!
You look as glum as the morning I won your trap and the two nags."

"By the way, what became of them?" asked Heathcote.

"I sold the chestnut to a young cornet in the Carabineers. He saw me
ride him through all the bonfires in Sackville Street the night the mob
beat the police, and he said he never saw his equal to face fire; and he
was n't far wrong there, for the beast was stone blind."

"And the gray?"

"The gray is here, in Rome, and in top condition; and if I don't take
him over five feet of timber, my name is n't Gorman." A quick wink and
a sly look towards Agincoort conveyed to Heathcote the full meaning of
this speech.

"And you want a high figure for him?" asked he.

"If I sell him,--if I sell him at all; for you see, if the world goes
well with me, and I have a trump or two in my hand, I won't part with
that horse. It's not every day in the week that you chance on a beast
that can carry fifteen stone over a stiff country,--ay, and do it four
days in the fortnight!"

"What's his price?" asked Agincourt.

"Let him tell you," said O'Shea, with a most expressive look at
Heathcote. "He knows him as well or better than I do."

"Yes," said Heathcote, tantalizing him on purpose; "but when a man sets
out by saying, 'I don't want to sell my horse,' of course it means, 'If
you will have him, you must pay a fancy price.'"

If O'Shea's expression could be rendered in words, it might be read
thus: "And if that be the very game I'm playing, ain't you a downright
idiot to spoil it?"

"Well," said Agincourt, after a pause, "I 'm just in the sort of humor
this morning to do an extravagant thing, or a silly one."

"Lucky fellow!" broke in Heathcote, "for O'Shea's the very man to assist
you to your project."

"I am!" said O'Shea, firmly and quickly; "for there's not the man living
has scattered his money more freely than myself. Before I came of age,
when I was just a slip of a boy, about nineteen--"

"Never mind the anecdote, old fellow," said Heathcote, laughingly, as
he laid his hand on the other's shoulder. "Agincourt has just confessed
himself in the frame of mind to be 'done.' Do him, therefore, by all
means. Say a hundred and fifty for the nag, and he 'll give it, and keep
your good story for another roguery."

"Isn't he polite?--isn't he a young man of charming manners and
elegant address?" said O'Shea, with a strange mixture of drollery and
displeasure.

"He's right, at all events," said Agincourt,