"I should think she could get a bit of a pace on her, sir? Mebbe ye've tried her racing?" "No, she wasn't brought up to that. But she's fast enough." "Ay, sir. No vices?" "Lord, no!" "Don't kick neither?" "Not with me." "Ah! they allus knows who'll stand it and who won't." Jack drained his tankard, and setting it down on the bench beside him, rose to his feet. "She'd not dream of kicking a friend. Jenny!" The ostler watched her pick her way towards her master, coquetting with her head, and sidling round him in the most playful manner possible. A slow smile dawned on the man's face. "Ah, it be a purty sight to watch her--so it be!" he said, and received a guinea from Jack, who never tired of listening to praise of his beloved Jenny. Carstares remounted, nodded farewell to the ostler and rode leisurely on down the street, soon branching off to the right into a typical Sussex lane, where he trotted between uneven hedges, sweet with blossom and with May, and placid fields rolling away on either side, upwards until they merged into the undulating hills, barely discernible in the gloom, that are the downs. It was a wonderfully calm evening, with only a gentle west wind blowing, and the moon already shining faintly in the dark sky. There was nothing beyond the sound of the mare's hoofs to break the beautiful stillness of it all. He rode for some way without meeting a soul, and when at the end of an hour someone did chance along the road it was only a labourer returning home to his supper after a long day in the fields. John bade him a cheery good evening and watched him pass on down the road humming. After that he met no one. He rode easily along for miles, into the fast-gathering darkness. He was frowning as he rode, thinking. Curiously enough, it was on his penniless days in France that his mind dwelt this evening. He had resolutely thrust that dark time behind him, determined to forget it, but there were still days when, try as he might, he could not prevent his thoughts flying back to it. With clenched teeth he recalled the days when he, the son of an Earl, had taught fencing in Paris for a living.... Suddenly he laughed harshly, and at the unusual sound the mare pricked up her ears and sidled uneasily across the road. For once no notice was taken of her, and she quickened her pace with a flighty toss of her head.... He thought how he, the extravagant John, had pinched and scraped and saved rather than go under; how he had lived in one of the poorer _quartiers_ of the city, alone, without friends--nameless. Then, cynically now, he reviewed the time when he had taken to drinking, heavily and systematically, and had succeeded in pulling himself up at the very brink of the pit he saw yawning before him. Next the news of his mother's death.... John passed over that quickly. Even now the thought of it had the power of rousing in him all the old misery and impotent resentment.