Boy looked away, shy and wary.
"Sometimes," she said. "He must have had a pig's time to be so rotten as that."
It was a new view to the young man, and sobered him.
"Perhaps," he said doubtfully. He was thinking out the question in his slow way. "It may be his own fault," he said. "You make yourself, I think."
"Part," answered the girl. "And part you are made by your surroundings. That's the way with young stock anyhow. It's a bit how they are bred—the blood in them; and part the food they get, and the air and liberty and sun they're allowed."
"I suppose so," said Silver quietly. "Certainly our friend's food don't seem to have suited him."
The girl refused to be amused.
"He's come down," she said. "Mr. Haggard says he was once a gentleman."
"Some time since, I should guess," replied Silver. "What!"
They were moving along a narrow cart-track that led across a fallow. He was riding behind her, his eyes on her back. The bathing cap had been stuffed away, and her hair, still dark from the sea, was bare to the sun.
"I'm glad you came," she said casually over her shoulder.
"I was just out for a canter before going to look at the horses," he answered.
She nodded to where against the skyline a string of tall, thin-legged black creatures, each with a blob of jockey on his back, paraded solemnly against the sky.
"See them!" she said. "On the Mare's Back." She watched them critically. "That's Make-Way-There—No. 2 in the string. Now she's playing up." She lifted her voice. "Don't pull at her, you little goat!"
"They're going to gallop her this morning, I believe," said Silver. "You hear Chukkers has let me down?"
"No!" cried the girl keenly.
"Yes; he wired last night to say he couldn't ride for me at Paris."
If it was news to the girl, it was by no means unexpected, and she took the blow with philosophical calm.
"That was certain once he knew we were training for you," she said. "I suppose dad's going to see who he'll give the ride to."
"Shall we canter?" said the young man. "I don't want to miss it."
"That's all right," replied the girl. "Father won't set 'em their work till I come."
It was clear she wished to keep him walking at her side, and he was pleased.
The incident on the cliff had brought them closer. For the first time the young man felt the warmth of the girl breaking through the barriers of her reserve. Her eyes, when they met his, were friendly, even affectionate. It was his turn to be pleasantly shy.
"D'you love them?" she asked.
She felt somehow so much older than he that she was free to question him.
"The horses?" he asked. "Rur-rather," with that infectious enthusiasm of his.
"You've got some pretty good ones," she told him.
"D'you think so?" keenly.
She nodded.
"Raw, but they'll come on. That's what you want."
"Any up to National form?" he asked.
"Make-Way-There might be good enough in a season or two if she'll stay," she said. "You can never tell. She's only four off."
They began to breast the slope of the Mare's Back.
"I've only had one real ambition in life," he said confidentially.
She looked at him.
"What?"
"To win the Nun-National."
She beamed on him friendly.
"I used to have one," she said—"till last year: tremendously."
"What's that?"
"To ride the National winner."
She peeped to see if he was mocking. He was sober as a judge.
"You may yet."
"Not now."
"Why not?" he asked. "Because it's against the National Hunt Rules?"
"Not that," she said with scorn. "I could get round their rotten rules if I wanted."
"How?" he asked.
She glanced at him warily.
"Eighteen months ago a lad came into our stable who was rather like me."
He laughed merrily.
"Good for you!" he cried. "Now put your idea into practise."
She shook her head.
"Why not?"
"I don't want to win the National now."
"Don't you?"
She looked up into his face.
"I'm too old," she said. "I've got to put my hair up this winter."
The confidence once made frightened her.
She broke into a canter, Heart of Oak striding at her side. The hill steepened against them just under the brow, and they came back into a walk.
"If I was my own master I should farm and breed horses," said the young man.
She glanced at him keenly.
"Aren't you your own master?"
He shook his head.
"I've got to stick to the desk."
"D'you like it?"
He looked away.
"I shall never make a banker," he said. "You see, I'm no good at sums." He flicked at the turf with his thong. "Now my father was a born financier. He could do that—and nothing much else. If there are no banks in heaven I'm afraid he'll be terribly bored. But I'm a farmer—or a fool; I'm not quite sure which. If my father had lived it might have been different. He might have entered me. But he died during my second year at Oxford four years ago, and I had to buckle to and do the best I could for myself."
"Bad luck," said the girl.
"It was, rather," admitted the young man. "But it gave me my head in one way. You see, father didn't approve of horses, though he was a farmer's son himself. He was afraid of the Turf. But he was always very good to me. He let me hunt when I was a boy though he didn't like it." The young man laughed. "But when I grew big he was awfully pleased. 'You'll never make a jockey now,' he used to say. And I never shall."
Boy ran her eye approvingly over his loose, big-limbed figure.
"You play polo, don't you?" she said.
"I do, a bit," he admitted.
"Back for England, isn't it?" she asked.
"This old pony did," Silver answered. "And he used to take me along sometimes."
"Don't you play still?" she inquired.
"I haven't this season, and I sha'n't again," he answered. "To play first-class polo you must be in the top of condition. And they keep my nose too close to the grindstone. Besides, pup-polo's very jolly, but 'chasing's the thing!"
They topped the brow. The crest of the Downs swelled away before them like a great green carpet lifted by the wind.
"There they are!" cried Boy, beginning to canter.
Old Mat sat dumped in familiar attitude on a cob as full of corners and character as himself.
The trainer was thumping mechanically with his heels, sucking at the knob of his ash-plant, his legs in trousers that had slipped up to show his gray socks, and his feet shod with elastic-sided boots.
He glanced shrewdly at the pair as they rode up.
"Good morning, sir," he said, touching his hat. "So Chukkers has chucked you."
"So I believe," answered Silver.
"I wep' a tear when they tell me. I did reelly," said the old man, dabbing his eye. "He's goin' to ride Ikey's Jackaroo—that donkey-coloured waler he brought home from Back o' Sunday. That's what he's after."
Silver nodded.
"I'm not altogether sorry," he said quietly. "And I'm not entirely surprised."
"Nor ain't I," replied Mat, with faint irony. "Not altogether somersaulted with surprise, as you might say. We knows Chukkers, and Chukkers knows us—de we." He dropped his voice. "Monkey Brand'll tell you a tale or two about his ole friend. You arst him one day when you gets him on the go."
He raised his voice and began to thump the air with his fist.
