Mr. Glasgow’s brown hunter, Solomon, had not lived his thirteen years in vain. When he was led out into the yard one idle forenoon, and was there walked and trotted up and down in front of his owner and two strange men in tight trousers, and when, later, one of the strange men, who had the knowledgeable light fingers of a vet., passed his hand down his legs, and looked into his eyes, and pinched his throat, Solomon knew that it looked like his fifth change of owners. Afterwards he was taken out and cantered in a field, and though he felt chilly and dull, he jumped a trial bank with self-respect, and with the consciousness that he was giving a lead to the chestnut, who did not understand the principle of jumping in cold blood. He was not mistaken in the purport of these things. Glasgow felt a pain about his throat as he saw the old horse walk into his stall again. He had not thought he would have minded so much. He stood by in the silence that characterizes horse-dealing, while the chestnut underwent examination, and looked round the yard at the miscellaneous collection of wreckage from his railway contract--the broken pumping-engine, the automatic crossing-gates that would not work, the corrugated iron hut that the men would not sleep in--and said to himself that the luck had been against him. It did not occur to him that he had shouldered his competitors out of the contract by a tender that left no margin for mistakes. Mr. Glasgow never made mistakes, but he had based his brilliant and minute calculations on the theory that the cheap Irish labour would accomplish as much in the day as the costly English, and the fact that it had not done so was obviously beyond the sphere of rational calculation. In the long stable at the other side of the yard a heavy hoof was dealing sledge-hammer kicks to the stall, and Glasgow, as he heard it, estimated what price the creditors would get for the big dray-horses that he had brought over from England for the railway work. When he thought of the value of the plant that he was going to leave behind, he scarcely felt like a defaulter: there would be more than enough realized to pay the men, and the Railway Company could afford to lose. There remained to him his private means, the Argentine Republic, his own considerable gifts as a civil engineer, and---- Would Lady Susan remain? He felt little doubt about that part of his future.