, splashing in mid-air, were not
+deceived.
+
+Albert came forward and ventured a shy and sullen word of
+congratulation.
+
+"That hundred thousand you won for me made it possible, no doubt,"
+replied Silver gravely.
+
+Albert was still on his pinnacle.
+
+"Very glad to 'elp in such a good cause, sir," he answered. "Only one
+thing, if I might make so bold: I 'ope you won't forget young Jerry's
+alf-dollar come Christmas. Means a lot to a little feller like that."
+
+The pair passed out into the Paddock Close.
+
+Old Mat and his missus were coming down the hill from church.
+
+The young couple strolled to meet them.
+
+"He's been making amends for what he did amiss at Liverpool, dad has,"
+said Mrs. Woodburn comfortably.
+
+Mat lifted a dull eye to the blue.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I put a sovereign in the plate. That should square the
+account, de we, accordin' to my reckonin'."
+
+He pursed his lips firmly, almost defiantly, as he looked the heavens in
+the face.
+
+A sudden shyness fell on the little group.
+
+Then Boy went to her mother, lifted the old lady's veil, and kissed her.
+
+"Mother," she said.
+
+Mrs. Woodburn took Jim Silver's hand in both of hers, and kneaded it in
+just the way her daughter would do in moments of deep emotion.
+
+She said nothing, but her eyes were beautiful.
+
+Old Mat swallowed, touched his hat, and looked away.
+
+"That's a little bit o' better," he muttered to himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A minute later the old man was walking down the hill, Mrs. Woodburn on
+his arm.
+
+The young couple strolled on up the slope.
+
+Boy looked across the Paddock Close to Joses's window.
+
+Mrs. Boam was pulling up the blind, and the sun was pouring in splendid
+torrents on to the dead man within.
+
+The girl was glad.
+
+They came to the quiet church.
+
+"Shall we go in?" she said.
+
+"Let's," he answered.
+
+Together they entered the silence and stood looking up toward the Figure
+in the dim east window.
+
+Mr. Haggard, in his cassock, was arranging the narcissi on the altar.
+
+As he saw them, he turned and came slowly down the aisle in the quiet.
+
+For Boy it was almost as if the Figure in the window had come to life
+and was drawing near to her and Jim.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Boy Woodburn, by Alfred Ollivant
+
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