"Rogues and rasqueals, Mr. Silver!" he cried in a kind of ecstasy. "Emmin on you in—same as the Psalmist says. But we got to love 'em all the same; else we'll nebber, nebber lead their liddle feet into the way." He coughed, wiped the back of his hand apologetically across his lips, and ended dryly: "Not the Three J's anyway!"
The horses were walking round the little group. Tall, sheeted thoroughbreds, each with his lad perched like a bird on his back, they swung daintily over the turf, blowing their noses, swishing their long tails, miracles of strength and beauty.
Monkey Brand led them on Goosey Gander, bandaged to the knees and hocks. Albert followed him on Make-Way-There, a pretty bay, with a white star. The lad's lips were turned in, and his face was stiff with aspiration and desire. That morning he hoped to have his chance, and he purposed to make the most of it. Jerry, the economist with the corrugated brow, followed him on a snake-necked chestnut. He sat up aloft, his shoulders square, his little legs clipping his mount, a Napoleon of the saddle, pondering apparently the great things of life and death. In fact, he was cogitating whether if he smoked behind the Lads' Barn at nights it was likely that he would be caught out by Miss Boy. Next came Stanley, the stupid, surreptitiously nagging at the flashy black he rode. Young Stanley was in evil mood, and he meant his horse to know it. His dark and heavy face was full of injured dignity and spite. Last night Chukkers, just back from winning the Australian National, had wired to say he couldn't keep his engagement to ride Make-Way-There at Paris. Monkey Brand would not ride, as his leg had been troubling him again; and Jerry had it that Albert, who was Make-Way-There's lad, was to get the mount. Stanley resented the suggestion. Albert had never yet ridden in public, while he, Stanley, had sported silk half-a-dozen times and had won over the sticks.
"Pull out, Brand," grunted the old trainer.
The little jockey yielded the lead to Albert, and joined the group of watchers.
The lads continued their patrol.
"What's the going like on the top there, Brand?" asked the old man.
"Not so bad, sir," the other answered. "Tidy drop o dew, I reck'n."
Make-Way-There, now she had the lead, showed a tendency to swagger. She bounced and tossed. The fair lad, swaying to the motions of his horse, rode the fretting creature patiently and well.
"She's a bit okkud yet," said Monkey, watching critically. "Woa, my lady. Woa then."
"It's the condition comin' out of her," muttered Mat. "She's all of a bubble. Fret herself into a sweat. Boy, you'd better take her. Send her along five furlongs smart and bustle her a bit as she comes up the slope."
"No," said the girl.
The old man threw a swift glance at her.
Boy had stuck her toes in again. He knew all the symptoms of old and made no effort to overcome them. She was growing into a woman, Boy was. That was the young man. A while back she cared not a rap for all the men in creation.
The old man made a mental note for reference to Ma.
"Albert can ride her," said the girl. "I want to see if he's coming on."
Jerry, the true prophet, winked; Stanley jobbed the black in the mouth and kicked him; Albert, his face firm and important, drew out. He had at least one of the qualities of a jockey—supreme self-confidence.
"Take her along at three-quarter speed till you get round them goss-bushes," growled Old Mat. "And when you feel the hill against you shove her for a furlong. Don't ride her out. And no fancy pranks, mind."
"And sit still," said the girl.
"Jerry, you take him along," continued the trainer.
The lads made sundry guttural noises in their throats, leaned forward as though to whisper in their horses' ears, and stole easily away.
A flash of swift feet, a diminishing thunder of hooves, and the pair made a broad sweep round the gorse-clump and came racing home.
Once the girl spoke.
"Keep your hands quiet," she ordered deeply.
Opposite them Jerry took a pull, but Albert and the mare went thundering past the watching group, the lad's fair head bowed over his horse's withers. He had her fairly extended, yet going well within herself, her head tucked into her chest.
On the ridge behind them he steadied to a walk, jumped off, and led the mare, breathing deep and flinging the foam abroad, down to the party.
"That's a little bit o' better," muttered the old man. "She can slip it. That lad'll ride yet, Boy."
"Perhaps; but don't tell him so," said the girl sharply.
She walked her pony across to the lad, and laid her hand on the mare's wet neck.
"That's a little better to-day, Albert," she said. "But you ought to steady a bit before you come."
The boy touched his cap and rode arrogantly on to join the other lads.
Monkey Brand saw the look upon his face.
"Once you knows you know nothin', you may learn somethin'," he said confidentially as the lad passed him. Then he turned with a wink to Silver and saidsotto-voce: "They calls him Boysie when he's crossed 'em. See he apes Miss Boy. He features her a bit, and he knows it. She's teaching him to ride, and he's picked up some of her tricks. Course he ain't got her way with 'em. But he might make a tidy little 'orseman one o' these days, as I tells him, if so be he was to tumble on his head a nice few times and get the conceit knocked out of him."
The lads continued their patrol.
Their knees were to their chins, and their hands thrust in front of them, a rein in each, almost as though they were about to pound a big drum with their fists.
Monkey nodded at them.
"She rides long, Miss Boy do—old style, cavalry style, same as you yourself, sir. They've all got the monkey-up-a-stick seat."
"Don't you believe in it?" asked the young man.
The other shook his head. He was himself a beautiful horseman of the Tom Cannon school; too beautiful, his critics sometimes said, to be entirely effective.
"Not for 'chasin," he said. "You can't lift a horse and squeeze him, unless you've got your legs curled right away round him. They ain't jockeys, as I tells 'em. They rides like poodle-dogs at a circus. There ought to be paper-'oops for em to jump through. No, sir. It may be Chukkers, as I says, but it ain't 'orsemanship."
The young man angled for the story that was waiting to be caught.
"Yet Chukkers wins," he said. "He's headed the list for five seasons now."
"He wins," said Monkey grimly. "Them as has rode against him knows 'ow."
Silver edged his pony up along the other.
"You've ridden against him?" he inquired with cunning innocence.
The little jockey's eyes became dreamy.
"My ole pal Chukkers," he mused. "Him and me. Yes, I've rode agin' him twenty year now. He was twelve first time we met, and I was turned twenty. The Mexican Kid they called him in them days. Kid he was; but wise to the world?—not 'alf!" ...
"Was that his first race?" asked Silver.
"It was so, sir—this side. Ikey'd just brought him across the Puddle to ride that Austrian mare, Laria Louisa. Same old stunt it was then as now—Down the Englishman, don't matter how.Yes, it was my first smell of the star-spangled jacket."
"Was that when you got your leg?"
