“D’you think he’ll win the National?” cried the young man, simple as a child.

“Certain for sure,” replied the other.  “When ’e walks on to the course all the other hosses’ll have a fit and fall down flat.  And I don’t blame ’em, neether.”

“Father thinks he’s funny,” said the girl with fine irony.

“I ain’t ‘alf so funny as that young billy-goat o’ yours, my dear,” replied the old trainer, and lilted on his way.  “It’s his foster-ma he takes after.  The spit of her, he be.”

As soon as the foal began to find his legs Boy took him out into the Paddock Close, and later on to the Downs.  He followed like a dog, skirmishing with Billy Bluff up and down the great rounded hills.

The bob-tail at first was inclined to be jealous.  He thought the foal was a new kind of dog and a rival.  Then when he understood that after all the little creature was only an animal, on a different and a lower plane, to be patronised and bullied and ragged, he resumed his self-complacency.  Thoroughly human, a vulgar sense of superiority kept his temper sweet.  He accepted Four-Pound-the-Second as one to whom he might extend his patronage and his protection.  And once this was understood the relations between the foal and the dog were established on a sound basis, while Maudie watched with a sardonic smile.

* * * * *

That autumn the girl, the foal, and the dog roamed the hillside by the hour together in the cool of dawn and evening.  And the colt became as handy as the goat he was alleged by his detractors to resemble.

“Go anywhere Billy Bluff does,” said Monkey Brand.  “Climb the ladder to the loft soon as look at you.”

On these frequent excursions Boy took her hunting-crop with her, and the long-flung lash often went curling round the legs of the unruly foal.  Early she broke him to halter, and when he became too turbulent for unbridled liberty she took him out on a long lounging rein.

The Downs about Cuckmere, which lies half-way between Lewes and Beachy Head, are lonely.  Apart from shepherds, you seldom meet on them anyone save a horseman or a watcher.  But more than once the three came on Joses on the hillside.

Since the moment she had marked him cowering in the Gap like a hunted creature, Boy had seen the tout with quite other eyes than of old.  Never afraid of him, from that time her aversion had turned to pity for one so hopelessly forlorn.

Whether Joses felt the change or not, and reacted to it unconsciously, it was impossible to say.  Certainly he showed himself friendly, she thought, almost ashamed.  At first she was not unnaturally suspicious, but soon the compassion in her heart overcame all else.

One brilliant September evening she came upon him on the Mare’s Back.

The fat man pulled off his hat shyly.

“You’ve put him on the chain, I see,” he said, referring to the long rein.