oking back saw Monkey Brand limp into the
yard from the road, leading Goosey Gander.

Mat was on the other side of the old horse, walking thoughtfully, his
whip over his shoulder, and muttering to himself, as was his way.

Goosey Gander's head was framed fittingly between master and man. Now he
rubbed it against one and now against the other. They led him to the
water-trough and stood over him as he drank with nibbling lips, shaking
the oppressive collar from his shoulders. Jim Silver at the gate watched
the little group with quiet content. The three seemed so perfectly at
home together that between them was no need for words.

* * * * *

Monkey Brand was a cockney.

He had been born in the River Ward of Hammersmith in that blind alley
known to the police and the inhabitants as Tiger Bay.

His father's ice-cream business never had any fascination for the lad;
but from the first his spirit drew him to the long-eared shaggy mokes of
certain of the neighbours. While the other urchins from the River Ward
spent their days in and out of the river dodging the coppers, at the
draw-docks on Chiswick Mall, or down by the coal-wharves under the
bridge, Monkey's happiest hours were passed leading a coster's cart
laden with green stuff up and down the alleys. When possible he slept
with Mary, the donkey he had in charge. She was fond of him, too; and
the Joes, who owned her, found that the long-eared lady, when in one of
her stubborn moods, would give to the boy's persuasions what she refused
to the big stick.

To the Joes Monkey proved himself invaluable.

He was industrious and reliable; and he had his reward when young Joe
jaunted across London for fish at Billingsgate or greens at Covent
Garden and took the lad with him.

The great day of the boy's life came when the Joes took him to Epsom for
the Derby week.

Old Joe, young Joe's missus, and the kids, stowed away in the body of
the cart; while young Joe balanced on one shaft and Monkey on the other.
The party crossed Barnes Common in the small hours of the Monday
morning, and dossed on Banstead Downs that night. Next day they joined
the great stream of traffic rolling out of London Epsomward. Young Joe,
whose strength lay in his powers of sympathetic intuition, let Monkey
drive. And the urchin took his place with pride in that vast stream of
char-a-bancs, 'buses, hansoms, and drags rolling southward; and no
four-in-hand coachman of the