“Very well,” answered the Honourable, buttoning on a watch-chain, with half-a-dozen lockets attached, as he emerged from his room. “Tell Smiles to get breakfast _directly_, and send the hack round in ten minutes!” Mr. Tiptop looked after him admiringly, as he clanked downstairs. “He means _business_ this morning,” thought the groom, “and I’ll lay a new hat he buys the bay horse!” Now if Mr. Tiptop had felt he had the best of the morning trial, it had been his intention to pull his horse back, and gammon his friend Isaac that he was beat, with the laudable determination to get the better of that worthy, as well as of the general public, by making good use of his knowledge previous to the race. When, however, he found that her antagonist had the heels of Chance, whom he had already tried with the other grooms to be quite the best in the town, he altered his tactics altogether. Obviously they ought to have both the flyers in the same stable; and it would be wiser to stand in with Isaac, and make the old groom a sharer in the profits, as he was already in the information which their early rising had enabled them to obtain. Mr. Tiptop forgot that it is as dark before dawn as it is after nightfall. He might, perhaps, have been farther enlightened, had he, instead of waiting at his master’s door till the Honourable’s teeth had been polished to the required degree of whiteness, been able to assist at an interview which took place at the same hour between Isaac and his master, in a room where the latter had just finished breakfast. The old groom made no apology for entering; as was his custom, he plunged at once _in medias res_. “I’ve sent _two_ out for you to-day,” said he, marching up to Mr. Sawyer’s chair, and confronting him with a grin, such as might be cut out of mahogany. “And left _one_ in the stable! you old idiot!” exclaimed the indignant Mr. Sawyer. “What the deuce have you done that for?” “You’ll want a second horse to-day,” answered the groom. “You’ll have a bid for Marathon before you’ve been on him half an hour. Leastways, if you’ve the discretion not to go a-showing of him up.” “What do you mean?” asked Mr. Sawyer, with a dawning of intelligence overspreading his countenance, for he knew his servant’s diplomatic talents of old. “Only that they’re all of ’em wanting a nag to win this here donkey-race, as I call it; for none but a donkey would be concerned in such a tomfoolery; and Mr. Crasher, he’s satisfied by this time that Marathon’s the one as just _can_. You sit still upon him to-day, and keep jogging of him about, to _qualify_ like, till the hounds find, and then open your mouth, and take what they offer you.” Mr. Sawyer had implicit confidence in his old servant; still he could not help wishing to be further enlightened. “You must have told some precious yarns,” said he, “to make people believe Marathon could _run up_ with a man in mud-boots!”