They were up and on the river, master and man, almost as soon as the dawn itself; taking their morning plunge under a sky that was but just changing the tints of rose to those of saffron before they merged into the actual light of day; and to the boy the man seemed almost a god in that dim light, which showed but an ivory shoulder lifting now and again as he struck outwards and deft his way through a yielding, yellow-grey waste that leaped in little lilac-hued ripples to his chin, and thence wavered off behind him in dancing lines of light.  And once, when he heard him lift up his voice and sing as he swam, he felt sure that he must be a god—­that that alone could explain why he had found him so different from other men, and cared for him as he had never cared for any human thing before.

From dawn to dark that day was one of unalloyed delight to him.  Never before had the starved soul of him—­fed, all his life, when it was fed at all, from the drippings of the flesh-pots and the “leavings” of the City—­found any savour in the insipid offerings of the Country; never before had he known what charms lie on a river’s breast, what spells of magic a blossoming hedge and the white “candles” of a horse-chestnut tree may weave, and never before had a meadow been anything to him but a simple grass-grown field.  To-day Nature—­through this man who was so essentially bred in the very womb of her—­spoke to his understanding and found her words not lost on air.  The dormant things within the boy had awakened.  Life spoke; Hope sang; and between them all the world was changed.  Yesterday, he had looked upon this day of idling in the country as a pleasant interlude, as a happy prologue to those greater delights that would come when he at last went to Epsom and really saw the famous race for the Derby.  To-day, he was sorry that anything—­even so great a thing as that—­must come to disturb such placid happiness as this.

And yet, when the wondrous “Wednesday” came and he was actually on his way to Epsom Downs at last ...  Ah, well, Joy is elastic; Youth is a time of many dreams, and who blames a boy for being delighted that one of them is coming true at last?

Cleek did not, at all events.  Indeed, Cleek aided and abetted him in all his boisterous outbursts from first to last; and was quite as excited as he when the event of the meeting—­the great race for the famous Derby Stakes—­was put up at last.  Indeed, he was a bit wilder, if anything, than the boy himself when the flag fell and the whole field swept by in one thunderous rush, with Minnow in the lead and Black Riot far and away behind.  Nor did his excitement abate when, as the whole cavalcade swung onwards over the green turf with the yelling thousands waving and shouting about it, Sir Henry Wilding’s mare began to lessen that lead, and foot by foot to creep up towards the head.