and harder against the grey's flanks.

"Oh, my darling, my beauty--_now_!"

One touch of the spur--the first--and Forest King rose at the leap, all
the life and power there were in him gathered for one superhuman and
crowning effort; a flash of time, not half a second in duration, and he
was lifted in the air higher, and higher, and higher in the cold, fresh,
wild winter wind; stakes and rails, and thorn and water lay beneath him
black and gaunt and shapeless, yawning like a grave; one bound, even in
mid air, one last convulsive impulse of the gathered limbs, and Forest
King was over!

And as he galloped up the straight run-in, he was alone.

Bay Regent had refused the leap.

As the grey swept to the judge's chair, the air was rent with deafening
cheers that seemed to reel like drunken shouts from the multitude. "The
Guards win, the Guards win;" and when his rider pulled up at the
distance with the full sun shining on the scarlet and white, with the
gold glisten of the embroidered "Coeur Vaillant se fait Royaume,"
Forest King stood in all his glory, winner of the Soldier's Blue Ribbon,
by a feat without its parallel in all the annals of the Gold Vase.

* * *

Over there in England, you know, sir, pipe-clay is the deuce-and-all;
you've always got to have the stock on, and look as stiff as a stake, or
it's all up with you; you're that tormented about little things that you
get riled and kick the traces before the great 'uns come to try you.
There's a lot of lads would be game as game could be in battle, ay, and
good lads to boot, doing their duty right as a trivet when it came to
anything like war, that are clean druv' out of the service in time o'
peace, along with all them petty persecutions that worry a man's skin
like mosquito-bites. Now here they know that, and Lord! what soldiers
they do make through knowing of it! It's tight enough and stern enough
in big things; martial law sharp enough, and obedience to the letter all
through the campaigning; but that don't grate on a fellow; if he's worth
his salt he's sure to understand that he must move like clockwork in a
fight, and that he's to go to hell at double-quick march, and mute as a
mouse, if his officers see fit to send him. _That's_ all right, but they
don't fidget you here about the little fal-lals; you may stick your
pipe in your mouth, you may have your lark, you may do as you like, you
may spend your _decompte_ how you choose, you ma