"No, sir. That was eight years later. Boomerang's year. He was the first waler Ikey brought over this side to do the trick. My! he were a proper great 'orse, too. I was riding Chittabob—like a pony alongside him. At the Canal Turn Chukkers ran me onto the rails." He told the tale slowly, rolling it in the mouth, as it were. "Chukkers went on by himself. Nobody near him. Thought he'd done it that time. Only where it was Boomerang snap his leg at the last fence. Yes, sir," mystically, "there's One above all right—sometimes, 'tall events."
"And you?" said Silver.
The little jockey thrust out his left leg.
"I was in 'orspital three months.... Howsomever, it come out in the wash next year."
"That was Cannibal's year, wasn't it?" asked Silver.
"Ah!" said Monkey. "Cannibal!—his name and his nature, too. He was a man-eater, that 'orse was. Look like a camel and lep like a h'earthquake. It was just the very reverse that year. Chukkers was on Jezebel, Chukkers was. She was a varmint little thing enough—Syrian bred, I have 'eard 'em say. And he was out to win all right that journey. There was only us two in it when we come to Beecher's Brook second time round." He came a little closer. "So when we got to the Canal Turn I rides up alongside. 'That you, Mr. Childers?' I says, and bumps him. That shifted him for Valentine's Brook. There's a tidy drop there, sir, as you may remember. Chukkers lost his stirrup, and was crawling about on her withers. I hove up alongside agin'. He saw me comin' and made a shockin' face. 'Clear!' he screams, 'or I'll welt you across the —— monkey mug!' And just then, blest if old Cannibal didn't make another mistake and cannon into him agin'. That spilt him proper! Oh, my, Mr. Silver!—my! And I sail 'ome alone. Oh, he was a reg'lar outrageous 'orse, Cannibal was." He dropped his voice. "When he come out of 'orspital of course he made a fuss about it, he and Jaggers and Jew-boy Aaronsohnn. But of course I knew nothin' about it; nor did nobody else. See, they all knew Chukkers. He'd tried it on 'em all one time or another. And I told the Stewards I was very sorry the fall had gone to 'is 'ead. Only little Bertie Butler—him with the squint, what won the Sefton this year, you know—who'd been following Chukkers—he says to me: 'Next time you're goin' to play billiards with Chukkers, Mr. Brand, tip us the wink, will you?'"
The girl's voice broke in on them.
"I'm going home now," she cried abruptly.
"Right," answered Silver. "May I come along?"
As he swung round, he saw the girl already jogging away. He pursued leisurely, anxious to talk about Make-Way-There, the Paris Meeting, and Chukkers and Monkey Brand's gossip. But she flitted away in front of him. As he drew up to her she broke into a canter, and the young man took a pull.
His intuitions, like those of most slow-brained men, were unusually swift and sure. It was as though Nature, the Dispenser of Justice, to compensate him for an apparent dearth in one direction, had endowed him richly in another.
"Woa, my little lad, woa then!" he murmured as Heart of Oak bounced and fretted to catch the retreating roan.
He realised that the girl had withdrawn within herself again. On the cliff, in the excitement of action, she had forgotten herself for the moment. Now she was cold and shy once more, retreating behind her barriers, closing her visor. It was as though she had admitted him too close; and to recover herself must now swing to the other extreme.
Obedient to her will, he kept several lengths behind her. When she found he did not draw up alongside, she slackened her pace. He felt her resistance was dying down in answer to his non-resistance. She was shoving against emptiness, and getting no good from it.
As they came to the crest of the Downs and began the descent of the hill, Boy dropped into a walk.
Below them the long roofs of Putnam's showed, weathered among the sycamores.
As the girl passed into the Paddock Close he was riding at her side again.
The Paddock Close was a vast enclosure, fenced off from the Downs, an ideal nursery and galloping ground for young stock.
There was hill and valley; here and there a group of trees for shade in the dog-days; a great sheltered bottom fringed by a wood that ran out into the Close like a peninsula; and the wall of the Downs to give protection from the east.
As they walked together down the hill, Boy was looking about her.
"Where's the mare?" she asked.
They were the first words she had spoken.
"Which mare?" asked Silver
"Four Pound."
He glanced round. The young stock were standing lazily under the trees, swishing their tails, and stamping off the flies. But the old mare had forsaken her usual haunt.
Then far away on the edge of a bed of bracken in the bottom, something like a piece of brown paper caught his eye. It rose and fell and flapped in the wind.
Boy saw it, too, and darted off.
"Call Billy Bluff!" she cried over her shoulder; but Billy had already trotted off to the yard to renew the pleasant task of tormenting Maudie and the fan-tails.
The girl made at a canter for the brown paper struggling on the edge of the bracken.
As she came closer she raised a swift hand to steady the man pounding behind her.
The brown paper was a new-born foal, woolly, dun of hue, swaying on uncertain legs. The little creature, with the mane and tail of a toy horse, looking supremely pathetic in its helplessness, wavered ridiculously in the wind. It was all knees and hocks, and fluffy tail that wriggled, and jelly-like eyes. Its tall, thin legs were stuck out before and behind like those of a wooden horse. It stood like one dazed, staring blankly before it, absorbed in the new and surprising action of drawing breath through widespread nostrils; quavered and then collapsed, only to attempt to climb to its feet again.
Close beside her child lay the mother, her neck extended along the green, her eyes blood-shot.
As the girl rode up, the old mare raised her gaunt, well-bred head and snorted, but made no effort to rise.
Boy dismounted.
"Hold Ragamuffin, will you?" she said.
Silver, himself dismounted now, obeyed.
Boy knelt in the bracken and felt the mare's heart.
The young man stood some distance off and watched her.
"Pretty bad, isn't she?" he said gravely.
"Go and tell mother, please," replied the girl, still on her knees. "And send one of the lads with a rug and a wheelbarrow."
The young man walked away down the hillside, leading the two ponies.
Left alone, Boy brushed away the flies that had settled in black clouds on the mare's face. The foal repeated its ungainly efforts, whimpering in a deep and muffled voice, like the wind in a cave. The urge of hunger was on it, and it did not understand why it was not satisfied. Boy went to it, and thrust her thumbs into its soft and toothless mouth. The foal, entirely unafraid, sucked with quivering tail and such power that the girl thought her thumbs would be drawn off. The old mare whinnied, jealous, perhaps, of her usurped function.
