He rose and, kicking off his slippers, padded to the door and looked out.  Then he peeped out into the forsaken yard and half drew the curtain.

Silver, who loved the old man most when he was most mysterious, watched him with kind eyes that laughed.

“I don’t bet, Mr. Silver, as you know,” began the other huskily, “except when it’s a cert., because it’s against her principles.”  He looked round him and dropped his voice.  “But I took a thousand to ten about Fo’-Pound-the-Second at Gatwick on Saraday.  Told Mar, too.  And she never said No.  Look to me like a sign like.”  He blinked up at the young man.  “You ain’t clean’d out, sir, are you—­not mopped up with the sponge?” he asked anxiously.

“There’ll be a few thousands left when it’s finished, I guess,” replied the other.

The old man lifted on his stockinged toes.

“Put a thousand on,” he whispered.  “I’ll do it for ye, so there’s no talk.  If he wins, thar’s a hundred thousand back.  If he don’t, well, it’s gone down the sink and h’up the spout same as its fathers afore it.”

The young man brimmed with quiet mirth.

“Will he win?” he asked.

Old Mat swung his nose from side to side across his face in a way styled by those who knew him trunk-slinging.

“He’s up against something mighty big,” said Jim, nodding at the wall.

On it was pinned a great coloured double-page picture from The Sporting and Dramatic of the famous American mare Mocassin.  Beside it were various cuttings from daily papers, recounting the romantic history of the popular favourite, and beneath the picture were three lines from the Mocassin Song—­

          Made in the mould,
          Of Old Iroquois bold,
          Mocassin, the Queen of Kentucky.

Ikey indeed had found his horse at last; and she was American—­Old Kentucky to the core.  It was said that Chukkers had discovered her on one of his trips home.  Certainly he had taken her across to Australia, where she had launched on her career of unbroken triumph, carrying the star-spangled jacket to victory in every race in which she ran.  Then he had brought her home to England, her reputation already made, and growing hugely all the while, suddenly to overwhelm the world, when she crowned her victories on three continents by winning the Grand National at Liverpool—­only to be disqualified for crossing amid one of the stormiest scenes in racing history.  After that Mocassin ceased to be a mare.  She became a talisman, an oriflamme, a consecrated symbol.  She was American—­youthful, hopeful, not to be put upon by the Old Country, quietly resolute to have her rights.

For the past twelve months indeed the Great Republic of the West had fixed her two hundred million eyes upon the star-spangled jacket across the sea in a stare so set as to be almost terrifying.

True that for a quarter of a century now her sons had followed that jacket with sporadic interest.  But since the affair at Liverpool, that interest had become concentrated, passionate, intense.