Speaker ahead of me, waving me on. `The Ayes have it! The Noes! The Ayes! The Noes! They volleyed, they thundered. 'Vide--'vide--'vide--'vide!' and the mare 'vided them as we still tore on, nearer and nearer, till the curls in the Speaker's wig grew clear, and then the whites of his eyes. Nearer and nearer in the mad excitement of the race, till with one final rush we passed the Mace, the Irish party rising as one man, and ran past the winning-post right into Parliament to the roaring of their wild hurroo!" "Bravo! Hurroo!" shouted Syd, as his uncle stopped, panting heavily again. "That was how you did it. You won; only you've got it a bit mixed. But you're coming round. I say, you feel ever so much better, don't you, for getting rid of that?" "Oh, it's all over, my lad," cried the trainer. "Did you ever hear the like?" "It's only excitement," said Syd. "Look at him; he's calming down now beautifully. You see, he'd got two things on his brain--the race and the election--and having been a bit screwed with the bad stuff you let him have, he naturally got himself a bit mixed." "Mixed?" said Sir Hilton, turning upon the boy sharply. "Wasn't I talking about something just now? But look, look at that man Simpkins rolling his eyes about. Is he going mad?" "Not a bit o' it, Sir Hilton; it's you as is mad. Ain't it enough as I've lost what I have?" "You lost too?" "Yes, uncle," cried Syd, shaking him; "but you haven't. You won--for all of us. I turned that ten you gave me into a century." "I--won?" stammered Sir Hilton, with his hands pressing his temples. "To be sure you did. You were sitting all of a jelly, and the game was nearly up; but Dr Jack Granton gave you a drench, just as if you'd been a horse. Then we got you into the air, and you came round directly, and ran between us to the saddling paddock, where we set you on to the mare just in time, and you led the field from the beginning. You won in a canter. Can't you recollect?" "No, nothing." "Don't you remember nearly tumbling off the horse after you'd passed the post?" "No." "Nor getting into the scales, saddle and bridle and all?" "No; nothing whatever." "Oh, Sam Simpkins, you must have given him a dose!" "Yes, I remember that--that champagne. It did taste very queer and strange," cried Sir Hilton, turning upon the trainer, whose red face looked piebald with sickly white, so strangely was it mottled. "I'd had it a long time, Sir Hilton," stammered the man. "P'raps it was a bit off." "Oh, hang that!" cried Sir Hilton. "Tell me again, Syd, my boy; did I win?" "In a canter, I tell you, uncle," cried the boy. "Ha!" sighed Sir Hilton, with a look of intense relief. "But it must be kept from your aunt. She has such--" "Kept from auntie?" cried Syd, staring. "Why, she knows all." "Knows all? You've told her?" "No-o-o-o. Don't you remember? No, you recollect nothing. She got to know you were off to ride somehow, and came after us to the hotel."