In another moment Mrs. Woodburn's tall and stately form came through the gate and laboured up the hill. She was wearing a white apron and carried a sheet in her hand.
Soon she stood beside her daughter, breathing deeply, and looking down upon the mare.
"Bad job, Boy," she said.
"Have you brought a thermometer?" asked the girl.
Mrs. Woodburn nodded, and inserted the instrument under the old mare's elbow, laying an experienced hand on her muzzle.
"If she'd make an effort," she said in her slow way. "But she can't be bothered. That's Black Death."
Silver, looking ridiculously elegant in his shirt-sleeves and spotless breeches, came up the hill toward them, trundling a dingy stable barrow. Behind him trotted a lad, trailing a rug.
"We must just let her bide," said Mrs. Woodburn. "Lay that sheet over her, George, to keep the flies off, and get a handful of sweet hay and put it under her nose to peck at it. You've brought the barrow, Mr. Silver. Thank you."
"Can you lift the foal in?" asked Boy.
"I guess," answered the young man, stripping up sleeves in which the gold links shone.
"Oh! your poor clothes!" cried Mrs. Woodburn. "Whatever would your mother say? Put on my apron, do."
The young man obeyed, gravely and without a touch of self-consciousness, binding the apron about his waist; and to Boy at least he appeared, so clad, something quite other than ludicrous.
"Can you manage it, d'you think?" she asked in her serious way.
"I guess," answered the young man.
He blew elaborately on his hands, made belief to lick them, and bowed his back to the lifting. There were no weak spots in that young body. It was good all through.
Strong as he was tender, he gathered the little creature. A moment it sprawled helplessly in his arms, all legs and head. Then he bundled it into the barrow.
The old mare whinnied.
"Put the rug over her head so she can't see," said Mrs. Woodburn.
The foal stood a moment in the barrow, then it collapsed, lying like a calf with a woolly tail, its long legs projecting over the side.
Silver grasped the handles of the barrow.
"Is it all right?" asked Boy.
"I guess," replied the young man, and trundled his load away down the hill.
The girl walked beside the barrow, one hand steadying the foal, who reared an uncanny head.
They passed through the yard, jolted noisily over the cobbles, and turned into a great cool loose-box, deep in moss-litter.
"I'll go and get the bottle," said the girl. "George, just run and bring a couple of armfuls of litter-grass off the stack and pile it in that corner."
When she returned with the bottle, the barrow was empty, and the foal lay quiet on a heap of brown grass in the corner.
It whinnied and essayed to stand.
"It's coming, honey," said Boy in her deep, comforting voice.
The foal sucked greedily and with quivering tail.
From outside in the yard came the pleasant clatter of horses' feet on the cobbles.
The string was returning.
In another moment Old Mat was standing in the door of the loose-box, grunting to himself, as he watched the little group within.
Boy, in her long riding-coat, stood in the dim loose-box, her fair hair shining, tilting the bottle, while the foal, with lifted head and ecstatic tail, sucked.
Silver, still in his shirt-sleeves, watched with folded arms.
"Colt foal I see," grunted the old man. "That's a little bit o' better. Four-Pound-the-Second, I suppose you'll call him."
On the morning that Make-Way-There had done his gallop Old Mat had noted that a change was coming over Boy.
She was ceasing to be a child, and was becoming a woman.
He mentioned it to Ma.
"Time she did," said the mother quietly. "She'll be seventeen in March."
The girl herself was aware of strange happenings within her. More, she knew that the tall young man was responsible for them.
A great new life, full of shadows and delicious dangers, was surging up in her heart, sweeping across the sands of her childhood, obliterating tide-marks, swinging her off her feet, and carrying her forward under bare stars toward the Unknown.
She fought against the invasion of this Sea, struggling to find footing on the familiar bottom.
That Sea and Mr. Silver were intimately connected. Sometimes, indeed, the girl could not distinguish one from the other. Was it the Sea which bore Mr. Silver in upon her resisting mind?—or was it Mr. Silver who trailed the Sea after him like a cloud?
Her helplessness angered and humiliated her. She fought fiercely and in vain. That strong will of hers, which had never yet met its match, was impotent now. This Thing, this Sea, this Man, crept in upon her like a mist, invading her very sanctuaries.
She might close the doors and lock them—to no purpose.
She was angry, excited, not entirely displeased.
The change wrought in her swiftly. At least she had the sense that she was embarking on a great adventure; and her romantic spirit answered to the appeal.
She became quieter and passed much time in her room alone.
Mr. Silver kept knocking at the door in the loft which he had never entered; but she refused to open to him.
To revenge herself she practised small brutalities upon him, which had no effect. He just withdrew and came again next day with his big-dog smile, quiet and persistent as a tide. Shy he was, and singularly pertinacious.
Then his mother died.
That seemed to Boy unfair; but as she reasoned it out he could hardly be held responsible.
They knew all about it at Putnam's, because there was a paragraph in the paper about Brazil Silver's widow.
The young man buried his mother on Friday, and on Saturday came down to Putnam's for his usual week-end.
Boy asked her mother if he had spoken to her about his trouble.
"No," said Mrs. Woodburn.
"Then he shall to me," said the girl, with determination.
He should not bottle up his grief. That would be bad for him. The mother in the girl was emerging from the tom-boy very fast.
On Sunday evening she took him for a ride, and had her way, without a struggle.
As they breasted the hill together, the young man told her all at some length.
"Was she much to you?" asked the girl keenly.
Her own mother was all the world to her.
He shook his head.
"Oh! that's all right," replied the girl, relieved and yet resentful, "if you didn't care."
"In some ways I'm glad for her sake," continued the young man. "She was always unhappy. You see she was ambitious. One of the disappointments of her life was that my father wouldn't take a peerage."
"Can't you be happy and ambitious?" asked Boy, peeping at him in the wary way he loved.
Jim Silver laughed and flicked his whip.
"I doubt it," he said.
"Aren't you ambitious?" she inquired.
He laughed his deep, tremendous laughter, turning on her the face she so rejoiced in.
"I've told you my one ambition."
"What's that?"
"To breed a National winner."
That brought them back to their favourite subject—Four-Pound-the-Second and his future.
The foal kept the girl busy, for the old mare died, and Boy had to bring up the little creature by hand. She didn't mind that, for the summer is the slack season in the jumping world. Moreover, trouble taken for helpless young things was never anything but a delight to her. And fortune favoured her. For the Queen of Sheba, one of her nanny-goats, had lost her kids, and the milk was therefore available for the foal.
