rangement, which, if made just now, would not suit the Major's
views.

They went to Newmarket, and there they met Captain Green. "Tifto,"
said the young Lord, "I won't have that fellow with us when the horse
is galloping."

"There isn't an honester man, or a man who understands a horse's
paces better in all England," said Tifto.

"I won't have him standing alongside of me on the Heath," said his
Lordship.

"I don't know how I'm to help it."

"If he's there I'll send the horse in;--that's all." Then Tifto
found it best to say a few words to Captain Green. But the Captain
also said a few words to himself. "D---- young fool; he don't know
what he's dropping into." Which assertion, if you lay aside the
unnecessary expletive, was true to the letter. Lord Silverbridge was
a young fool, and did not at all know into what a mess he was being
dropped by the united experience, perspicuity, and energy of the man
whose company on the Heath he had declined.

The horse was quite a "picture to look at." Mr. Pook the trainer
assured his Lordship that for health and condition he had never seen
anything better. "Stout all over," said Mr. Pook, "and not an ounce
of what you may call flesh. And bright! just feel his coat, my Lord!
That's 'ealth,--that is; not dressing, nor yet macassar!"

And then there were various evidences produced of his pace,--how he
had beaten that horse, giving him two pounds; how he had been beaten
by that, but only on a mile course; the Leger distance was just the
thing for Prime Minister; how by a lucky chance that marvellous quick
rat of a thing that had won the Derby had not been entered for the
autumn race; how Coalheaver was known to have had bad feet. "He's a
stout 'orse, no doubt,--is the 'Eaver," said Mr. Pook, "and that's
why the betting-men have stuck to him. But he'll be nowhere on
Wednesday. They're beginning to see it now, my Lord. I wish they
wasn't so sharp-sighted."

In the course of the day, however, they met a gentleman who was of a
different opinion. He said loudly that he looked on the Heaver as the
best three-year-old in England. Of course as matters stood he wasn't
going to back the Heaver at even money;--but he'd take twenty-five
to thirty in hundreds between the two. All this ended in the bet
being accepted and duly booked by Lord Silverbridge. And in this
way Silverbridge added two thousand four hundred pounds to his
responsibilities.

But there was worse than this coming. On t