|THE sun had risen, and the long waste of Down stretched far and wide on
all sides; a broad and level track as smooth as any lawn, with here and
there a long but gentle slope, marked the exercising-ground used by
Mr Chifney's horses. This glistened in the early rays like a path of
silver. But fringing it on one side lay a great patch of gorse, and this
quite twinkled with green and gold from the gossamers, whose slender
fibres covered it as with a veil. The air was fresh and odorous with a
hundred pleasant scents and in the distant vale the morning mists were
lifting from field and farm, from tower and town, as at the command of
some enchanter. Nothing was heard but the occasional “tink, tink” of
a sheep-bell from the still sleeping folds. It was a scene to charm
eye and ear; but Captain Walter Lisgard of the 104th Dragoons, and
Mr Derrick from Cariboo, were persons upon whom the Dawn and its
concomitants were a good deal thrown away.
“You are sure this is the right place?” inquired the Colonist as
they reached a long low-shuttered building, half brick half wood, where
the horses were wont to be rubbed down after their gallops.
“Ay, this is it right enough,” was the reply. “I dare say they are
all inside there waiting for us. It does not do to be seen at this sort
of work. Yes, here they are.”
Inside the doorway of the shed in question stood Mr Tite Chifney, in
company with a gentleman of advanced years, in a white greatcoat and a
new broad-brimmed hat, somewhat resembling a bishop's.
“How are you, Lisgard?”
“How do you do, my Lord?” were the only salutations that passed
between the members of the two parties, who had met entirely upon
business.
“Come and beat the furze with me, will you, Derrick? the captain has
not his gaiters on. It is well to make quite sure that we are all alone
before we begin,” said the horse-trainer. The two men accordingly
stepped into the gorse, and commenced walking through it in parallel
lines, as though in pursuit of game.
When he came to a patch of gorse a little higher and thicker than the
rest, Mr Chifney struck it violently with his foot as if for rabbits.
All of a sudden, there was a violent ejaculation from Derrick; he threw
himself down upon some crouching object, and then came a struggle and a
choking scream. “Hollo, don't kill the fellow,” exclaimed Chifney
running up. “See, he's black in the face, man.--Master Walter, my
Lord---help, here, help!”
The two men who had been left in the rubbing-house came quickly forward,
but it took the combined strength of all three of them to release the
poor wretch from the powerful grasp of the Cariboo miner.
“Damn the rogue; I 'll teach him to come spying here,” cried he,
nodding with his head towards a shattered telescope, upon which he had
just stamped his foot. “I'll squeeze his throat for him.”
“You seem to have done that already, sir,” said the man in the
broad-brim coolly; “a very little more of it, and you would probably
have had _your_ throat squeezed for you by the hangman. Poor devil, he
doesn't seem to have much beside his life belonging to him, so that it
would be hard to take that.”
A wretched object, clothed in ragged black, and with wisps of straw for
shoes, wet with the dew amid which he had been lying, and shivering with
pain and fear, hear crawled to the last speaker's feet.
“Don't let 'em murder me, my Lord. They _will_ if you don't
interfere,” screamed the wretched “tout,” whose mission it was to
procure racing intelligence under difficulties of this sort, but who had
been fairly cowed by Derrick's rage and violence. “I swear to you
that I will never tell a soul that I have seen your lordship”----
“Quiet, fool!” interrupted the other sternly, “unless you want to
have your lying tongue cut out.--It's bad enough,” whispered he to
the trainer, “that he should have seen _me_ hear; but do you think he
has seen the horses?”
“That's quite certain, my Lord,” returned the trainer coolly; “and this
is a mouth as can't be shut about that matter. But he shall see nothing
more of this morning's work.--Come here, you sir.”
Taking the trembling wretch by the collar, he led him to the edge of the
furze, and, having securely tied his arms and legs, enveloped his head
in a horse-cloth which he brought out of the rubbing-house. From the
same building there now emerged two horses, not in the clothes in which
exercise was generally taken, but ready in all respects for racing, and
ridden not by stable-boys as usual, but by regular jockeys.
“There is no question about it but the bay is the best-looking,
my Lord,” said the trainer, in answer to something that had been
addressed to him; “but handsome is as handsome does. You would not
thank me for praising _The King_ on Epsom Downs, after he had been
beaten by an outsider such as yonder horse.”
“Who rides the creature?” inquired the other sharply, and looking
contemptuously towards the clumsy black, who was no other than our old
friend _Menelaus_. “Dam'me if he don't look more fit for a hearse
than a race-course.
“Jack Withers, my Lord--a man that was with him in France, and
thoroughly understands what the horse can do; and, indeed, there is
no other that _can_ ride him as should be. That's the worst of these
foreign horses--they are so full of tricks. I've known that black stand
stock-still in his gallops, and shoot his boy off just like a rocket. He
can't abide a strange seat.”
“Of course Withers rides him in the great race,” observed the other
thoughtfully.
“Certainly, my Lord, just as Tom Uxbridge here will mount _The King_.
