This was all very well, but Mostyn did not feel capable of relying upon his own judgment, nor did he trust Captain Armitage's word. Fifteen hundred pounds was a large sum, and not to be merely thrown away to put cash into the pocket of a drunkard. Would he do well to purchase Castor? Certainly Sir Roderick had admitted the value of the colt. That went for a good deal, but at the bottom of his heart Mostyn knew that his desire to own the horse had something to do with the struggle which he felt, in an indefinite sort of way, had commenced between himself and Rada. "I'm a girl, but I'll back myself to win a Derby before you!" she had cried contemptuously, and the words had galled and stung him. She had great faith in Castor, he knew that; well, it would be a fitting punishment upon her if, by extraordinary luck, he contrived to carry off the race with that particular horse. Mostyn was not spiteful by nature, but he was very human. As they walked together, passing through the little town and then emerging upon open country, Captain Armitage exerted his powers of persuasion to the full, and he had a plausible tongue. Mostyn had an eye for a horse, so the old man asserted, and he had recognised that fact upon Derby day, or he would not have dreamed of making his offer. He had taken a fancy to Mostyn from the first, especially because the latter had taken his joking in good part. What he was doing was purely out of personal consideration. "Look here, Clithero,"--he halted in that sudden and abrupt manner peculiar to him, and seized the young man by the arm--"we don't want a lot of palaver over this business. Treves will tell you that the colt's all right, and his word's as good as gospel. Settle on the nail and we'll cry quits at a thousand." They reached the training stables at last, a low narrow building, lying a little back from the road, a building that formed three sides of a square and was approached by a large gate. Beyond it, and indeed, on either side of the road, was open level country. "A capital pitch for exercising," as Captain Armitage put it, pointing to a row of horses that were following one another in steady line over the down. Castor had just returned from exercise, and they found him in his stable where he had been groomed by one of the boys. William Treves himself, an important personality, a man who had accumulated a considerable fortune, but who had no pride about him, and who was not ashamed of his humble origin, nor of the fact that he had never acquired a mastery of the king's English, discoursed volubly on the perfections of the colt. Apparently he already knew of Captain Armitage's desire to find a purchaser. The man gave Mostyn the impression of honesty.