Jaggers stared out over the Downs.

“If that Putnam horse was not to start it would be worth a monkey to you,” he said, cold and casual.

The other shot a swift and surreptitious glance at him.

Jaggers had on his best pulpit air.

“Don’t start,” mused Joses.  “That’s a tall order.”

The trainer picked his teeth.

“A monkey’s money,” he said.

The fat man sniggered.

“It’s worth money, too,” he remarked.

“Give you a new start in a new country,” continued Jaggers.  “Quite the capitalist.”

Joses’s eyes wandered.

“I don’t say it mightn’t fix it,” he said at last cautiously.  “But it’d mean cash.  Could you give me something on account?”

His Reverence was prepared.

He took a leather case out of his pocket and handed over five bank-notes.

“There’s a pony,” he said.  “Now I don’t want to see you till after the race.  You know me.  Me word’s me bond.  It’s all out this time.”

With a proud and priestly air he strode back to the house.

CHAPTER XL

Man and Woman

Silver and Joses went back to Cuckmere by the same train from Brighton.

The young man was well-established in a first-class smoker, and the train was about to start when the fat man came puffing along the platform.  He was very hot; and out of his pocket bulged a brown paper parcel.  The paper had burst and the head of a wooden mallet was exposed.

Silver, quiet in his corner, remarked that mallet.

That night he took a round of the stable-buildings before he went to bed, as his custom had been of late.  There was nobody stirring but Maudie, meandering around like a ghost who did not feel well.

He went to the back of the Lads’ Barn, and looked across the Paddock Close.  A light in the window of a cottage shone out solitary in the darkness.

It was the cottage in which Joses lived, and the light came from an upper window.

Silver strolled along the back of the stable-buildings toward it.

Under Boy’s window he paused, as was his wont.

A light within showed that the girl was in her eyrie.  Then the light went out, and the window opened quietly.

Shyness overcame the young man.  He moved away and went back to the corner in the saddle-room he had made his own—­partly because he could smoke there undisturbed, and far more because it was directly under the girl’s room, and he loved to hear her stirring above him.

He lit his pipe, settled himself, and began to brood.

The girl was still there—­he could tell by the sound; and still at the window.

A vague curiosity possessed him as to what attracted her.  Then she crossed the floor with that determined step of hers, and went along the loft, the planks betraying her.