n 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