At first this rivalry between Skelton’s stable and what Jack Blair modestly called his “horse or two” was a joke on the courthouse green and the race track. But when ten years had passed, and Jack Blair had been steadily losing money all the time on account of matching his horses against Skelton’s, it had ceased to be a joke. Blair had more than the average man’s pugnacity, and having early suspected that Skelton meant to ruin him, it only aroused a more dogged spirit of opposition in him. Old Tom Shapleigh in the beginning urged Blair to draw out of the fight, but Blair, with a very natural and human aggressiveness, refused. Elizabeth at first shared Blair’s confidence that he could beat Skelton’s horses as easily as he had run away with Skelton’s sweetheart, but she soon discovered her mistake. Blair was a superb farmer. He had twelve hundred acres under cultivation, and every year the bags of wheat marked “Newington” commanded a premium in the Baltimore market. But no matter how many thousand bushels of wheat Blair might raise, that “horse or two” ate it all up. There were two Blair children, Hilary and little Mary. Elizabeth Blair was full of ambition for her boy. He was to be educated as his father had been, first at William and Mary, afterwards at the University of Virginia. But she discovered that there was no money either to send the boy to school or to employ a tutor at home. Mrs. Blair bore this, to her, dreadful privation and disappointment with courage, partly born of patience and partly of a woman’s natural vanity. Blair never ceased to impress upon her that since Skelton chose to harbour his revenge all those years, that he--Blair--could not refuse to meet him, particularly as he had carried off the prize matrimonial in the case. Blair had the most winning manner in the world. When he would tip his wife’s chin up with his thumb, and say, “Hang it, Bess, I’ll meet Skelton on the race track, in the hunting field, anywhere he likes, and take my chances with him as I did before: I had tremendous odds against me then, but Fortune favoured me,” Elizabeth would feel an ineffable softness stealing over her towards her husband. Not many wives could boast of that sort of gallantry from their husbands. Blair was not disposed to underrate his triumph over Skelton. Every defeat of his “horse or two” was met by a debonair laugh, and a reminder, “By Jove, his horses may leg it faster than mine, but I beat him in a better race and for a bigger stake than any ever run on a race course!”