“I give you best, Miss Woodburn,” he said.  “But Albert could never have ridden that race.  Never!  It was a good win.  And you deserved it.  But it wasn’t that I wanted to see you about.”  He looked round the little room.  “It’s not much of a place perhaps, you may think.  But there’s the window, and the sight of grass, and cows grazing and folks passing on the path.  And in this house there’s Mrs. Boam, and Jenny, and the pussy-cat.  I should miss it.”  He lifted those suffering eyes of his.  “I don’t want to pass what little time I’ve left in the cage.”

“But they won’t hurt you now,” cried Boy.  “They couldn’t.”

The other laughed his dreadful laughter.

“Couldn’t they?” he said.  “You don’t know ’em.  It’s the cat-and-mouse business all the time.  I’m the mouse.  I’ve been there.”

“But you’ve done nothing,” said Boy.

Joses moved his head on the pillow.

“There’s just one thing,” he said, dropping his voice.  “Mr. Silver’s got a little bit of paper that might make trouble for me.”

“But he shall give it up!” cried the girl.

“Will he?” grunted the other.

“Of course he will.  He’s as kind as kind.”

Joses shook a dubious head.

“Men are men,” he said.  “And when men get across each other they are tigers.”

“He’s a tame one,” said the girl.  “I’ll see to that.”

“He might be,” muttered the other.  “In the hands of the right tamer.”

Boy went straight back to Putnam’s and discovered Mr. Silver smoking in the saddle-room.

She told him what had passed.

“I know,” he said.  “Here it is.”  He produced the bit of paper.  “I’ll burn it,” and he held it to the bowl of his pipe.

“No!” cried the girl.  “Give it me.”

She took it straight back to the sick man.

He lit a match and watched it burn with eyes that were almost covetous.

“That’s the last of ’em,” he said.  “Now I shall die in the open like a gentleman.”

He was, in fact, dying very fast.

It did not need Dr. Pollock’s assurance to make the girl aware of that.

She longed to help him.

“Would you like to see Mr. Haggard?” she asked awkwardly.

He shook his head, amused.

“He’d come the parson over me.”

“I don’t think he would.”

“He couldn’t help it if he was true to his cloth.”

“I’m not sure he is,” said Boy doubtfully.

“You’re the same,” he said.

She glanced up at him swiftly.

His eyes were mischievous, almost roguish.

“What d’you mean?”

“You want me to repent.”

She coloured guiltily, and he laughed like a boy, delighted with his own cleverness.

“There’s one thing Mr. Haggard might do for me,” he said.  “Lend me Clutton Brock’s Shelley, if he would.  He’s got it, I know.”