"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.