"Perhaps her owner may refuse to allow her to be experimented upon again. I should, in his place! It may be foolish, but I hate to see a brute suffer, even for the noble purpose of proving my own superiority." He swung away as he spoke, thus failing to see the stunned blankness of Cornelia's expression. Straight as a dart she stood, with head thrown back, scarlet lips pressed tightly together, and dark brows knitted above the wounded tragedy of her eyes. The labourer standing by the mare's side looked towards her with honest sympathy. He had had personal experience of the "length of the Captain's tongue," and was correspondingly sympathetic towards another sufferer. A tender of dumb animals, he was quick to understand the expression on the girl's face, and to know that she had been wrongfully accused. "Don't you take on, miss!" he said, touching his cap with the unashamed servility at which the American girl never ceased to wonder. "I'll look after her meself, and if the dirt is washed out of the sores at once, she'll come to no harm. Likely as not there'll be nothing for the vet to do by the time he arrives. At the worst it'll be only a few stitches. She'll soon get over that." Cornelia shivered, and bit hard on her lower lip. She slipped her hand into an inside pocket of the white coat, and, coming a step nearer, dropped a coin into the man's hand. He cast down his eyes, started, and flushed a deep red. "Thank you, miss. Beg pardon, but you've made a mistake!" A sovereign lay brightly on his grimy palm; he stared at it with respectful awe, scarcely regretful, since it did not enter his mind to conceive that such a munificent gift could seriously have been offered for his acceptance. It had seldom happened that he had had the handling of such a fortune, since his whole weekly earnings reached a total of eighteen shillings, but Cornelia in her turn looked abashed and discomfited, thrusting her hand once again into the tightly-buttoned little pocket. "I'm sorry! I ken't get used to your money over here. Will that make it enough?" To the man's utter stupefaction she placed a second sovereign beside the first in his outstretched palm. He stared at it with distended eyes, thrilled by the discovery that she _had_ meant it after all, awed by the revelation of such munificence. "Beg pardon, miss, I was thinking as you'd mistook it for a shilling, not making so bold as to complain. I thank your ladyship kindly! I'm sure I can't rightly say what I ought--" He stuttered, incoherent with excitement, but even as he spoke he held out the second sovereign, and Cornelia understood that his good feeling permitted him to accept only what had been originally offered. She would have felt the same in his place, and realising as much, took back the coin without a demur. "Well! it's waiting for you next time I come, if you've done your duty by that mare."