Boy fed him herself by day and night, sleeping in his loose-box for the first few weeks, she and Billy Bluff, who promised to be good. Monkey Brand, who had neither wife nor child of his own, and loved the girl with the doting passion of a nurse, wanted to share her watch, but his aid was abruptly refused. So the little jockey slept in the loft instead, to be near at hand, and would bring the girl a cup of tea after her vigil.
Once, in his mysterious way, he beckoned Silver to follow him. The young man pursued him up the ladder, treading, of course, on Maudie, who made the night hideous with her protests.
Up there in the darkness of the loft the little man stole with the motions of a conspirator to a far trap-door. He opened it gingerly and listened. From beneath came the sound of regular breathing. Thrusting his lantern through the dark hole, he beckoned to Silver, who looked down.
In a corner of the loose-box, on a pile of horse rugs, slept Boy, her mass of hair untamed now and spreading abroad like a fan of gold. Beside her on the moss-litter lay Billy Bluff, curled and dreaming of the chase. And on a bed of bracken by the manger, his long legs tied up in knots, was the foal.
Silver peeped and instantly withdrew as one who has trespassed innocently.
"Pretty as a pictur, ain't it?" whispered the little jockey. "Only don't go for to say I give her away. That'd be the end of Monkey Brand, that would."
He swung the lantern so that the light flashed on the face of the sleeping girl.
"That'll do," muttered the young man uneasily. "You'll wake her."
"No, sir. She's fast," the other answered. "Fair wore out. He wouldn't take the bottle yesterday, and she was up with him all night. I went down to her when it come light. Only where it is she won't allow nobody to do nothin' for him only herself." He stole back to his lair in the straw at the far end of the loft. "That's the woman in her, sir," he said in his sagacious way. "Must have her baby all to herself. Nobody don't know nothin' about it only mother."
Four-Pound-the-Second after the first few perilous weeks throve amazingly. He ceased to be a pretty creature, pathetic in his helplessness, and grew into a gawky hobbledehoy, rough and rude and turbulent.
Old Mat shook his head over the colt.
"Ugliest critter I ever set eyes on," he said, partly in earnest and partly to tease his daughter.
"You'll see," said Boy firmly.
"If he's a Berserk he's worth saving, surely," remarked Silver. "Berserker—Black Death. Ought to be able to hop a bit."
Everybody at Putnam's knew that the colt was the son of that famous sire, but nobody, except Mat Woodburn and Monkey Brand, knew how they knew it.
"Oh! if he's going to win the National—as I think he is, de we—he's worth a little trouble," replied the old man, winking at Monkey Brand.
"D'you think he'll win the National?" cried the young man, simple as a child.
"Certain for sure," replied the other. "When 'e walks on to the course all the other hosses'll have a fit and fall down flat. And I don't blame 'em, neether."
"Fatherthinkshe's funny," said the girl with fine irony.
"I ain't 'alf so funny as that young billy-goat o' yours, my dear," replied the old trainer, and lilted on his way. "It's his foster-ma he takes after. The spit of her, he be."
As soon as the foal began to find his legs Boy took him out into the Paddock Close, and later on to the Downs. He followed like a dog, skirmishing with Billy Bluff up and down the great rounded hills.
The bob-tail at first was inclined to be jealous. He thought the foal was a new kind of dog and a rival. Then when he understood that after all the little creature was only an animal, on a different and a lower plane, to be patronised and bullied and ragged, he resumed his self-complacency. Thoroughly human, a vulgar sense of superiority kept his temper sweet. He accepted Four-Pound-the-Second as one to whom he might extend his patronage and his protection. And once this was understood the relations between the foal and the dog were established on a sound basis, while Maudie watched with a sardonic smile.
That autumn the girl, the foal, and the dog roamed the hillside by the hour together in the cool of dawn and evening. And the colt became as handy as the goat he was alleged by his detractors to resemble.
"Go anywhere Billy Bluff does," said Monkey Brand. "Climb the ladder to the loft soon as look at you."
On these frequent excursions Boy took her hunting-crop with her, and the long-flung lash often went curling round the legs of the unruly foal. Early she broke him to halter, and when he became too turbulent for unbridled liberty she took him out on a long lounging rein.
The Downs about Cuckmere, which lies half-way between Lewes and Beachy Head, are lonely. Apart from shepherds, you seldom meet on them anyone save a horseman or a watcher. But more than once the three came on Joses on the hillside.
Since the moment she had marked him cowering in the Gap like a hunted creature, Boy had seen the tout with quite other eyes than of old. Never afraid of him, from that time her aversion had turned to pity for one so hopelessly forlorn.
Whether Joses felt the change or not, and reacted to it unconsciously, it was impossible to say. Certainly he showed himself friendly, she thought, almost ashamed. At first she was not unnaturally suspicious, but soon the compassion in her heart overcame all else.
One brilliant September evening she came upon him on the Mare's Back.
The fat man pulled off his hat shyly.
"You've put him on the chain, I see," he said, referring to the long rein.
Boy stopped.
His face was less bloated, his appearance more tidy than of old. It was clear he had been drinking less.
"What d'you think of him?" she asked.
The tout threw a critical eye over the foal. There was no question that Joses knew a thing or two about a horse.
"Ugly but likely," he said, with the deliberate air of a connoisseur. "What they call in France abeau laid."
The girl demurred to the proposition. Her foal wasnotbow-legged.
"His legs are all right," she said, somewhat tartly. "He's a bitonthe leg; but he's sure to be at that age."
"How's he bred, d'you know?" asked the other thoughtfully.
Boy was on the alert in a moment. That was a stable secret, and not to be disclosed.
"I'm notquitesure," she answered truthfully. "We picked up the dam from a gypsy."
The fat man nodded. He seemed to know all about it. Indeed, it was his business to know all about such things.
"She was a Black Death mare, that, no question," he said, and added slowly, his eye wandering over the colt: "Looks to me like a Berserk somehow." She had a feeling he was drawing her, and kept her face inscrutable in a way that did credit to the teaching of Monkey Brand. "If so, you've drawn a lucky number," continued the other. "Such things happen, you know."
Boy moved on, and was aware that he was following her.
She turned and saw his face.
There was no mischief in the man, and fluttering in his eyes there was that look of a hunted animal she had noticed in the Gap.
She stopped at once.