What's the good of having a trial-race unless with the same jocks as
is to ride them afterwards?--Starting from that white post, up the rise
yonder, round the fir clump, and so back again, is the Derby course to
a yard.--Master Walter and Mr Derrick, will you be so good-as to bear a
hand, and help me out with the steps?”
“Ain't the gentleman in the broad-brim going to use them as well
as me?” observed the Colonist insolently, and keeping his hands
resolutely in his pockets. “I never engaged myself to be his
body-servant, as I know on.”
There being no answer to this appeal, Captain Lisgard and the trainer
once more entered the rubbing-house, and reappeared dragging with them a
movable platform upon wheels, and furnished with a flight of steps after
the manner of a pulpit. From the top of this, one might see the whole
course from end to end, and upon it the four spectators took their
station close to the starting-post.
“Now, my lads, are you both ready?” inquired the trainer of the jockeys,
who were getting their fuming horses into line. “This handkerchief will
serve for a flag, and when I drop it, let there he no false starts. One,
two, three--now off!”
As the handkerchief left his fingers, the bay and black leaped forward
as with a single impulse; the next moment each had got into his stride,
and was away like the wind.
“It is amazing how they keep together,” muttered his Lordship in
an uneasy tone: “I should not have thought the Frenchman had had such
speed in him.”
“It is the hill which will decide the matter, my Lord,” returned the
trainer in a low tone; “the ground is rising already. There! and see,
the black draws ahead.”
“Ay, the black has it!” cried Derrick with a frightful imprecation.
“I will lay fifty-pounds to ten on _Manylaws_.”
“I take you, sir,” said the man in the broad-brim coolly, as with
race-glass in hand he watched every movement of the horses who were now
nearing the fir-clump: “there has something happened to that big-boned
animal of yours, I fear. What is it, Chifney?”
He was about to pass the glass to the trainer, but Derrick roughly tore
it from his grasp, and applied it to his own eyes. “It's one of his
infernal jibs,” exclaimed he; “and yet---- Well done, Jack Withers;
that's a five-pound note in your pocket.--Perhaps you'd like to look
again, my Lord, for their position is a little altered.”
“The black is gaining fast,” ejaculated Captain Lisgard, his pale
face aglow with excitement. “He has recovered all he lost by that
false step. What a pace they are coming down the hill! By Heaven, _The
King_ is beaten! Tom is using the whip.”
“Just what I expected,” murmured the trainer.
There was a thunder of hoofs, the smack of a whip again and again, a
flash of colour--first black, then bay--and the trial-race was over.
“In a second and a half less time than the last Derby,” said his
Lordship drily, after consulting his stop-watch.
“I think I did not bring you here for nothing, my Lord,” said the
trainer confidentially.
“Certainly not, Mr Chifney,” returned the other bitterly: “I find
myself a poorer man than I had thought to be three minutes ago by fifty
thousand pounds. Moreover, I have made the acquaintance of one of the
greatest ruffians that I have ever met even upon a race-course. It is
altogether an excellent morning's work.”
“It would have been worse for you, my Lord, if you had not come,”
answered the trainer with some stiffness; “you would not have thanked
me if you had seen this for the first time on Epsom Downs.”
“Very true--very true, Mr Chifney. But you must excuse my feeling a
little annoyed by the results of this gallop. And as for this gentleman
with the beard--when he has done shaking his hands with his jockey----
Here are two five-pound notes for you, sir--the amount of my bet.”
“Keep it yourself, my Lord,” exclaimed Derrick, waving his hat round
and round in frantic joy. “Or stay, if you're too proud.--Here,
Jack, is a fiver for you; and here, you poor devil in the horse-cloth,
here's another for you, to heal your windpipe, which, I believe, I
squeezed a little too hard a while ago. If the race had gone agen me,
you'd never have got a shilling of compensation, so you may thank
_Manylaws_.”
The trainer's hand was clapped upon the incautious gold-digger's
mouth with considerable emphasis, but it arrived too late. “The
cat was out of the bag.” The tout had learned the very piece of
intelligence to obtain which he had gone through so much.
Bound and bruised, and in evil plight as he was, the fellow could not
help indulging in a sly chuckle, while his four enemies (for the jockeys
were already in the rubbing-down house attending to their panting
steeds) regarded one another with looks of blank dismay.
“You have done it now, Mr Derrick,” observed the trainer
lugubriously. “We shall never get thirty to one--no, nor ten to
one--against _Menelaus_ again.--Great Heaven! why, you wouldn't kill
the man!”
The gold-digger had drawn a clasp-knife, half dagger, half cutting-tool,
from his pocket, and was quietly feeling the point of it with his thumb.
