ween times and your cheeks are
as red as roses when the flag goes down."

"And if the horse should not win after you have cheated the people?"

"You'll be some five thousand out of pocket--that's all. Now, Anna,
don't let us have any mumble-pie between us. I'm not the dark man of the
story-books who lures the beautiful heroine on to play, and you're not
the wonderful Princess who breaks her old pa and marries because he's
stony. You can't get overmuch out of the old man and you're going to
make the rest at Tattersalls. If you listen to me, you'll make it--but
if you don't, if you play the giddy goat with old John Farrier in the
pulpit; well, then, the sooner you write cheques the better. That's the
plain truth and you may take it or leave it. There are not three honest
men racing and Willy Forrest don't join the trinity. We'll do as all
the crowd does and leave 'em to take care of themselves. You make a book
that they know how to do it. Oh, my stars, don't they--eh, what?"

Anna did not reply immediately to this odd harangue. She knew a good
deal about horses, but nothing whatever about the knavery of betting,
the shoddy tricks of it and the despicable spirit in which this great
game is often played. Something of her father's cunning, inherited and
ineradicable, led her to condone the Captain's sporting creed and not to
seek understanding. The man's high spirits made a sure appeal to her.
She could not comprehend it wholly--but she had to admit that none of
all her father's widening circle had ever appealed to her as this
nimble-tongued adventurer, who could make her heart quicken every time
their hands touched.

"I don't like it," she said anon, "and I don't want anything to do with
it. You make Whirlwind win the race and nobody will be hurt. If they bet
against the horse, what is that to me? How can I help what they
think--and I don't care either if they are so foolish. Didn't you
promise me that I should see him gallop this morning? I wouldn't have
motored over otherwise. You said that there was to be a Trial--"

"Divine angel, we are at your feet always. Of course, there's a Trial.
Am I so foolish as to suppose that you came over to see Willy
Forrest--eh, what? Have I lost the funny-bone up above? Farrier is going
to gallop the nags in half an hour's time. Your smoke-machine can take
us up the hill and there we'll form our own conclusions. You leave the
rest to me. It will be a bright sunny morning when they put