he quarrels of Governor Eden and his Assembly, and
offered to lay a guinea that the Governor's agent would get to him that
day,--will-he, nill-he. I did not think it worth while to argue with
such a man.

My Lord took three-quarters of an hour to dress, and swore he had not
accomplished the feat so quickly in a year. He washed his hands and face
in a silver basin, and the scent of the soap filled the room. He rated
his Swiss for putting cinnamon upon his ruffles in place of attar of
roses, and attempted to regale us the while with some of his choicest
adventures. In more than one of these, by the way, his Grace of
Chartersea figured. It was Fox who brought him up.

"See here, Baltimore," he said, "I'm not squeamish. But I'm cursed if I
like to hear a man who may die any time between bottles talk so."

His Lordship took the rebuke with an oath, and presently hobbled down the
stairs of the great and silent house to the stable court, where two
grooms were in waiting with the horse. He was an animal of amazing
power, about sixteen hands, and dapple gray in colour. And it required
no special knowledge to see that he had a devil inside him. It gleamed
wickedly out of his eye.

"'Od's life, Richard!" cried Charles, "he has a Jew nose; by all the
seven tribes I bid you 'ware of him."

"You have but to ride him with a gold bit, Richard," said Comyn, "and he
is a kitten, I'll warrant."

At that moment Pollux began to rear and kick, so that it took both the
'ostlers to hold him.

"Show him a sovereign," suggested Fox. "How do you feel, Richard?"

"I never feared a horse yet," I said with perfect truth, "nor do I fear
this one, though I know he may kill me."

"I'll lay you twenty pounds you have at least one bone broken, and ten
that you are killed," Baltimore puts in querulously, from the doorway.

"I'll do this, my Lord," I answered. "If I ride him, he is mine. If he
throws me, I give you twenty pounds for him."

The gentlemen laughed, and Baltimore vowed he could sell the horse to
Astley for fifty; that Pollux was the son of Renown, of the Duke of
Kingston's stud, and much more. But Charles rallied him out by a
reference to the debt at quinze, and an appeal to his honour as a
sportsman. And swore he was discouraging one of the prettiest encounters
that would take place in England for many a long day. And so the horse
was sent to the stables of the White Horse Cellar, in Piccadilly, and
left there at my order.