atly curious and honestly concerned.

"Thought I were sellin' him," muttered Monkey.

The Duke bent shaggy brows upon the little man.

"Were you?" he asked.

For a moment the old merry Monkey rose from the dead and twinkled. Then
he stiffened like a dead man, touched his hat, and turned away.

The Duke clung to him.

He, too, had heard a story, and wished to know the rights and wrongs of
it.

"Well, well," he said. "We must all hope the Putnam horse wins--for Mr.
Silver's sake. Eh, what?"

"Yes, your Grace," replied the uncommunicative Monkey.

The night before the race the Duke, still hunting the trail tenaciously,
stumbled, according to his own account, on Old Mat, and reported the
substance of his interview with Monkey in that ingenuous way of his,
half simple, half brutal, and all with an astonishing _savoir-faire_ you
would never have given him credit for.

"One thing," he ended, "he ain't blackguardin' you."

Mat seemed lost in memories.

"I wep' a tear. I did reely," he said at last. Then he shook a sorrowful
head. "I ain't one o' yer whitewings meself," he said. "Not by no means.
But he shock me, Monkey do. He does reely." He dabbed his eye. "Rogues
and rasqueals, yer Grace," he said. "All very well. But there is a
limit, as the Psalmist very proply remarked."

The Duke turned to go, his curiosity still unsatisfied.

"Where's Boy?" he asked gruffly. "I've seen nothing of her this time."

"She's kep' busy, your Grace--nursin' the baby."

"How is he?"

"Keeps a-crowin'," said the old man, "from all I hears of it."

CHAPTER XLVII

On the Course

Next morning was gray with gleams of sun: an ideal day, old hands said,
for the great race of the year.

Mat found his way to the Paddock early and alone.

At Aintree everything is known about the notables by everybody, and
there were few more familiar figures than that of the old man with the
broad shoulders, the pink face, and the difficulty in drawing breath.

It was twenty odd years since Cannibal had won the big race for him; and
this year it was known that he had only come up to see the sport. True
he had a horse running, down on the card as Four-Pound-the-Second, brown
gelding, five years old, green jacket and cap, ten stone; but he was an
any-price outsider, only entered because for something like fifty years
there had never been a National in which a Putnam horse had not played a
part. And rumour had it that Four-Pound was a rum