Hercules St. Levant (of the Chilian Cuirassiers) would tell you--if he could be brought to speak coherently on the subject--that he dates his ruin from the day when he miscalculated the extent of Sir Alan Wyverne's long-suffering or laziness. Surely some of us can remember that wonderful Copper Captain--the round, ringing tones tempting you with a point over the proper odds--the scarfs and waistcoats blinding in their gorgeousness, so "loud" that you _heard_ them coming all the way up from the distance post--the supernatural whiskers, whose sable volutes shaded his broad shoulders like the leaves of a talipat-palm? Hercules was very successful at first: he must have started with a nominal capital, but he had plenty of courage, some judgment, and more luck; so, by dint of industry, and now and then picking up crumbs from the table of those by whom the "good things" of the turf are shared, he contrived to ruffle it for awhile with the best of them. Men of mark and high estate would meet and hold communion with him--as they have done with deeper and darker villains--on the neutral ground at "The Corner," without caring to inquire too closely what Cacique had signed his commission, or on what foughten-fields the rainbow of his ribbons was won. With common prudence he might have held his own till now. But St. Levant was a buccaneer to the backbone: he spent his winnings as lavishly as any one of the young patricians whom he delighted to honour and imitate; and took his ease in the sunshine, scorning to make the slightest provision for the season of the rains. It came at last, in an Epsom Summer Meeting. The adverse Fates had it all their own way there: several of the Captain's certainties were overturned, and several promising "plants" were withered in their bud. It was the fourth "day of rebuke and blasphemy," and still the battle went hard against the Peruvian plunger. The Oaks dealt him the _coup de grace_: it was won by an extreme outsider. Hercules saw the number go up, and staggered out of the enclosure like a drunken man, with hardly breath enough left to hiss out a curse between his white lips. "Hecuba" was one of six that Wyverne had taken with him against the field for an even thousand: her name had never been mentioned in the betting at the time, and Alan only selected her because he chanced to know her owner and breeder well.