ced to return to the occupation of rubbing
down horses; but these periods of depression were of short duration, and
at the next turn of fortune's wheel he would again be on top.

"No, thuh," he was wont to say, with his inimitable lisp--"no, thuh, you
can't keep a good man down. 'Tain't no use a-talkin', you jeth can't. It
don't do me no harm to go back to rubbin' now an' then. It jeth nachully
keepth me on good termth with de hothes."

And, indeed, it did seem that his prophecies were surer and his
knowledge more direct after one of these periods of enforced humility.

There were various things whispered about Schwalliger; that he was no
more honest than he should be, that he was not as sound as he might be;
but though it might be claimed, and was, that he would prophesy, on
occasion, the success of three different horses to three different men,
no one ever accused him of being less than fair with the women who came
out from the city to enjoy the races and increase their excitement by
staking small sums. To these Schwalliger was the soul of courtesy and
honour, and if they lost upon his advice, he was not happy until he had
made it up to them again.

One, however, who sets himself to work to give a race-horse tout a
character may expect to have his labour for his pains. The profession of
his subject is against him. He may as well put aside his energy and say,
"Well, perhaps he was a bad lot, but----." The present story is not
destined to put you more in love with the hero of it, but----

The heat and enthusiasm at Saratoga and the other race-courses was done,
and autumn and the glory of Bennings had come. The ingratiating
Schwalliger came back with the horses to his old stamping ground and to
happiness. The other tracks had not treated him kindly, and but for the
kindness of his equine friends, whom he slept with and tended, he might
have come back to Washington on the wooden steps. But he was back, and
that was happiness for him. Broke?

"Well," said Schwalliger, in answer to a trainer's question, "I ain't
exactly broke, Misthah Johnthon, but I wath pretty badly bent. I goth
awa jutht ath thoon ath I commenth to feel mythelf crackin', but I'm
hyeah to git even."

He was only a rubber again, but he began to get even early in the week,
and by Saturday he was again as like to a rainbow as any of his class.
He did not, however, throw away his rubber's clothes. He was used to the
caprices of fortune, and he did not