“Shall I read for you, Sir?”

“Yes.”

The trainer read three entries, one after another, without result; they had all been honestly settled.  At the fourth the prostrate man said, “Stop!” This was the first of the entries which still depended on a future event.  It recorded the wager laid at Windygates, when Geoffrey had backed himself (in defiance of the surgeon’s opinion) to row in the University boat-race next spring—­and had forced Arnold Brinkworth to bet against him.

“Well, Sir?  What’s to be done about this?”

He collected his strength for the effort; and answered by a word at a time.

“Write—­brother—­Julius.  Pay—­Arnold—­wins.”

His lifted hand, solemnly emphasizing what he said, dropped at his side.  He closed his eyes; and fell into a heavy stertorous sleep.  Give him his due.  Scoundrel as he was, give him his due.  The awful moment, when his life was trembling in the balance, found him true to the last living faith left among the men of his tribe and time—­the faith of the betting-book.

Sir Patrick and Mr. Speedwell quitted the race-ground together; Geoffrey having been previously removed to his lodgings hard by.  They met Arnold Brinkworth at the gate.  He had, by his own desire, kept out of view among the crowd; and he decided on walking back by himself.  The separation from Blanche had changed him in all his habits.  He asked but two favors during the interval which was to elapse before he saw his wife again—­to be allowed to bear it in his own way, and to be left alone.

Relieved of the oppression which had kept him silent while the race was in progress, Sir Patrick put a question to the surgeon as they drove home, which had been in his mind from the moment when Geoffrey had lost the day.

“I hardly understand the anxiety you showed about Delamayn,” he said, “when you found that he had only fainted under the fatigue.  Was it something more than a common fainting fit?”

“It is useless to conceal it now,” replied Mr. Speedwell.  “He has had a narrow escape from a paralytic stroke.”

“Was that what you dreaded when you spoke to him at Windygates?”

“That was what I saw in his face when I gave him the warning.  I was right, so far.  I was wrong in my estimate of the reserve of vital power left in him.  When he dropped on the race-course, I firmly believed we should find him a dead man.”

“Is it hereditary paralysis?  His father’s last illness was of that sort.”

Mr. Speedwell smiled.  “Hereditary paralysis?” he repeated.  “Why the man is (naturally) a phenomenon of health and strength—­in the prime of his life.  Hereditary paralysis might have found him out thirty years hence.  His rowing and his running, for the last four years, are alone answerable for what has happened to-day.”

Sir Patrick ventured on a suggestion.

“Surely,” he said, “with your name to compel attention to it, you ought to make this public—­as a warning to others?”