Aileen stroked and petted him and patted his neck and rubbed his nose, and you’d really thought the old horse knew her, he seemed so gentle-like. Then the Commissioner came down and said Mrs. Hautley, the police magistrate’s wife, and some other ladies wanted to see the horse that had won the race. So he was taken over there and admired and stroked till old Jacob got quite crusty.

“It’s an odd thing, Dawson,” 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 really 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.