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.