The captain did not present an imposing figure that morning. Mostyn found him lounging in a disreputably worn arm-chair, clad in a soiled but brilliantly-flowered dressing-gown, smoking an old meerschaum pipe, and perusing a sporting paper. His white hair was untidy, his beard unkempt, and his slippers down at the heel. The little sitting-room was dingy and uncared for; Rada had evidently abandoned the hopeless task of tidying it. "I told you that I was a poor man, Mr. Clithero," Captain Armitage said, waving a deprecating hand round the room, "and now you can see for yourself." Suddenly his dull eyes brightened. "You say Royce has left you some brass," he insinuated. "Have you thought better of that offer I made you the other day?" "That's what I'm here for," explained Mostyn. "Are you still willing to sell Castor, Captain Armitage?" "I should say I was, my boy." The old man sprang from his chair with something of the nervous energy that Mostyn remembered he had displayed when on the coach. "Fifteen hundred pounds! Why, it would be the making of me just now." He spoke eagerly. "I know how I could turn it into five, into ten thousand. There's Cardigan, a sure thing for the Liverpool Cup, and Boscowen, a perfect snip at Sandown. Give me fifteen hundred down, and I'll make a fortune. You shall have the tips, too; I'll throw them into the bargain." So it came about that, without loss of time, Captain Armitage, muttering and mumbling to himself, had shuffled out of the room, leaving Mostyn to gaze out of the uncleaned window over a strip of garden where the grass grew rank, and where weeds choked the few hardy flowers that had endured. Whatever she might be elsewhere, Rada evidently took no pride in her own home; Mostyn told himself that the Mill House, practically little more than a tumble-down cottage, was one of the most dreary spots he had ever visited. It was not long before the captain reappeared, a little more spruce in his attire and ready to go out. It was, it appeared, not more than half an hour's walk to the training stables, and there was no reason why the bargain should not be clinched at once.