The sodden and simple wit of Billiter rose like a salmon at this gaudy fly of irony. He lost his temper. “Your damned, spavined, bow-legged, mule-be-gotten crock of a Punchinello won.” Quixtus regarded him mildly; but a transient gleam of light flickered in his china-blue eyes. “Then, my dear Billiter,” said he, “I have won nine hundred pounds, which, in view of my opinion of the turf, based on experience, I think I shall hand over to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to be earmarked for the conversion of the Mahommedans in Mecca. As for you, Billiter, you have won two hundred and twenty-five pounds”—Billiter quivered with sub-aspirate anathema—“which ought to satisfy the momentary cupidity of any man. Let us go. The more I see of it the more am I convinced that the race-course is no place for me. It is too good.” Billiter glanced at him with wrathful suspicion. Was he speaking in childish simplicity or in mordant sarcasm? The grave, unsmiling face, the expressionless blue eyes gave him no clue. Thus, however, ended Quixtus’s career on the Turf. To stand about wearily in all weathers in order to witness what, to his fastidious mind was merely a dull and vulgar spectacle, was an act of self-sacrifice from which he derived no compensating thrill. The injured Billiter having patched up a peace with Old Joe Jenks, convincing him of his own ingenuousness and of the inevitable change in his patron’s luck, in vain persuaded Quixtus to resume his investigations. He offered to introduce him to a fraternity of so-called commission agents and touts, in whose company he could saturate himself with vileness. “I have no taste for disgusting society,” said Quixtus. “Then I don’t know what the deuce you do want,” exclaimed Billiter in a fume. “You can’t touch pitch without being defiled.” “I thought that was just what you were trying to be.” “In one way, yes,” replied Quixtus, musingly; “But I loathe touching the pitch.” In spite of his confessed belief in the altruistic purity of the turf, he regarded as unspeakable defilement the cheques which he had received from Old Joe Jenks. He had kept them in his drawer, and the more he looked at them the more did the bestial face of Old Joe Jenks obtrude itself before his eyes, and the more repugnant did it become to his now abnormal fastidiousness to pay them into his own banking account. To destroy them, as was his first impulse, merely signified a benefit conferred on the odious Jenks, who would be only too glad to repocket his filthy money. What should he do? At last a malignant idea occurred to his morbidly and curiously working mind. He would cast all this pitch and defilement upon another’s head. Some one else should shiver with the disgust of it. But who? The inspiration came from Tartarus. He endorsed the cheques to the value of nearly two thousand pounds, and paid them into the banking account of his nephew Tommy Burgrave.