shots
hurriedly, and the last counted blank, for being outside the circle of
the stated time.

So he was beaten. But a terrific uproar over the field proclaimed the
popular dissatisfaction. Presently there was a cleavage of the mob, and
behold a chase at the heels of the fellow to rival the very captain
himself for fleetness. He escaped, leaving his pole with the sheet nailed
to it, by way of flag, in proof of foul play; or a proof, as the other
side declared, of an innocently premature signalizing of the captain's
victory.

However that might be, he ran. Seeing him spin his legs at a hound's
pace, half a mile away, four countrymen attempted to stop him. All four
were laid on their backs in turn with stupefying celerity; and on rising
to their feet, and for the remainder of their natural lives, they swore
that no man but a Champion could have floored them so. This again may
have been due to the sturdy island pride of four good men knocked over by
one. We are unable to decide. Wickedness there was, the Dame says; and
she counsels the world to 'put and put together,' for, at any rate, 'a
partial elucidation of a most mysterious incident.' As to the
wager-money, the umpires dissented; a famous quarrel, that does not
concern us here, sprang out of the dispute; which was eventually, after
great disturbance 'of the country, referred to three leading sportsmen in
the metropolitan sphere, who pronounced the wager 'off,' being two to
one. Hence arose the dissatisfied third party, and the letters of this
minority to the newspapers, exciting, if not actually dividing, all
England for several months.

Now the month of December was the month of the Dame's mysterious
incident. From the date of January, as Madge Winch knew, Christopher Ines
had ceased to be in the service of the Earl of Fleetwood. At Esslemont
Park gates, one winter afternoon of a North-east wind blowing 'rum-shrub
into men for a stand against rheumatics,' as he remarked, Ines met the
girl by appointment, and informing her that he had money, and that Lord
Fleetwood was 'a black nobleman,' he proposed immediate marriage. The
hymeneal invitation, wafted to her on the breath of rum-shrub, obtained
no response from Madge until she had received evasive answers as to why
the earl dismissed him, and whence the stock of money came.

Lord Fleetwood, he repeated, was a black nobleman. She brought him to say
of his knowledge, that Lord Fleetwood hated, and had reason to hate