"What is it, Mr. Joses?" she asked.
She felt that he was calling to her for help.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Woodburn," he began.
"Yes, Mr. Joses."
Her deep voice was soft and encouraging as when she spoke to a sick creature or a child. Those who knew only the resolute girl, who went her own way with an almost fierce determination, would have been astonished at her tenderness.
"That little mistake of mine on the cliff," muttered the man.
A great impulse of generosity flooded the girl's heart and coloured her cheek.
"That'squiteall right," she said.
It was clear he was not satisfied.
His eyes wandered over heaven and earth, never meeting hers.
"You've not said anything to the police about that?"
"No!" she cried.
"Nor that gentleman?"
"Mr. Silver?"
"Yes."
"I'msurehe hasn't."
The other drew a deep breath.
"It wouldn't help me any if he had," he said.
He looked up into the deep sky, that was gathering the dusk, and still alive with the song of larks. "I wouldn't like to see 'em in a cage," he said quietly. "It wasn't meant. Never!"
Next Saturday, when Mr. Silver came down, she told him of the incident.
"You didn't say anything to the police, did you?" she asked anxiously.
"No," he said. "I meant to, but I forgot."
She repeated Joses's remark about the cage.
"He's been in the cage," she said quietly.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
She nodded with set lips.
"How d'you know?"
"I saw it in his eyes."
The young man was genuinely moved.
"Poor beggar!" he said.
The little affair of Joses was one of the many trifles that made for intimacy between the young man and the girl.
In spite of herself Boy found her opposition dying away. Indeed, she could no more resist him than she could resist the elements. She might put her umbrella up, but that did not stop the rain. And if the rain chose to go on long enough, the umbrella would wear away. The choice lay with the rain and not with the umbrella.
By the autumn Boy had ceased even to pretend to be unfriendly. It was no use, and she was never much good at pretending.
Then with the fall of the leaves old Ragamuffin began to tumble to pieces.
She watched him closely for a week. Then one October dawn, the mists hanging white in the hollows, she led him out to the edge of the wood before the lads were about. Only Monkey Brand accompanied her.
Herself she held the old pony alongside the new-dug grave, talking to him, stroking his nose. Monkey Brand, of the steady hand and loving heart, did the rest. A quarter of an hour later the girl and the little jockey came back to the yard alone. She was carrying a halter in her hand and talking of Four-Pound-the-Second.
The lads watched her surreptitiously and with brimming eyes. Albert, who prided himself on the hardness of his heart, wept and swore he hadn't.
"I'll lay she feels it," blubbered Stanley, who was not clever enough to conceal his tears.
When Silver came down for the week-end, Old Mat told him what had happened.
"That's the strength in her," he whispered. "Just took and did it, she and Monkey Brand. Never a word to her mother or me—before or since."
But the young man noticed that the girl looked haggard, wistful, more spiritual than usual. He was shy of her, and she of him.
When that evening she met him in the yard and said, "Will you come and see?" he was amazed and touched.
They stood together by the new-made grave under the wood. Jim was far more moved than when his mother died.
"Dear old Ragamuffin!" he said.
She seemed to quaver in the dusk.
"You mustn't," she said, in strained and muffled voice, and for a moment laid a finger on his arm.
Next day, as they were making their Sunday round of the horses together, Silver stopped at Heart of Oak's box.
"I don't quite know what to be at with this poor old cormorant," he said, slow and cogitating. "I'm looking for a home for him. But there are no bidders. A bit too good a doer, I guess. Eat 'em out of hearth and home."
The girl's eyes flashed on his face and away again.
"He's not old," she said, as her hand stroked the pony's neck.
"Well, he's like me," the young man replied. "He's older than he was."
Boy made a cursory inspection of the pony's mouth.
"Eleven off," she said.
"That's too old to play polo."
She believed it to be a lie, but she did not think she was sufficient an authority on the game to justify her in saying so.
"Anyway, I'm getting too heavy for him," Silver went on. "Joint too big for the dish, as they say. That fellow's more my sort, ain't you, old lad?" He nodded to the next loose-box, where his seventeen-hand hunter, Banjo, stood, blowing at them through the bars. "What Heart of Oak wants is a nice light weight just to hack him about the Downs and ease him down into the grave."
That evening after supper Jim Silver sang.
Apart from the members of the Eton Mission Clubs there were perhaps a dozen men in the world—Eton men all, boating men most—who knew that he did "perform," to use their expression; and just two women—Boy Woodburn and her mother. Old Mat, to be sure, did not count, for he always slept through the "performance."
The young man's repertoire consisted of two songs—The Place Where the Old Horse DiedandMy Old Dutch.
With a good natural voice, entirely untrained, he sang with a deep and quiet feeling that made his friends affirm that once you had heard Silver Mug's—
We've been together now for forty years,And it don't seem a day too much,There ain't a lady livin' in the landAs I'd swop for my dear old Dutch.
you would never listen to Albert Chevalier again.
That, of course, was the just and admirable exaggeration of youth and friendship.
But it was the fact that always after the young man had sung there was an unusually prolonged silence, and, as Amersham once said, you felt as if you were in church.
This evening, after he had finished, and Mrs. Woodburn had broken the silence with her quiet "Thank you," the young man returned to the subject he had broached in the stable.
Silver indeed was nothing if not dogged, as the girl was beginning to find out.
"I say, Miss Woodburn," he began in that casual way of his, "I wish you'd take charge of that old yellow moke o' mine."
Boy shook her head.
He laughed and drew his chair beside her as she worked. Not seldom now he doffed the Puritan with her, and became easy, chaffing, almost gallant. Amersham and his friends would have been amazed had they seen their sober Jim Silver so much at home with a lady.
"Oh, I say—why not?" he protested, boyish and chaffing.
"He's too much of a handful for me," said the girl gravely, threading her needle against the light.
He laughed, delighted, smacking his knee as he did when pleased, while even Ma, who of wont turned a deaf ear on the young couple, smiled sedately.
"I like that!" cried Silver. "Ha! ha! ho! ho! That's a good un." Then he turned grave, almost lugubrious. "But of course if you won't have him I must do something to him. I'm too fond of the old fellow to let him rot."
Next morning, before he left for London, Boy saw him from her window holding intimate communion with Monkey Brand in the Paddock Close beside the wood.
When he had driven away, the girl descended from her eyrie and cross-examined the little jockey sharply.
Monkey looked secretive and mysterious even for him.
