Misset shrugged his shoulders.

Gaydon said, “Let us hear it.”

O’Toole drew himself up; his chair no longer creaked, it groaned and cracked.

“It is a lottery,” said he, “and we have made our fortunes.  We three are the winners, and so our names are not crossed out.”

“But I have put no money in a lottery,” objected Gaydon.

“Nor I,” said Misset.

“And where should I find money either?” said O’Toole.  “But Charles Wogan has borrowed it for us and paid it in, and so we’re all rich men.  What’ll I buy with it?”

Misset paced the room.

“The paper came four days ago?” he said.

“Yes, in the morning.”

“Five days, then,” and he stood listening.  Then he ran to the window and opened it.  Gaydon followed him and drew up the blind.  Both men listened and were puzzled.

“That’s the sound of horseshoes,” said Gaydon.

“But there’s another sound keeping pace with the horseshoes,” said Misset.

O’Toole leaned on their shoulders, crushing them both down upon the sill of the window.

“It is very like the sound a gentleman makes when he reels home from a tavern.”

Gaydon and Misset raised themselves with a common effort springing from a common thought and shot O’Toole back into the room.

“What if it is?” began Misset.

“He was never drunk in his life,” said Gaydon.

“It’s possible that he has reformed,” said O’Toole; and the three men precipitated themselves down the stairs.

The drunkard was Wogan; he was drunk with fatigue and sleeplessness and pain, but he had retained just enough of his sober nature to spare a tired mare who had that day served him well.

The first intimation he received that his friends were on the watch was O’Toole’s voice bawling down the street to him.

“Is it a lottery?  Tell me we’re all rich men,” and he felt himself grasped in O’Toole’s arms.

“I’ll tell you more wonderful things than that,” stammered Wogan, “when you have shown me the way to a stable.”

“There’s one at the back of the house,” said Gaydon.  “I’ll take the horse.”

“No,” said Wogan, stubbornly, and would not yield the bridle to Gaydon.

O’Toole nodded approval.

“There are two things,” said he, “a man never trusts to his friends.  One’s his horse; t’ other’s his wife.”

Wogan suddenly stopped and looked at O’Toole.  O’Toole answered the look loftily.

“It is a little maxim of philosophy.  I have others.  They come to me in the night.”

Misset laughed.  Wogan walked on to the stable.  It was a long building, and a light was still burning.  Moreover, a groom was awake, for the door was opened before they had come near enough to knock.  There were twelve stalls, of which nine were occupied, and three of the nine horses stood ready saddled and bridled.