“No,” said I, “certainly not, when the vet.’s bill was twelve pounds ten—­not a farthing less, James.”

When the proposed purchaser came, he said, “It’s a poor horse—­a very poor horse; he wants a lot of looking after, and I shouldn’t think of buying him except for the sake of seeing what I could do with him, for I am not fond of lumber, Mr. Hawkins—­I don’t care for lumber.”

It was straightforward, but I did not at the time see his depth of feeling.  He was evidently intending to buy him out of compassion, as he had some knowledge of his ancestors.  But I stuck to my fifteen pounds hard and fast, and at last he said, “Well, Mr. Hawkins, I’ll give you all you ask, if so be you’ll throw in the saddle and bridle!”

I was tired of the negotiations, and yielded; so away went poor Dreadnought with his saddle and bridle, never for me to look on again.  I was sorry to part with him, and the more so because his life had been unfortunate.  But I was deceived in him as well as in his new master.  From me he had concealed his merits, only to reveal them, as is often the case with latent genius, when some accidental opportunity offered.

At that time Bromley in Kent was a central attraction for a great many second-class patrons of the sporting world.  I know little about the events that were negotiated at Bromley and other small places of the kind, but there was, as I have been informed, a good deal of blackguardism and pickpocketing on its course and in its little primitive streets—­lucky if you came out of them with only one black eye.  They would steal the teeth out of your mouth if you did not keep it shut and your eyes open.

However, Bromley races came on some time after the sale of my Dreadnought....  The next morning my groom came with a look of astonishment that seemed to have kept him awake all night, and said,—­

“You’ll be surprised to hear, sir, that our ’oss has won a fifty-pound prize at Bromley, and a pot of money besides in bets for his owner.”

“Won a prize!” said I.  “Was it by standing on his head?”

“Won a race, sir.”

“Then it must have been a walk-over.”

“Oh no, sir; he beat the cracks, beat the favourites, and took in all the knowing ones.  I always said there was something about that there ’oss, sir, that I didn’t understand and nobody couldn’t understand, sir.”

I was absolutely dumbfounded, knowing very little about “favourites” or “cracks.”  My groom I knew I could rely upon, for he always seemed to be the very soul of honour.  I thought at first he might have been misled in some Bromley taproom, but afterwards found that it was all true—­he had heard it from the owner himself, in whom the public seemed to place confidence, for they laid very long odds against Dreadnought.

The animal was famous, but not in that name; he had, like most honest persons, an alias.  How he achieved his victory is uncertain; one thing, however, is certain—­it must have been a startling surprise to Dreadnought to find himself in a race at all, and still more astonishing to find himself in front.