“Come,” said Skelton good-naturedly, “it is time for youngsters like you to be in bed. It is nearly one o’clock.” Lewis crept off quite dolefully to his bed, while Skelton, sad at heart, remained standing before the open window, gazing at the glittering moon that silvered the lovely, peaceful, and tender landscape. CHAPTER XIV. The days that followed were days of torture to Elizabeth Blair. It was as if Blair could think of nothing but Alabaster and the famous match. It got out among the betting fraternity which infests every racing community that Blair had a superstitious faith in the black horse, and thereupon they beset him. Blair, in the coolest, most rational, and self-possessed way in the world, would give the most extraordinary odds, secretly goaded by the general disposition in favour of Jaybird. At home it seemed as if he had but one idea, and that was Alabaster. He was at the stables by dawn of day to see if the horse was all right, and the last thing he did at night was always to take a lantern and go into the horse’s stall and examine everything carefully. The creature, with tawny, vicious eyes, would back his ears and glare at him, pawing the ground and occasionally hitting a thundering blow with his hoof against the wooden partition of the stall. His coat was satin smooth. The black hostler declared solemnly: “Dat hoss, he see evils, I know he do. Sometimes, in de middle o’ de night, I heah him whinnyin’ an’ gwine on, an’ den he kick wid he hine foots; dat’s a sho’ sign.” One night Blair came in the house, where Mrs. Blair sat in the dimly lighted drawing-room, with Mary and Hilary beside her listening to her sweet talk, and, coming up to her, said, with pale lips, “Alabaster is off his feed to-night.” Elizabeth felt no inclination to laugh. Alabaster’s appetite for his oats was of great importance to everybody at Newington then. Blair sat down heavily. His pallor and distress were so great that it moved Elizabeth to go to him and put her arms tenderly about him. “Dearest,” she said, “no matter how it goes, try--try--to give this up. See how much misery it has brought into our married life! It is well enough for men like Richard Skelton, to whom money is nothing, but to you it is different. Think of me--think of our children.”