“Always one for ’orses, I was. They’ve mostly got their allotted days for coming down to the farriers yonder. You wouldn’t believe ’ow I notice if one of ’em misses. Them two white ones, I see ’em regular, the mare on a Monday and the ’orse Saturday.” “You’ll see one of them to-morrow, then,” said Fayre pleasantly. “Saturday morning, regular as clockwork, ’e come. George ’as only got the one carter and ’e brings the old ’orse down afore ’e goes to ’is dinner.” Fayre paid for the clips and strolled out of the shop, well satisfied with his opening move. The storm of chaff that greeted him as, flushed and breathless, he peddled up the drive to Staveley nearly an hour later failed to disturb his equanimity. He said he needed exercise and, as Lord Staveley sapiently remarked, he seemed to be getting it. Certainly he was markedly stiff the next morning and it required a certain amount of determination to unearth his steed once more from the garage and climb painfully into the saddle. He was rewarded, however, for March was going out gently indeed and the air was soft as spring. As he coasted quietly down the long slope to Keys he found himself wondering, for the hundredth time, at the beauty of England and regretting the long years he had wasted in the tropics. He dismounted at the end of the road that led to the smithy and wheeled his bicycle slowly to the door. Here he paused and stood watching the smiths at work, one of a group of interested idlers. Out of the corner of his eye he kept a good lookout for the white horse. He had been there about ten minutes when it came round the corner, led by a lanky, brown-faced farm labourer. Fayre noted with satisfaction that he did not belong to the heavy, bovine type so prevalent farther south. Here was a true North-countryman with the shrewd grey eyes and long upper lip of his kind. Fayre moved aside to let him pass. “I’ve seen you before, old fellow,” he remarked pleasantly, addressing the horse. The carter turned and summed him up silently. “It was a bit dark and I didn’t get a good look at him,” Fayre went on, speaking to the carter directly this time. “But he’s uncommonly like the horse I saw on the Whitbury road about a week ago. If he was, he’s lucky to be here now, that’s all I can say. There’s one motorist near here that ought not to be allowed on the road.” The carter flushed a deep red under his tan. “It wasn’t no one round here or I’d ’a’ let him hear of it. It was some damned stranger. I know the cars round here well enough. Ought to be hung, comin’ round the corner like that, he ought!” Fayre nodded. “Lucky for me I hadn’t reached the bend,” he said. “I was walking carelessly and he’d probably have got me. You didn’t take his number, I suppose? A fellow like that deserves to be hauled up.”