wed the triumphant Boys.

"Stand down, England!"

"What price the Yankee-doodlers?"

"Who gives the Mustang best?"

In that tumult of sound, individual voices were lost. The yells of the
bookies were indistinguishable. Men saw things through a mist, and more
than one woman fainted.

Then through the terrific boom came the discordant blare of a megaphone,
faint at first but swiftly overbearing the noise of the tempest.

"Watch it, ye ----!" it screamed. "He's catchin' ye!"

It was the voice of Jaggers.

The thousands heard and hushed. They recognised the voice and the note
of terror in it.

Chukkers heard, too, turned, and had a glimpse of a green jacket surging
up wide on his right.

There was the sound of a soughing wind as the crowd drew its breath.

What was this great owl-like enemy swooping up out of nowhere?

Chukkers, his head on his shoulders, took the situation in.

What he saw he didn't like.

The mare was going strong beneath him, but the brown horse on his
quarter was only beginning: so much his expert eye told him at a glance.
Four-Pound-the-Second was coming along like a cataract, easy as an eagle
in flight; his great buffeting shoulders were sprayed with foam, his
gaping nostrils drinking in oceans of air and spouting them out again
with the rhythmical regularity of a steam-pump; and his little jockey
sat on his back still as a mouse--a pale face, a gleam of fair hair, and
two little brown fists that gave and took with each stride of the
galloping horse.

Chukkers was not the only one who seized the situation.

The bookies absorbed it in a flash--the outsider's form, the jockey's
colours, the significance of both. It was Old Mat's horse--Old Mat who
had sprung surprises on the ring so often in his time. Rumour had always
said that the horse was by Berserker. Then they had disbelieved.
Now--well, he looked it.

Suddenly the ring went mad.

"Six to four the favourite!" the bookies roared. "Seven to four on the
field!"

The English, too, woke to the fact that they had a champion at last. A
thirst for vengeance, after all they had endured at the hands of the
contumelious foe, carried them away. They stood up and howled. The
Americans, who had seen the cup of victory brought to their lips and
snatched away again, roused by the threat to their favourite, responded
wrathfully. Roar answered roar; New England thundered against Old.

Chukkers, as always, had steadied the mare after her ru