"He's a very queer gentleman," was all he would say. "One o' them that's been to India without their 'ats, I should say. You know, Miss?" He tapped his forehead. "Melted a-top."
"What did hesay?" persisted the girl.
"He said nobody was to exercise Heart of Oak only unless you wanted him. And he said he'd make up his mind next week."
"Make up his mind?"
"That was the word, Miss."
"Bring me the gun," ordered Boy.
The little man obeyed sulkily.
"It'll be in my room," she said. "And it'll stay there."
"Very good, Miss," replied the jockey, and winked to himself as the girl ascended the ladder.
That evening, as Old Mat slept noisily by the fire with open mouth, the two women worked.
Mrs. Woodburn every now and then lifted her eyes to her daughter's face and let them dwell there, as the sky dwells on a tree.
"D'you like him, Boy?" she asked at length, tranquilly.
The girl for once was taken by surprise. She flushed a little and perhaps for the first time in her life fenced.
"Who, mother?"
"Mr. Silver."
"Yes," said the girl. "He's like Billy Bluff—only less rowdy."
Silver's Leicestershire friends were under the delusion that he was keeping his hunters at Lewes. And so indeed he did till the hunting season began; and then he brought them over to Putnam's.
The Duke's north-country stud-groom, who was inThe Beehiveat Folkington, as they came along the road from Lewes, ran out of the bar to have a look at them.
"Ma wud!" he whistled. "Champion!"
And Mike Rigg was right. Silver's horses indeed were the one item of his personal expenditure on which the young man never spared his purse. He used to say with perfect truth that except for his stud he could live with joy on £3 a week. But there was no man in England who had a rarer stud of weight-carriers.
"Big as blood elefunks," said Monkey Brand in the awed voice of a worshipper. "Flip a couple o' ton across country singin' hallelooyah all the way."
The Duke, when first they appeared with his hounds at the covertside, shook his head over them: for Jim Silver came south with a formidable reputation as a thruster.
"Too classy for my country, Silver," he said. "What d'you want with that sort of stuff down here?"
"I didn't like to part with 'em, sir," replied the young man. "They've done me well in their time."
"I don't want you young bloods from the shires down here," scolded the Duke. "You'll be all over my hounds. This is an old man's country, ain't it, Boy?"
Thunderbolt stood on his hind legs and pawed deliberately at the heavens.
"They're big, your Grace," answered the girl. "But Mr. Silver's bigger. He can hold them."
"And you can hold him, my dear," said the Duke. "Keep him in your pocket, there's a good gal. Now, Joe, let's be moving on."
The Duke was fond of the girl. It was said, indeed, that he liked her better than anybody in the hunt. Certainly he was never so happy as when showing her round his famous piggeries at Raynor's, or talking goats to her at an Agricultural Show.
Boy on her side was one of the most regular followers of the Duke's hounds; but, as she never tired of impressing on her friends, she hunted for professional reasons, and not for pleasure. Indeed, she was honest as always when she declared that she did not care for hunting for its own sake. There was so much swank about it and so little business: oceans of gossip, flirting, swagger, and spite to every ounce of reality. Moreover, her refined and Puritan spirit revolted against the people who hunted: she thought of them all as bubbles, brilliant apparently, but liable to burst at any moment and leave nothing behind them but a taint of vulgarity.
When hounds were running people saw little of Silver and the girl, who were always well behind.
"Carrying on together," was the spiteful comment of those whom Boy was wont to call in scorn "the ladies."
But it was not true. The pair were not coffee-housing. Boy was at her job, schooling her youngsters with incomparable patience, judgment, and decision; and Jim Silver, on those great fretting weight-carriers of his, was marking time and in attendance.
The Duke, when he got the pair alone, never tired of chaffing them.
"I notice she always gives you the lead, Silver," he mocked.
"Yes, sir," replied the young man. "She makes the hole, and I creep through it afterward."
The couple were talked about, of course; and both were dimly aware of it. Boy was used to being made the subject of gossip; and Silver was almost as unconscious of and aloof from it as were the horses that he rode.
The ladies, to whom he paid no attention, were indignant and resentful.
"It can't be," they said; and—"I hate to see that chit making a fool of a nice man like that."
The Duke, whose ears were growing longer every day, heard them once and began to bellow suddenly in that disconcerting way of his.
"It's all right!" he shouted. "You needn't be afraid. She won't have him."
The ladies jeered secretly. To their minds the question was not whether the girl would have Silver, but whether he would be Mug enough to give her the chance.
Certainly the pair were drawing close.
Days together in the saddle, the risks and small adventures of the field, and by no means least those long hacks home at evening, not seldom in the dark, over the Downs, a great wind blowing gustily under clear stars, did their sure, unconscious work.
Up to Christmas the young man visited Putnam's regularly. Then he missed two successive week-ends. When he came again there was a cloud over him. It was so faint and far that nobody noticed it indeed but the girl. She was not deceived.
As they rode home in the afternoon he was more silent than his wont. Once or twice her eyes sought his. His brows were level and drawn down. There was resistance in his face.
"Are you worried?" she asked.
His plain, strong face broke up, brightened and became beautiful.
"Yes," he said.
"Tell me."
"It's the only thing that ever worries me."
"What?"
"The Bank."
"Is it going wrong?"
He laughed again.
"I don't know," he said, and began to chuckle at himself. "That's the trouble. I can't get the hang of it. There's a screw loose somewhere. I'm like a man steering a ship who knows nothing about navigation."
"It's all right if you do your best," said the girl, with the little preacher touch she inherited from her grand-dad. That note always caused an imp of mischief to bob up in the young man's heart.
"Hope so, de we," he said.
She looked at him sharply.Shemight censure her father, but she allowed that liberty to no one else.
"What!" she said.
Jim Silver took to instant flight.
"None-nothing," he stammered. "Only I'm afraid the pup-passengers won't think it's all right when they find themselves going to the bottom. They'll say, 'What business had you at the wheel if you can't steer?' And they'll be right, too."
With the New Year the young man came no more for week-ends, and the reason was well known.
The hunting-field is always a great place for gossip, for except at rare intervals there is little else to do. And with the Duke's hounds the gossip was about Mr. Silver.
The Union Bank of Brazil and Uruguay was known to be in difficulties, and Boy hunted alone.
"Where's your Life Guardsman?" asked the Duke.
"Guarding the Bank, I believe, your Grace."
