l break somewan's back here yet, an' I'm tellin' you that
sthraight. They say a black cat's full av th! divil, but Diablo's ould
Nick hisself, though I'm sayin'it was th' b'y Shandy's fault sp'ilin'
him. An' if it wasn't fer Miss Allis it's a pity you couldn't a-sold
him the Chestnut. He's a sawhorse--he's as heavy in th' head as a bag of
salt; he'll never do no good to nobody. Them's the kind as kapes a man
poor, eatin' their heads off, an' wan horse, or maybe two, in the
stable earnin' th' oats fer them. It's chaper to cut th' t'roats av such
cattle."

"I believe you're right, Mike," Porter answered, quietly, as he left the
stable.

Crane, driving back to Brookfield, turned over in his mind the matter
of his mission. He was satisfied. He had succeeded in the main objective
point. It would have been a good move to have acquired Lucretia, to have
tempted her owner to part with her for ready money in sight. The money
would soon have disappeared; then Porter, with a lot of bad horses on
his hand, would almost certainly have come more firmly into the grasp
of Crane. The offer to buy Lauzanne had been a bit of saving grace, a
faint, generous impulse, begot of Allis's regenerating influence; but
Crane had discovered that Porter did not at all suspect him of interest
in the fraud--that was a great something. He had also established
himself firmly in Mrs. Porter's good graces, he could see. It would be
indeed strange if in the end he did not succeed completely.

XIV

Shandy's escapade with Diablo had brought a new trouble to Mike Gaynor.

The boy had been discharged with a severe reprimand from Mr. Porter, and
a punctuation mark of disapproval from the Trainer's horn-like hand.
He had departed from Ringwood inwardly swearing revenge upon everybody
connected with that place; against Diablo he was particularly virulent.

Mike tried to secure a boy in the Brookfield neighborhood to ride Diablo
in his work, but Shandy's evil tongue wagged so blatantly about the
horse's bad temper that no lad could be found to take on in the stables.
Ned Carter might have ridden Diablo at work, but the big Black was
indeed a horse of many ideas. He had taken a notion to gallop kindly
while accompanied by Lucretia and Lauzanne; worked alone he sulked
and was as awkward as a broncho of the plains. Also he disliked
Carter--seemed to associate his personality with that of Shandy's.

Mike's discontent over the hitch spread to John Porter.