And now the names. Don't speak;
listen--you may break the thought else. The winner of the first is
_Beeswing_; of the second, _Falcon_; and of the third, _Lightning_."

He had stood for some seconds in silence before he spoke; his eyes were
closed; he seemed to bring up thought and speech with difficulty, and
spoke faintly and drowsily, both his hands a little raised, and the
fingers extended, with the groping air of a man who moves in the dark.
In this odd way, slowly, faintly, with many a sigh and scarcely audible
groan, he gradually delivered his message and was silent. He stood, it
seemed, scarcely half awake, muttering indistinctly and sighing to
himself. You would have said that he was exhausted and suffering, like a
man at his last hour resigning himself to death.

At length he opened his eyes, looked round a little wildly and
languidly, and with another great sigh sat down on a large rock that
lies by the margin of the lake, and sighed heavily again and again. You
might have fancied that he was a second time recovering from drowning.

Then he got up, and looked drowsily round again, and sighed like a man
worn out with fatigue, and was silent.

Sir Bale did not care to speak until he seemed a little more likely to
obtain an answer. When that time came, he said, "I wish, for the sake of
my believing, that your list was a little less incredible. Not one of
the horses you name is the least likely; not one of them has a chance."

"So much the better for you; you'll get what odds you please. You had
better seize your luck; on Tuesday Beeswing runs," said Feltram. "When
you want money for the purpose, I'm your banker--here is your bank."

He touched his breast, where he had placed the purse, and then he turned
and walked swiftly away.

Sir Bale looked after him till he disappeared in the dark. He fluctuated
among many surmises about Feltram. Was he insane, or was he practising
an imposture? or was he fool enough to believe the predictions of some
real gipsies? and had he borrowed this money, which in Sir Bale's eyes
seemed the greatest miracle in the matter, from those thriving shepherd
mountaineers, the old Trebecks, who, he believed, were attached to him?
Feltram had, he thought, borrowed it as if for himself; and having, as
Sir Bale in his egotism supposed, "a sneaking regard" for him, had meant
the loan for his patron, and conceived the idea of his using his
revelations for the purpose of making his fortune.