The Captain spoke of an early Spring Meeting at Newmarket; and this particular race in it was exciting some interest at Nullington, for reasons which need not be detailed here. Philip, desperately anxious to replenish his diminished coffers, took the bait, though in a cautious manner, and betted twenty pounds on Patchwork. If the horse won, and Philip gained the odds, he would pocket two hundred pounds. He grew anxious. Everybody said that either Trumpeter or Clansman would win; Patchwork was scoffed at as an outsider. Philip began to think of his twenty pounds as so much good money thrown away. At length the day of the race arrived, and Philip awaited the result with a feverish anxiety to which his young life had hitherto been a stranger. It is true, if he lost, twenty pounds would not ruin him; but, if he won, two hundred would set him up. At length the looked-for news reached Nullington by telegram, and a slip of paper was pasted to the window of the Rose and Crown, on which was written in large characters:--Patchwork 1.--Clansman 2.--Trumpeter 3. Philip Cleeve fell back out of the crowd gathered there, with a great gasp of relief. Three days later Captain Lennox placed in his hands two hundred pounds in crisp Bank of England notes. "If you had only taken my advice," he said, "and ventured fifty pounds instead of twenty, what a much richer man you would have been to-day!" CHAPTER IV. THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF APRIL. The twenty-fourth of April was here, and with it Gilbert Denison's seventieth birthday. The long winter had come to an end at last. It was a lovely spring morning, fresh and sweet. The air was full of the melody of birds; faint delicious odours stole in and out among the garden-paths; a warm sun shone over all. But we must for the moment leave Heron Dyke. In the breakfast-room at Nunham Priors, a charming house among the Sussex Hills, sat Gilbert Denison--that Gilbert Denison who was cousin to the Master of Heron Dyke, and between whom there had been such a long and bitter feud--and Frank, his only son.