True, both had now returned, but in chastened mood, the result perhaps of well-deserved affliction experienced in foreign lands.

This morning things were much as of old.  The fan-tails puffed and pouted and sidled on the roofs.  Across the Paddock Close came the sound of church-bells, and from the Lads’ Barn the voices of the boys singing a hymn.

The Bible Class was in full swing.

All the lads were there but one.  That one was Albert.  He stood in lofty isolation in the door of the stable, a cigarette in his mouth, his arms folded and his face stiff with the self-consciousness that had obsessed him since his ride in the National.  Jerry and Stanley, once the friends of Albert, and now his critics, swore that he never took that look off even when he went to bed.

“Wears it in his sleep,” said Jerry, “same as his pidgearmours.”

But the loftiest of us cannot live forever on the Heights of Make-Believe.  And Albert, as he breathed the Spring, and remembered that no one was by to see, relaxed, became himself, and began to warble not unmelodiously—­

“When the ruddy sun-shine Beats the ruddy rain, Then the ruddy sparrow ’Gins to chirp again.”

Mr. Silver came out of the house.

Albert straightway resumed his air of a Roman Emperor turned stable-boy.

The other listened to the singing that came from the barn.

“Not inside, then, Albert?” he said.

“No, sir,” answered the other.  “I leave that to the lads.”

Mr. Silver looked at his watch.

“You’d better do a bolt before Miss Boy catches you,” he said.

Albert redoubled his frozen Emperor mien.

The other passed into the saddle-room; and Albert revealed the bitterness of his soul to Maudie on the ladder.

“He’s all right now,” he told his confidante.  “Goin’ to start the Bank again, and all on what I won him.  And all the return he can make is to insultify me.  That’s the way of ’em, that is.”

A door opened at the back, and a rush of sound emerged.

The lads were tumbling out of the Barn.

Boy Woodburn came swiftly into the yard, her troop at her heels.

She marked the truant in the door.

“Well, Albert,” she said.  “We missed you.”

“He’s too stuck up wiv ’isself to pray to Gob any more,” mocked Jerry, stopping while the girl went on into the stable.

“He thinks he can do it all on his own wivout no ’elp from no one,” sneered Stanley.  “Albert does.”

Albert swaggered forward.

“Say!” he said to Jerry.  “Was it you or me won the National?”

“Neever,” answered Jerry.  “It was Miss Boy.”

“Did she ride him, then?” asked Albert.

Jerry shot his face forward.  All the other lads were at his back.

“She did then,” he said.

Albert was white and blinking, but in complete control of himself.