was a Mug. A mug was made
to be drained; and Joses had dreamed that to him would fall the draining
of this singularly fine specimen of his class. His attachment to the
firm of the Three J's, based largely on fear, was not such but that he
would break it at any moment could he do so with security and profit.

He had known all about Silver long before he had turned up at Putnam's;
it was part of his business to know about such young men. Indeed, he had
made an abortive, determined, and characteristically tortuous attempt to
sweep the young man and his horses into Jaggers's capacious net.

Silver indeed had hesitated awhile between the two stables. Then he had
met Jaggers, and had decided at once--against Dewhurst. When the game
was finally lost, and it was known that Putnam's had come out top again
in the struggle that had lasted between the two stables for thirty
years, the tout changed his method but never lost sight of his ideal;
yearning over the rich young man as a mother yearns over a child.

His dreams had been shattered finally in the wood a month back, and for
that debacle the girl behind the rock must be held responsible.

CHAPTER XVII

Boy Sees a Vision

Joses when in liquor was wont to boast that his memory was good, and he
was right upon the whole. But on this occasion he had forgotten
something, and that something was Billy Bluff. Billy and Joses had met
before, as Monkey Brand had pointed out to Mat, and had agreed to
dislike each other. And when Joses began his stalk, Billy Bluff started
on a stalk of his own.

Boy Woodburn, peeping between two rocks, watched with grim glee. Her
senses, quick as those of a wild creature, had warned her long ago of
the Great Beast's approach. For Joses to imagine he could take her by
surprise was as though a beery bullock believed that he could catch a
lark. The girl was almost sorry for the man: his fatness, his fatuity
appealed to her pity. Alert as a leopard, she was not in the least
afraid of him. In the wood, true, he had caught her, but her downfall
there she owed to a sprain. Here in the open, in her riding things, she
could run rings about her enemy.

Lying on her face behind the rock, she watched the little drama.

Billy Bluff, wet still from the sea, his hair clinging about his ribs,
and giving him the air of a heraldic griffin, crept on the puffing fat
man and hurled at him with a roar.

The assault was entirely unexpected.

"You--bear!" blur