Another five I placed on Tambourine; not without misgivings. But what might I do better? My judgment was worthless where I did not know one horse from another. I might as well take Coburn’s advice; the more since he went often wrong and might name a winner by mistake. Five, therefore, on Tambourine; and when he started my hopes and Connelly--whose consoling quart must be a pint by now--went with him. At the worst I may so far compliment Tambourine as to say that I saw him again. He finished far in the rear; but at least he had the honesty to go around the course. Yet it was five dollars lost. When Tambourine went back to his stable, my capital was reduced by half, and Connelly and liberty as far apart as when we started. Following the disaster of Tambourine I sought no more the Coburn. Clearly it was not that philosopher’s afternoon for naming winners. Or if it were, he was keeping their names a secret. Thus ruminating, I sat reading the race card, when of a blinking sudden my eye was caught by the words “Bill Breen.” The title seemed a suggestion. Bill Breen had been my roommate--my best friend in the days of old Trinity. I pondered the coincidence. “If this Bill Breen,” I reflected, “is half as fast as my Bill Breen, he’s fit to carry Cæsar and his fortunes.” The more I considered, the more I was impressed. It was like sinking in a quicksand. In the end I was caught. I waxed reckless and placed ten dollars--fairly my residue of riches--on Bill Breen in one of those old-fashioned French Mutual pools common of that hour; having done so, I crept away to a lonesome seat in the grandstand and trembled. It was now or never, and Bill Breen would race freighted with the fate of Connelly. About two seats to my right, and with no one between, sat a round, bloated body of a man. He looked so much like a pig that, had he been put in a sty, you would have had nothing save the fact that he wore a hat to distinguish him from the other inmates. And yet I could tell by the mien of him, and his airs of lofty isolation and superiority, that he knew all about a horse--knew so much more than common folk that he despised them and withdrew from their society. It was like tempting the skies to speak to him, so wrapped was he in the dignity of his vast knowledge, but my quaking solicitude over Bill Breen and the awful stakes he ran for in poor Connelly’s evil case, emboldened me. With a look, deprecatory at once and apologetic, I turned to this oracle: “Do you know a horse named Bill Breen?” I asked. “I do,” he replied coldly. Then ungrammatically: “That’s him walking down the track to the scales for the ‘jock’ to weigh in,” and he pointed to a greyhound-shaped chestnut. “Can he race?” I said, with a gingerly air of merest curiosity. “He can race, but he won’t,” and the swinish man twined the huge gold chain about his right fore-hoof. “I lost fifty dollars on him Choosday. The horse can race, but he won’t; he’s crazy.”