The Duke grunted.
"Wants guarding from what I can hear of it," he blurted. "Tell him it's no good," he shouted. "Tell him to come out of it. It's no job for an honest man."
"What isn't?"
"Bankin'." He muttered to himself. "There's only one thing an honest man can do, that's land. Everything else you get dirty over. I'm not overclean myself, but I'm not as dirty as some of 'em."
Then there appeared paragraphs in the paper.
The girl asked her father about them.
He shook his head.
"I don't understand it, my dear," he said. "And what's more, I don't believe Mr. Silver do himself. I see the accounts published in the paper. Accordin' to them the Bank had five millions in cash. You'd think you couldn't go very fur wrong with five millions in cash in the till."
"Perhaps a clerk's been taking some," said the girl eagerly.
Once, but only once, there had been a clerk at Putnam's.
The old man was not to be convinced.
"Take a tidy-sized clurk to go off with five million in his pocket," he said. "Course I don't say he couldn't do it, Gob 'elpin' 'im. Only he'd be carryin' a lot o' dead weight, as the Psalmist said.Too'eavily penalised, I should say. No, my dear, 'tain't the clurk. 'Tis the li'bilities."
"What are the liabilities?" asked Boy.
"They're the devil, my dear," said the old man. "That's all I can tell you. Land you in the lock-up soon as look at you."
Later that evening the girl went to call on her friend, Mr. Haggard.
He was in his study among his books, and rose to greet her with that affectionate kindliness he reserved for her.
"I want to know something, Mr. Haggard," said the girl in her determined way.
He looked at her over his spectacles.
"Yes."
"Can they put you in prison if you lose your money?"
"Not if you lose it honestly," replied the vicar.
One reason the girl liked him so much was that he never played the fool. The heavy horse-chaff with which the average Englishman of the Duke's type, in his elephantine efforts at gallantry, thinks it necessary to adorn his conversation, were not for him.
"Oh, he'll lose it honestly all right," cried the girl eagerly, unconscious of the fact that she was giving herself away, or careless of it.
It was not hard for the other to gauge her mind. Casually he turned over an evening paper.
"I see there's good news about Mr. Silver's Bank," he said. "It's weathered the storm."
He pointed out to her a paragraph in the stop-press column.
The good news was confirmed.
That night a telegram came from Mr. Silver to say he was coming down next morning and asking them to meet him at Lewes.
"I knew he'd come if he could to-morrow," cried the girl.
Her mother looked at her.
"It's your birthday, Boy," she said.
The girl's fair face flushed.
"He doesn't know that," she said, on the defensive. "And you're not to tell. It's the last day of hunting. That's what I meant."
She was indeed seventeen next day. And the sign of her womanhood was that when she came down in the morning her hair was bunched in a neat little coil at the back of her head. Because of it she was shy and somewhat defiant. Dressed for hunting in snowy shirt and long-skirted dark coat, she entered the parlour more swiftly than her wont, in her shoes and stockings, and carrying her riding-boots in her hand.
Her father's mild blue eye penetrated her secret at once.
"That's a little bit o' better," he said. "It'sMissWoodburn now."
"Now then, father," reproved Mrs. Woodburn.
"Oh, I knows my place, plea Gob," mumbled the old man. "Ought to arter all the trainin' you been at the pains to put me to." And he winked and chuckled and grunted over his porridge.
"Let me look at you, Boy," said her mother, when the teasing old man had gone.
The girl coloured faintly. Her mother kissed her. "Joyce," she said gravely, "you're a woman now."
"Am I, mother?" laughed the girl. "I feel like a boy sometimes still."
She was gay with an unusual gaiety.
Her mother marked it with those observant eyes of hers.
After the pair had read together, as their custom was, Mrs. Woodburn laid the Bible down and took up her knitting.
Boy pulled on her boots before the fire.
"I hope you won't marry out of your own class, Boy," said Mrs. Woodburn at last quietly. "We're humble folk, as dad says."
"I don't think I shall marry at all," replied the girl curtly. "I don't feel like it."
The mother continued on her tranquil way.
"When you marry, marry your own sort," she advised.
Boy was silent for a time.
"Isn't Mr. Silver our sort?" she asked at last, her eyes on her mother's.
Mrs. Woodburn, for all her liberal mind, was of the older generation.
"My dear," she said, "he's an Eton man."
"He's not like one," replied the girl shortly. "He's a gentleman."
"My dear, Eton men are gentlemen," reproved Mrs. Woodburn.
"Some," replied the girl. "The Duke is." She added maliciously—"Sometimes."
Old Mat, Monkey Brand, and Albert started early for the meet.
It was a long hour later before mother and daughter, waiting in the parlour, heard the steady clop-clop of a horse's feet and the crisp trundle of wheels on the road.
In another moment the buggy had drawn up at the gate; Goosey Gander was stretching his neck, and Jerry of the corrugated brow was touching his hat to the descending passenger.
A tall, top-hatted figure, enfolded in long, shaggy gray frieze coat, came up the paved yard toward them between clouds of arabis.
Silver had changed in the train on the way down. He was booted, spurred, and above all radiant.
Mrs. Woodburn went out on to the steps to meet him. The girl hid her hair behind her mother's stately figure.
"So you've managed it!" smiled Mrs. Woodburn.
"I was determined not to miss it," replied the young man, striding up the steps stiff in his top-boots. "Miss Woodburn, congratulations."
"Who told you?" cried Boy, taken aback.
"Billy Bluff, of course," replied the other. "Caddish of him, wasn't it?"
They went into the parlour.
Mrs. Woodburn did not offer the traveller a drink for the simple reason that it never occurred to her to do so.
"By Jove! Iamlate!" cried the young man, glancing at the clock. "There was a break-down at Hayward's Heath."
He stripped off his ulster, and stood up in his pink coat, his baggy white breeches, and top-boots.
In Boy Woodburn's judgment most men, so attired, looked supremely ridiculous. It was not so with Mr. Silver. It may be that his absolute lack of self-consciousness distracted attention from his costume. It may be that he was so real himself that he dominated his artificial habiliments. Certainly his strong, clean face, his short, crisp hair, and pleasant, booming voice possessed and pleased the girl.
"You'd better be off, or you'll have the Duke down on you," said Mrs. Woodburn.
"Dad's gone an hour since," said Boy.
She led the way swiftly down long stone passages out into the yard. He followed, his eyes on that shining bunch of hair before him.