"You're right," said French. "Faith, the horse has nearly driven everything else out of my mind. It's a queer business the way that girl come to my house and saved my fortune. I tell you straight, she put the come'ither on me so that I'd follow her through the black bog itself, if she beckoned me, with both eyes shut. She's a jewel, begad, she's a jewel! Look, now, at what she's done for me—saved and scraped, put me on an allowance of pocket-money—she did that—kept the house together; and it was she put the idea of taking the horse away from Drumgool into my head. Then, again, only for her you would never have come about the place, and what have you done? Why, you've saved me twice and three times over. My dear boy," burst out French, seizing Mr. Dashwood's hand, "it's you that's been the making of me, for if you hadn't nobbled that black beast of a Giveen, I'd have been done for entirely, and I hope she'll have you and make you happy."

"It's all a toss up," said Mr. Dashwood, as he wrung French's hand. "You never know what a woman will do, and, I tell you this, if she chucks me, and if you—if you—well, as a matter of fact, if you marry her, I'll forget I ever cared for her, and we'll all be friends just as we've always been."

"You say you are going to write to her?"

"Yes. I'm going to write now."

"Well, then," said French, "I'll do the same and write to her myself."

* * * * *

On the morning of the 13th, when the men had departed, Mr. French for Epsom, with the horse, and Mr. Dashwood to Hollborough to bail out the bailiff, Miss Grimshaw found herself alone and, for the first time in many months, lonely. The society of women can never make up to a woman for the society of men, and the society of men can never make up to a man for the society of women. French and Dashwood had taken away a genial something with them; the place seemed deserted.

She had grown fond of them both, extremely fond of them, and if she had cross-questioned herself on the subject, she could not have discovered, I think, which man she cared for most as a companion. Bobby Dashwood had youth on his side, and youth appeals to youth; but then French had experience—though it had never done him much good—and personality. There was a lot of sunlight about Michael French; one felt better for his presence, and, though he would knock a man down for two pins, though he made sport out of debt and debts over sport, and drank whisky enough to shock the modern tea-and-toast and barley-water man, he was a Christian when it came to practice, and a friend whom no disaster could alienate.

I cannot help lingering over him, for he belongs to a race of men who are growing fewer in an age when coldness and correctness of character veil, without in the least diminishing, the essential brutality and savagery of man.

Miss Grimshaw, left to herself, made a tour of the rooms, set Effie some sums to keep her quiet, and then retired into the sitting-room and shut the door.

It was now that the really desperate condition of things that underlay the comedy of Garryowen appeared before her unveiled.

"If the horse does not win?"

The ruin that those six words have so often postulated, rank, raw, cold, and brutal, rose before her. Horses, cards, dice, wine, tobacco—one's dislike of the Pipers who cry these down is accentuated by the truth that underlies their piping.

They are the prophets of the awful telegram which heralds the misery, the pinching, and the poverty that will grip you and your wife and your children till you are in your coffins. They are the prophets of the white dawn that shines into your rooms at Oxford when the men are gone, shines on the card-strewn floor where, like a fallen house of cards, lies the once fair future of a man. They are the physicians who prognose inefficiency, failure, old-age at forty—mental death.

Effie would have two hundred a year. Nothing could touch that. But what of the jovial French? She knew enough of his financial affairs to know that he would be absolutely and utterly ruined.

Tears welled to her eyes for a moment; then she brushed them away, and her colour heightened. Enthusiasm suddenly filled her; the desperate nature of the adventure appealed to her adventurous soul. Never did a doubter do any great work or carry any high adventure to a successful close. Garryowen would win! She felt that to doubt it would be the act of a traitor, and to believe it would help the event.

Shortly after three the dog-cart hired at the inn for the purpose of bailing out Mr. Piper arrived with Mr. Dashwood and his charge.

Mr. Piper looked literally as though he had been bailed out. The unfortunate man, besides receiving a severe rebuke from the magistrates, had been fined two pounds, which Mr. Dashwood had paid.

In Mr. Piper's morning reflections, conducted in the police cell at Crowsnest, he had recognised his false position, and the uselessness of kicking against the pricks.

He knew full well the ridicule that attends the unfortunate who tries to explain away the reason of his drunkenness; to say that he had been made tipsy by force would, even if it obtained his discharge, be so noticeable a statement that the London Press would be sure to seize upon it. If the horses had been taken away, it would be far better to put the fact down to the evasion having been effected whilst he was asleep, and as he had some money about him, he felt sure of being able to pay any fine that might be inflicted on him. He was unconscious of the fact that he had kicked the constable.

Mr. Dashwood, having released him, paid his fine, and given him some soda-water at the Hollborough inn, sketched for him the true position of affairs, making him understand that the horse, once the race was over, would be religiously brought back, and that the only course for him in the midst of these circumstances was to return to The Martens, accept its hospitality, and wait.

Having left him there, the young man, after a short interview with Miss Grimshaw, returned to London.