"You didn't back it!" exclaimed Captain Ablewhite, with an amazed look. "What _did_ you back, then?" "Morning Light." "Morning Light! Have you lost your wits? Why, old chap, he was never meant! I could have told you that if you had asked me. He's going to win the Cambridgeshire. Upon my soul, this is the best thing I've heard for a month." "I don't think so." "How much did you back him for?" "Four hundred." Captain Ablewhite whistled. "Well, it's no use crying over spilt milk. There's one good thing--the game's alive. You can pull it back with interest, and you are not the man I take you for if you don't do it. What does it matter to you, a thousand or two? These things happen to all of us. I remember last year at Ascot--but it's no good raking it up. It knocked me over for a month, I can tell you that. From what I can understand of your system it's when you risk the most you win the most. Isn't it?" "Yes," groaned Jeremiah. "I thought so. Now if you had backed Tricksy, what would you have won?" "Nearly five thousand," groaned Jeremiah. "By all that's wonderful! And you didn't follow it out! But I'm a nice one, I am, to preach!" And then Captain Ablewhite said, playfully, "Don't you let me catch you at it again!" "I won't," groaned Jeremiah. "The beauty of the thing is, as I have said," continued Captain Ablewhite, "that the game's alive. It's always alive, and waiting for us. What is _one_ miss? You can snap your fingers at it. All you've got to do is to increase your stake the next time. Old fellow, I give you my solemn word there's only one thing in life worth living for, and that is horse-racing and betting on it. If it was abolished, there are a thousand men in England who would put a bullet through their heads to-morrow; and I'd be one of them--I would! It isn't called a Royal sport for nothing. There never _was_ anything like it, and there never _will_ be anything like it. Great Scot! the fortunes I've seen lost and won! Come and have some fizz." Jeremiah went and had some fizz, and then Captain Ablewhite asked him what his trouble was. "I've lost all the ready money I brought with me," said Jeremiah. "What of that? You want to go on betting?" "Yes." "Give me," said Captain Ablewhite, "your I O U for a thou." What with his despair, and the mixed liquors he had imbibed, Jeremiah scarcely knew what he was doing; and under Captain Ablewhite's directions he wrote and signed an I O U for £1,000, which the gallant Captain comfortably deposited in his pocket-book. "Come with me," said Captain Ablewhite. "By Jove! the numbers are going up." Jeremiah went with him, and was introduced to a book-maker, to whom Captain Ablewhite whispered a few words. "All right, Captain," said the book-maker. "The gentleman's name is good enough; but I thought he was quite a different sort of man." Captain Ablewhite nodded, and took Jeremiah aside.