nest handicap; but, as a rule, the
real criminals are never unearthed, and by consequence are never reached
and punished.

The Household, present and absent, were heavily hit. They cared little
for the "crushers" they incurred, but their champion's failure, when
he was in the face of Europe, cut them more terribly. The fame of the
English riding-men had been trusted to Forest King and his owner, and
they, who had never before betrayed the trust placed in them, had broken
down like any screw out of a livery stable; like any jockey bribed to
"pull" at a suburban selling-race. It was fearfully bitter work; and,
unanimous to a voice, the indignant murmur of "doctored" ran through
the titled, fashionable crowds on the Baden course in deep and ominous
anger.

The Seraph's grand wrath poured out fulminations against the wicked-doer
whosoever he was, or wheresoever he lurked; and threatened, with a
vengeance that would be no empty words, the direst chastisement of the
"Club," of which both his father and himself were stewards, upon the
unknown criminal. The Austrian and French nobles, while winners by the
event, were scarce in less angered excitement. It seemed to cast the
foulest slur upon their honor that, upon foreign ground, the renowned
English steeple-chaser should have been tampered with thus; and the fair
ladies of either world added the influence of their silver tongues, and
were eloquent in the vivacity of their sympathy and resentment with a
unanimity women rarely show in savoring defeat, but usually reserve for
the fairer opportunity of swaying the censer before success.

Cecil alone, amid it all, was very quiet; he said scarcely a word,
nor could the sharpest watcher have detected an alteration in
his countenance. Only once, when they talked around him of the
investigations of the Club, and of the institution of inquiries to
discover the guilty traitor, he looked up with a sudden, dangerous
lighting of his soft, dark, hazel eyes, under the womanish length of
their lashes: "When you find him, leave him to me."

The light was gone again in an instant; but those who knew the wild
strain that ran in the Royallieu blood knew by it that, despite his
gentle temper, a terrible reckoning for the evil done his horse might
come some day from the Quietist.

He said little or nothing else, and to the sympathy and indignation
expressed for him on all sides he answered with his old, listless calm.
But, in truth, he barely k