“_Talk_ of it! indeed there is,” answered Mr. Tiptop, whose face was beginning to redden with his potations. “And a precious exhibition it will be, too. Ride! There isn’t one of ’em as don’t believe he’s down to every move in the game; and I’d take that boy of yours—though he _is_ but a boy, and not the best of hands, neither—and teach him to outride every man of ’em in a fortnight! Such a mess as they made of it last year! Blessed if I wasn’t quite ashamed of the Honourable, to see him rollin’ about in a striped jacket, like a zebra in convulsions! What’s the use getting a horse fit, when the _man’s_ blown in three fields? But I don’t mind telling _you_, now,” added he, confidentially, and fixing his eyes on the tallow candle that stood between them—“I don’t mind telling _you_; for there’s money to be made of it. He’ll win it this year, if he’ll only sit _still_!” “Win it, will he?” rejoined Isaac. “Well, I shouldn’t wonder, so as he comes in first. But it takes a smartish nag, Mr. Tiptop, to win a steeple-chase. Have you _tried_ yours to beat everything in the town?” “Well, I think I’ve the length of most on ’em,” answered Mr. Tiptop, smiling at the candle with a most reflective expression of countenance. “You’ve got a bay as might run up, if he was lucky. Why don’t you make _your_ master put him in?” “He’s as deep as a well, is _my_ master,” answered old Isaac. “Nobody never knows what _he’s_ up to. Bless you! I can’t help thinking as he must have bought the bay a-purpose for this here race: but _I_ don’t know, no more than the dead; and I dursn’t ask him, neither.” Mr. Tiptop reflected profoundly for several minutes, during which period Isaac’s countenance would have been a study for an artist who wished to represent a face totally devoid of thought. Then he asked— “Have _you_ ever tried the bay?” “_Never_,” answered the senior, who piqued himself on his veracity. “Master brought him back from Stockbridge, last spring, pretty nigh done; and when I asked him what he’d been up to, he bid me mind my own business. The poor critter! he’d had a benefit, _sure-lie_!” This was undoubtedly true, Marathon having turned restive at a cross-road on the occasion in question, and, after a quarter of an hour’s fight, given in, completely exhausted. “If he can beat our mare a mile, at even weights, he’ll win it, as safe as safe!” observed Mr. Tiptop, now speaking very thick, and with a good deal of gravity. “I dursn’t give him a _mile_,” answered Isaac, with an emphasis on the substantive which argued that he was open to persuasion for a shorter distance. Mr. Tiptop regarded him attentively for several seconds, during which time he thought him first a flat, then the sharpest customer he had ever come across, and lastly an ignorant yokel and greenhorn once more. “If _you’ll_ chance it,” said he, “I’ll chance _our_ mare. We might try them early to-morrow morning.”