sh. Now he
changed his tactics to meet the new situation. As the horses made for
the water, the mare on the rails, and the outsider wide on the right,
Chukkers began to nibble at her. The action was faint, yet most
significant.

"He ain't _ridin'_," muttered Old Mat, watching closely through his
glasses--"not yet. I won't say that. But he's spinnin' her."

Indeed it was so. The crowd saw it; the Boys, gnawing their thumbs, saw
it; the bookies, red-faced from screaming, saw it, too.

The crowd bellowed their comments.

"She's held!"

"The mare's beat!"

"Brown's only cantering!"

"She's all out!"

In all that riot of voices, and storm of tossing figures, two men kept
calm.

Old Mat was genial; Silver still, his chest heaving beneath his folded
arms.

"Like a hare and a greyhound," muttered the old man, apt as always.

"Got it all to themselves now," said Silver. "And the best horse wins."

"Bar the dirty," suggested the trainer.

The warning was timely.

[Illustration: AINTREE: Plan of Course]

Just before the water Rushton pulled out suddenly right across the brown
horse.

It was a deliberate foul, ably executed.

The crowd saw it and howled, and the bookmakers screamed at the
offending jockey as he rode off the course into the Paddock.

"Plucky little effort!" shouted Old Mat in Silver's ear. "He deserved to
pull it off."

No harm, in fact, had been done.

Four-Pound-the-Second had missed Jackaroo's quarters by half a length;
but the big horse never faltered in his stride, charging on like a
bull-buffalo, and rising at the water as the mare landed over it.

The old man dropped his glasses, and settled back on his heels.

"What next?" he said.

"Can't do much now, I guess," answered Silver comfortably.

Old Mat turned in his lips.

"Watch it, sir," he said. "There's millions in it."

As the favourite and the outsider swept away for the second round in a
pursuing roar, the width of the course lay between them. The mare hugged
the rails; the brown horse swung wide on the right.

"You're giving her plenty of room, Mr. Woodburn," said the White Hat in
front.

"Yes, my lord," Mat answered. "'Don't crowd her,' I says. 'She likes a
lot o' room. So do Chukkers.'"

Just clear of the course outside the rails, under the Embankment, a
little group of police made a dark blue knot about the stretcher on
which Boy Braithwaite had been taken from the course. As the brown horse
swept hard by the