brother said it was; and terribly like gambling, you must own, it looked! However, that is all over now, and you are well out of it. I am sure you think so too, eh?” Arthur hesitated a little ere he answered this leading question. For some reason, which it is not necessary at this stage of the story to explain, he was not particularly partial to talking of that famous colt, known in the betting-ring, and in sporting circles generally, as Rough Diamond. It is just possible that he was not quite so glad to be what Mr. Duberly called “out of it” as that gentleman seemed to think; still, he contrived to answer cheerfully enough that “it was all right,” and that he hoped that Norcott would have good luck with the brute now he had got him. “Ha, ha!” laughed the cheerful old man. “So Roughrider, or whatever his name is, has come to be called a brute, eh? The way of the world, sir; the way of the world! Whatsoever is our own is perfection; but directly it becomes our friend’s--poof!”--and he snapped his fingers significantly--“it isn’t worth a brass farthing! Seen the sort of thing, by George! a hundred times. But I say, Arthur,” lowering his voice to a whisper, “about this Colonel Norcott; what and who is he? I’ve a sort of idea that I know something about him. Didn’t he go to the colonies, or the dogs, or some confounded place? I’m a bad hand at remembering that kind of thing; couldn’t even when I was a young man; and now I might as well try and recollect who built the Monument.” Again, as at the mention of Colonel Norcott in connection with that unlucky steed Rough Diamond, Arthur looked ill at ease. He answered readily enough, however, to the effect that he believed Colonel Norcott had formerly been in the Irish Greys, but that it was long before _his_ time, and that he (Arthur) knew very little in any way about the purchaser of John Beacham’s colt. “In the Irish Greys, was he?” Mr. Duberly said thoughtfully. “Ah, that reminds me! How little it takes sometimes to do that kind of thing! Colonel Norcott was the man--correct me if I’m wrong--who had something to do with an advertisement. Answered one from a respectable young woman, eh? and--ah yes! It all comes home to me now. A bad business--a shocking bad business indeed!” Arthur reflected a little, and then said that he was afraid, from some things he had heard, that Colonel Norcott was the identical man existing for life under the kind of cloud alluded to by Mr. Duberly. “I don’t think that I ever heard the particulars,” he said. “I fancy his wife left him, or was an objectionable person, or something extenuating of that kind. She is dead now, fortunately for him, and he has married again, I fancy--some colonial person, whom they say is rather nice.”