He decided on employing two trainers this time.  One to travel to Scotland, and begin with him at his brother’s house.  The other to take him up, with a fresh eye to him, on his return to London.  He turned over in his mind the performances of the formidable rival against whom he was to be matched.  That other man was the swiftest runner of the two.  The betting in Geoffrey’s favor was betting which calculated on the unparalleled length of the race, and on Geoffrey’s prodigious powers of endurance.  How long he should “wait on” the man?  Whereabouts it would be safe to “pick the man up?” How near the end to calculate the man’s exhaustion to a nicety, and “put on the spurt,” and pass him?  These were nice points to decide.  The deliberations of a pedestrian-privy-council would be required to help him under this heavy responsibility.  What men could he trust?  He could trust A. and B.—­both of them authorities:  both of them stanch.  Query about C.?  As an authority, unexceptionable; as a man, doubtful.  The problem relating to C. brought him to a standstill—­and declined to be solved, even then.  Never mind! he could always take the advice of A. and B. In the mean time devote C. to the infernal regions; and, thus dismissing him, try and think of something else.  What else?  Mrs. Glenarm?  Oh, bother the women! one of them is the same as another.  They all waddle when they run; and they all fill their stomachs before dinner with sloppy tea.  That’s the only difference between women and men—­the rest is nothing but a weak imitation of Us.  Devote the women to the infernal regions; and, so dismissing them, try and think of something else.  Of what?  Of something worth thinking of, this time—­of filling another pipe.

He took out his tobacco-pouch; and suddenly suspended operations at the moment of opening it.

What was the object he saw, on the other side of a row of dwarf pear-trees, away to the right?  A woman—­evidently a servant by her dress—­stooping down with her back to him, gathering something:  herbs they looked like, as well as he could make them out at the distance.

What was that thing hanging by a string at the woman’s side?  A slate?  Yes.  What the deuce did she want with a slate at her side?  He was in search of something to divert his mind—­and here it was found.  “Any thing will do for me,” he thought.  “Suppose I ‘chaff’ her a little about her slate?”

He called to the woman across the pear-trees.  “Hullo!”

The woman raised herself, and advanced toward him slowly—­looking at him, as she came on, with the sunken eyes, the sorrow-stricken face, the stony tranquillity of Hester Dethridge.

Geoffrey was staggered.  He had not bargained for exchanging the dullest producible vulgarities of human speech (called in the language of slang, “Chaff”) with such a woman as this.

“What’s that slate for?” he asked, not knowing what else to say, to begin with.