er.

"Are you going to, Boy?" asked the old lady.

"D'you want me not?"

The mother nodded.

"Why not?"

Mrs. Woodburn sighed.

"I'd rather not," she said.

"Why not?" persisted Boy.

"It's against the rules."

"Is that all?" with scorn.

"No."

"Then why not?"

"It's dangerous."

"Dangerous!" flashed the girl. "So you think I'm a coward, too!"

"I don't, I don't," pleaded the other. "But I don't want you to."

Boy put her hand on the old lady's knee.

Her mother and Mr. Haggard were the only two human beings to whom she
ever demonstrated affection.

"Will you promise me?" said the mother.

"No," answered Boy.

Mrs. Woodburn tried to rise, but the girl held her down.

"Sit down, mother, please. You never come and see me up here."

Her eyes devoured her mother's face hungrily and with unlaughing eyes.

"Kiss me, mother," she ordered.

Mrs. Woodburn refrained.

"Kiss me, mother," sternly.

The mother obeyed.

"Shall you?" she asked.

"I shan't say," replied Boy.

She rose and went to the window.

Outside under the wood Mr. Silver, pipe in mouth, was sauntering round
Ragamuffin's grave.

"He said I was afraid!" she muttered.

* * * * *

When her mother left the room, the girl went to the window.

The gallop had kindled in her for the moment the flame of her old
ambition; but the desire had died down swiftly as it had risen.

Boy knew now that she no longer really wanted to ride the Grand National
Winner. She wanted something else--fiercely.

Cautiously she peeped out of the window.

Mr. Silver, in that old green golf-jacket of his, that clung so finely
to his clean shoulders, was prowling along the edge of the wood close to
Ragamuffin's grave, peeping for early nests.

The girl remembered that it was St. Valentine's--the day birds mate.

She turned away.

BOOK V

MONKEY BRAND

CHAPTER XXXV

The Dancer's Son

Sebastian Bach Joses was the son of an artist of Portuguese extraction.
The artist was a waster and a wanderer. In his youth he mated with a
Marseillaise dancing-girl who had posed as his model. Joses had been the
result. The father shortly deserted the mother, who took to the
music-hall stage.

After a brief and somewhat lurid career on the halls in London and
elsewhere she died.

The lad had as little chance as a human being can have. As a boy, with
the red-gold mass of hair he inherited from his mother, and