“I have done wrong,” said he, “but it is a wrong which is not
without remedy. No, I am not going to murder this gentleman--at least
not now; but I have something of importance to tell him.--Look you here,
Mr Tout. I am not a respectable person any more than yourself, in a
general way; but there is probably this difference between us--I am
a man of my word. What I _say_, I will do, I always _do_ do, at all
hazards. If a man robs another of his gold in the place where I come
from, we shoot him: it mayn't be right, but that is the principle on
which we act. You will rob me of all I have in the world if you tell
what you have seen to-day; consequently, mark me, if you do tell,
_I will kill you_. Of this you may be well assured. That is the only
satisfaction which will be left me. You have felt my fingers, but
you will in that case feel this knife. I hope I make myself well
understood---- No, Master Walter, this is not your business, but a
private matter between this person and myself. I want to take a good
look at him, so that I may know him again anywhere; alone or in company,
in England or across seas; let him be sure I shall find him out; and I
want him to take a good look at me. Mine is not the face of a man who
falters in his purpose, or who, having suffered a wrong, puts up with
it, I think, and does not revenge himself.”
He knelt down, and set his bearded cheek quite close to the luckless
tout. Each looked into the other's eyes--one inquiringly, with a
half-timid, half-cunning glance; the other sternly, vengefully, like a
judge and executioner in one.
“I will never tell!” quavered the miserable wretch--“s'help me,
Heaven, I never will!”
“Yes, you will,” returned Derrick coolly; “I can see that you are
a babbler born; and I don't ask impossibilities. Moreover, it is but
just that you should derive some advantage from my folly. In a week's
time, you may tell your employer what you please. In the meanwhile,
there is your five pounds. I wish to act as fairly by you as I can;
but if the odds rise or fall respecting these two horses within seven
days--as they can only do if the result of this trial gets wind--then I
shall know where to find a sheath for this knife.” With these words he
cut the rope that bound the man's arms and legs, pushed the five-pound
note into his hands, and bade him be off; whereupon off he shambled.
Neither the trainer nor the man addressed as “my Lord” had stirred
or spoken a word during this interview, and Captain Lisgard had only
once made a movement as though to interrupt it. All three were well
enough pleased that the gold-digger had taken the task of imposing
silence into his own hands. In all likelihood, he was merely threatening
the fellow; and if not, they did not wish to be accessories before the
fact to--to any vengeance he might choose to inflict upon the offending
tout.
“Well, gentlemen, we have now six clear days wherein to make our
arrangements,” said Derrick, “and a good deal may be done in that
time. True, but for my stupid conduct, we might have had more time
before us; but I have made what amends lies in my power.”
“You believe, then, that yonder rascal will keep his word, do you?”
inquired the trainer incredulously.
“I think so, Mr Chifney. I shall certainly keep mine,” returned the
other gravely.--
“Master Walter, we had better be moving home.”
At these words, the party separated--like men who have each their work
to do, and are glad to be quit of their companions, in order that they
may set about it--with no more ceremony than a parting nod. The man in
the broad-brim rode away upon a shooting-pony, which awaited him in the
rubbing-down house. The jockeys paced slowly towards their stables, each
horse now clothed and visored as though it had been merely out for early
exercise; while Mr Chifney walked briskly homeward by another route.
Derrick and Captain Lisgard returned together by the way they came, and
plodded on for some time in total silence.
“You will put all your money upon the black un now, I fancy, Master
Walter?” observed the gold-digger at last, as they drew near the village.
“I have done that already,” replied the young man frankly. “I was
thinking rather of hedging when the odds fall.”
“Nay, do not do that, lad,” rejoined the other earnestly; “the
thing is a certainty. _The King_ was the only horse that we had to fear.
On the contrary, my advice is, 'Put the Pot on.'”
“The Pot _is_ on, with all I have to put in it, Mr Derrick. You forget
that I am not an eldest son, and nobody lends money to a younger.”
“Ay, true; there's that confounded stuck-up coxcomb, Sir Richard.
But look here, my lad. In this pocket-book I carry all I am worth in the
world, for in Cariboo there are no banks, and a man at my time of
life does not readily change his habits. Here are five hundred pounds
entirely at your service. Nay, I told you that I had taken a liking to
you, and I would give them to you right-away, only I suppose you are too
proud to accept them, save as a loan.”
“Mr Derrick--Ralph--you are very, very kind,” said the young man
hesitatingly; “but this is a large sum.”
“At the present prices, it is ten thousand pounds if _Manylaws_
wins,” replied the gold-digger, rubbing his hands; “and if
_Manylaws_ does not win--well, I shall not, I hope, be an importunate
creditor. I do not say: 'Do not thank me,' lad, or I like you to
smile like that. You are very, very welcome. But here we part; you to
your home and friends, and I--well, I am used to be alone. I shall
not see a friend's face again till I see yours. Good-bye, dear lad,
good-bye.”
With a hearty hand-shake and more thanks, Master Walter strode gaily
away through the still slumbering village, reclimbed the avenue gate,
and let himself noiselessly in at the front-door. As he passed on tiptoe
along a gallery, on one side of which lay his sister's apartment, and
on the other that of Miss Rose Aynton's, a door opened, and an anxious
voice whispered: “What news, Walter?”
“Good news,” replied he in the same cautious tone, and glided on to his
own room.