et without more ado....

Twenty-one minutes past three.

Slowly he put down the terrier and turned eastward. It was clear that
he was expecting something or somebody.

It was a hot June day, and out of the welter of din and rumble the cool
plash of falling water came to his straining ears refreshingly. At
once he considered the dog and, thankful for the distraction, stepped
beneath the portico of a provision store and indicated the marble basin
with a gesture of invitation.

"Have a drink, old chap," he said kindly. "Look. Nice cool water for
Patch." And, with that, he stooped and dabbled his fingers in the pool.

Thus encouraged the little white dog advanced and lapped gratefully....

"Derby Result! Derby Result!"

The hoarse cry rang out above the metallic roar of the traffic.

Lyveden caught his breath sharply and then stepped out of the shelter
of the portico on to the crowded pavement. He was able to buy a paper
almost immediately.

Eagerly he turned it about, to read the blurred words....

For a moment he stood staring, oblivious of all the world. Then he
folded the sheet carefully, whistled to Patch, and strode off westward
with the step of a man who has a certain objective. At any rate, the
suspense was over.

A later edition of an evening paper showed Major Anthony Lyveden that
the horse which was carrying all that he had in the world had lost his
race by a head.

* * * * *

By rights Anthony should have been born about the seventh of March. A
hunting accident to his father, however, ushered him into the middle of
the coldest January ever remembered, and that with such scant ceremony
that his lady mother only survived her husband by six and a half hours.
When debts, funeral and testamentary expenses had been deducted from
his father's bank balance, the sum of twenty-three pounds nine
shillings was all that was left, and this, with the threat of royalties
from one or two books, represented the baby's fortune. Jonathan Roach,
bachelor, had risen to the occasion and taken his sister's child.

Beyond remembering that he did handsomely by his nephew, bred him as
became his family, sent him to Harrow and Oxford, and procured him a
commission in the Royal Regiment of Artillery before most of the boy's
compeers had posted their applications to the War Office, with the
living Jonathan Roach we are no further concerned.

The old gentleman's will shall speak for itsel