“I had no right to expect anything else, and if I had I should have been disappointed. I was now like a fettered dog, obliged to crouch before the glance of my keeper. Jim had only to say do this or do that, and I was forced to obey. “Duplicate keys were given me to enter stables by night, and when these did not answer I broke open the doors to hocus ’osses for those who gave out their orders, till at last I and three others had a command to poison the water from which a whole stable of race-’osses were supplied. The game was now up; my employers made a fortune and escaped all danger. “They were, however, suspected, but as they had touched the blunt and obtained credit of being down to a thing or two they were followed more than before. “One of their tools was grabbed and had six years of it. I and two others cut our sticks just in time. “After a twelvemonth’s hide we came back, but we could not get anything to do. Jim told us that we had managed the thing badly, and that his employers had cut him off without giving him a ‘quid’ for his trouble. “‘Foul deeds deserve foul play,’ said the moody prisoner in the corner. ‘It is the moral law, and grievous ought to be the penalty exacted from all who take part in them. Retributive justice has overtaken you, Bandy-legged Bill. You perceive I am acquainted with your nickname. But what became of the lord, your former master?’ “‘Why,’ replied the gipsy, ‘I knowed he was in it all from first to last, and had picked me up to serve his own ends. I dogged him one morning going down to the stables.’ “Please, my lord,” says I, coming the crawl to him, ‘I am an ill-used man.’ “‘Indeed! And who has ill-used you, Will?’ he asked, as if he had been my best friend. So I took courage, and up and told him all. “‘And who is Jim Dempster?’ said he, when he had heard me out, looking as innocent as a blessed saint. “‘Why, the agent of your friends who belong to the big betting firm where I was after I left you. Jim is the little man you spoke to the other day at Ascot about the running of Butterfly.’ “‘My friends, you scoundrel! How dare you call those fellows my friends?’ he cried out. ‘Perhaps you, too, are a friend of mine, as you have been my groom and rode my horses. Don’t you have the audacity to speak of such persons as my friends again.’ Then turning as serious as a barn owl, he looked me in the face, and continued, ‘You have escaped the law, my man, this time. Take my advice, quit bad company, and turn to an honest course of life. But, mark me, if ever you cross my path again, and are impudent enough to speak to me, I shall give you into custody on your own confession,’ and away he strode to the stable. “‘Hang it all, this is cheeky for a youngster, lord or no lord,’ says I. ‘I don’t think I could have done it better myself.’