“You seem to have done that already, sir,” said the man in the broad-brim coolly; “a very little more of it, and you would probably have had _your_ throat squeezed for you by the hangman. Poor devil, he doesn't seem to have much beside his life belonging to him, so that it would be hard to take that.” A wretched object, clothed in ragged black, and with wisps of straw for shoes, wet with the dew amid which he had been lying, and shivering with pain and fear, hear crawled to the last speaker's feet. “Don't let 'em murder me, my Lord. They _will_ if you don't interfere,” screamed the wretched “tout,” whose mission it was to procure racing intelligence under difficulties of this sort, but who had been fairly cowed by Derrick's rage and violence. “I swear to you that I will never tell a soul that I have seen your lordship”---- “Quiet, fool!” interrupted the other sternly, “unless you want to have your lying tongue cut out.--It's bad enough,” whispered he to the trainer, “that he should have seen _me_ hear; but do you think he has seen the horses?” “That's quite certain, my Lord,” returned the trainer coolly; “and this is a mouth as can't be shut about that matter. But he shall see nothing more of this morning's work.--Come here, you sir.” Taking the trembling wretch by the collar, he led him to the edge of the furze, and, having securely tied his arms and legs, enveloped his head in a horse-cloth which he brought out of the rubbing-house. From the same building there now emerged two horses, not in the clothes in which exercise was generally taken, but ready in all respects for racing, and ridden not by stable-boys as usual, but by regular jockeys. “There is no question about it but the bay is the best-looking, my Lord,” said the trainer, in answer to something that had been addressed to him; “but handsome is as handsome does. You would not thank me for praising _The King_ on Epsom Downs, after he had been beaten by an outsider such as yonder horse.” “Who rides the creature?” inquired the other sharply, and looking contemptuously towards the clumsy black, who was no other than our old friend _Menelaus_. “Dam'me if he don't look more fit for a hearse than a race-course. “Jack Withers, my Lord--a man that was with him in France, and thoroughly understands what the horse can do; and, indeed, there is no other that _can_ ride him as should be. That's the worst of these foreign horses--they are so full of tricks. I've known that black stand stock-still in his gallops, and shoot his boy off just like a rocket. He can't abide a strange seat.” “Of course Withers rides him in the great race,” observed the other thoughtfully.