his life to breeding shire-horses. Now he meant, when once he had
mastered his job, to devote his leisure to owning and breeding 'chasers.

Some time elapsed after his father's death before he let himself go in
this respect. His sensitive conscience and high sense of duty gave him
an uneasy mind in the matter. His father had disapproved of horses, or
rather had been afraid of the Turf and its consequences.

It was a while before the son could assuage his qualms and feel himself
free to go forward in the prosecution of his desire.

His old house-master, still his father-confessor in spiritual
distresses, finally dispelled the young man's doubts and launched him on
his destined way.

"Be yourself," he said, "as your father was before you. He wouldn't
farm--because he hadn't got it in him. What he had in him was banking.
So like a wise man he banked. You've got it in you to breed steeplechase
horses. So breed them. Only--breed them better than any man ever bred
them before."

The young man's mind once finally resolved, nothing could stop him. And
it was in the pursuit of his desire that he first came across Mat
Woodburn.

The old man and the young took to each other from the first. Indeed,
there was much in common between the two. Both were simple of heart,
children of nature, caring little for the world, and both believed with
passionate conviction that an English thoroughbred was the crown and
glory of God's creatures.

"_HE_ didn't make no mistake _that_ time," the old man was fond of
saying with emphasis, to the amusement of Mr. Haggard and the annoyance
of his wife.

CHAPTER XIII

Boy in Her Eyrie

In the corner of the yard at Putnam's was Billy Bluff's kennel. Above
the kennel, a broad ladder, much haunted by Maudie, the free, who loved
to sit on it and tantalize with her airs of liberty Billy, the prisoner
on his chain, led to the loft above the stable.

It was a very ordinary loft in the roof, dusty, dark, with hay piled in
one corner, a chaff-cutter, and trap-doors in the floor, through which
the forage was thrust down into the mangers of the horses below.

At the end of the loft was a wooden partition. Behind the partition was
the girl's room.

She slept and lived up there over the stable at her own desire. It was
less like being in a house: the girl felt herself her own mistress as
she did not under the maternal roof; and most of all she was near the
horses.

"I keep two watch-dogs at