says the Commissioner, 'nobody here knows
this horse, where he was bred, or anything about him. Such a grand
animal as he is, too! I wish Morringer could have seen him; he's always
raving about horses. How savage he'll be to have missed all the fun!'

'He's a horse you don't see every day,' says Bill Dawson. 'I'll give a
couple of hundred for him right off.'

'Not for sale at present,' says old Jacob, looking like a cast-iron
image. 'I'll send ye word when he is.'

'All right,' says Mr. Dawson. 'What a shoulder, what legs, what loins he
has! Ah! well, he'll be weighted out now, and you will be glad to sell
him soon.'

'Our heads won't ache then,' says Jacob, as he turns round and rides
away.

'Very neat animal, shows form,' drawls Starlight. 'Worth three hundred
in the shires for a hunter; if he can jump, perhaps more; but depends on
his manners--must have manners in the hunting-field, Dawson, you know.'

'Manners or not,' says Bill Dawson, 'it's my opinion he could have won
that race in a canter. I must find out more about him and buy him if I
can.'

'I'll go you halves if you like,' says Starlight. 'I weally believe him
to be a good animal.'

Just then up rides Warrigal. He looks at the old horse as if he had
never seen him before, nor us neither. He rides close by the heads of
Mr. Dawson's team, and as he does so his hat falls off, by mistake, of
course. He jumps off and picks it up, and rides slowly down towards the
tent.

It was the signal to clear. Something was up.

I rode back to town with Aileen and Gracey; said good-bye--a hard matter
it was, too--and sloped off to where my horse was, and was out of sight
of Turon in twenty minutes.

Starlight hails a cabby (he told me this afterwards) and gets him to
drive him over to the inn where he was staying, telling the Dawsons he'd
have the wine put in ice for the dinner, that he wanted to send off a
letter to Sydney by the post, and he'd be back on the course in an hour
in good time for the last race.

In about half-an-hour back comes the same cabman and puts a note into
Bill Dawson's hand. He looks at it, stares, swears a bit, and then
crumples it up and puts it into his pocket.

Just as it was getting dark, and the last race just run, back comes
Sir Ferdinand and all the police. They'd ridden hard, as their horses
showed, and Sir Ferdinand (they say) didn't look half as good-natured as
he generally did.

'You've lost a great meeting, Morringer,' s