"Folks would talk, Mr. Oke--thanking you all the same." So out they went, and down the street side by side, and knocked at the Mayor's door. The Mayor was taking a nap in his back-parlour with a handkerchief over his face. He had left business soon after burying his wife, who had kept him hard at work at the cheesemongering, and now he could sleep when he chose. But he woke up very politely to attend to his visitors' business. "Yes, for sure, I'll hold the stakes," said he: "and I'll see it put in big print on the Regatta-bill. It ought to attract a lot of visitors. But lor' bless you, Mr. Oke!--if you win, it'll do _me_ no good. She"--meaning his wife--"has gone to a land where I'll never be able to crow over her." "Your Worship makes sure, I see, that we women are going to be beat?" put in Sal. "Tut-tut!" says the Mayor. "They've booked Seth Ede for stroke." And with that he goes very red in the gills and turns to Landlord Oke. "But perhaps I oughtn't to have mentioned that?" says he. "Well," says Sal, "you've a-let the cat out of the bag, and I see that all you men in the town are in league. But a challenge is a challenge, and I mustn't go back on it." Indeed, in her secret heart she was cheerful, knowing the worst, and considering it none so bad: and after higgling a bit, just to deceive him, she took pretty well all the conditions of the race as Oke laid 'em down. A tearing long course it was to be, too, and pretty close on five miles: start from nearabouts where the training-ship lays now, down to a mark-boat somewheres off Torpoint, back, and finish off Saltash Quay. "My dears," she said to her mates later on, "I don't mind telling you I was all of a twitter, first-along, wondering what card that man Oke was holding back--he looked so sly and so sure of hisself. But if he've no better card to play than Seth Ede, we can sleep easy." "Seth Ede's a powerful strong oar," Bess Rablin objected. "_Was_, you mean. He've a-drunk too much beer these four years past to last over a five-mile course; let be that never was his distance. And here's another thing: they've picked Tremenjous Hosken for one th'art." "And he's as strong as a bullock."