"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?"