l urchin who jeered:

"Say, lydy! is yon what they call a camel-leopard?"

The little party had the road to themselves, and passed unheeded.

The Billjim Guard were escorting the favourite to the yard, and the
crowd were escorting the Billjims.

When Four-Pound-the-Second reached the yard with his three satellites
twenty minutes later, the backwash of the crowd still eddied and swirled
about the entrance.

The policeman on the gate made a fuss about admitting Billy Bluff. But
the head yard-man, who knew Mat Woodburn's daughter almost as well as he
knew his own, interfered on her behalf.

"He'll sleep in my horse's box," Boy explained.

"Won't your horse sleep without him, Miss?" grinned the yard-man.

"Not so well," answered the girl.

"Oh, let him in," said the other. "Pity to spoil that horse's beauty
sleep. Might lose his looks."

Boy could never bring herself to titter at the jokes of those whom it
was expedient to placate. Happily Albert was at hand to make amends, and
he, to be sure, had no qualms of conscience.

The little procession entered, Billy Bluff at the heels of the great
horse, striking fire in the dusk from the cobbled yard.

"He's to look after Chukkers, I suppose," said the yard-man grimly,
pleased at his own generosity, well satisfied with his wit, and fairly
so with Albert's tribute to it.

"He's to look after my horse," said Boy resolutely.

"He looks he could look after himself, Miss," replied the witty
yard-man.

"So he can, sir, with you to help him," said the swift and tactful
Albert.

The yard-man, who could tell you stories of Boomerang's National, and
Cannibal's victory, that not even Monkey Brand could surpass, knew of
old the feeling between Putnam's and the Dewhurst stable, and had placed
the boxes of the two horses far apart.

* * * * *

All through the week the excitement grew.

The Sefton Arms was seething; the bar a slowly heaving mass of
racing-men, jockeys, touts, habitues.

Once or twice there were rows between Ikey's Own--the Yankee doodlers,
as the local wits called them--and the English silver-ring bookies; and
the cause of the quarrels was invariably the same--the treatment of the
mare at last year's National.

Throughout the week Boy went her quiet, strenuous way, unconscious of
the commotion about her, or careless of it.

Jim Silver escorted her to and from the yard. Most people knew Old
Mat's daughter and respected