Alf was on his feet in a trice.

“At the Canal Turn,” he chirped.  “Bump him off and then jump on the flat of his face.”

The moralist greeted the suggestion with warm approval.

“One up to Alfie!” he cried.  “He’ll make a jockey and a Christian yet, Alf will.”

Ginger handed up a piece of chalk.

Jerry hushed his audience.

“Quiet now, if you please,” said he.

He took the chalk and wrote up in sprawling letters on the board: 

     Bible Class.

     First Question.  What price Four-Pound-the-Second, Grand National?

Instantly there was a hub-bub, from which the words “Hundred to one” came with insistent force.

“Hundred to one,” said the lecturer.  “Thank you, genelmen.”

He proceeded to write.

     Second Question.  Any takers?

“Yus,” said the lofty Stanley.  “I’ll do it in dollars—­twice over.”

“Thank you,” said the scribe.

     Third Question.  What price Mocassin?

The name was received with groans.

“Sevens—­if Chukkers rides,” cried the cherub.  “Tens if he don’t.”

The answer was received with jeers.

“Chukkers not ride!”

“O’ course he’ll ride!”

“He always has ridden her—­here and in the States and in Australia!”

Stanley finally deigned to descend from his heights to crush the youth.

“They got a quarter of a million on God Almighty’s Mustang, the Three J’s ’ave.  Think they’d trust anyone up only one of their fat selves?  Now then!”

In the middle of the storm Monkey Brand, who had been waiting for the girl in the door, looked in.

He saw the writing on the board and crossed the barn.  Monkey himself could neither read nor write, but he was well aware that anything written by the lads should be rubbed out at once.

“Who wrote this?” he asked.

Jerry, who on the other’s entrance had descended swiftly from the platform, repeated the question.

“Who wrote this?” he asked authoritatively.  “Can’t you ’ear Mr. Brand?”

“Albert, I reck’n,” answered Stanley, taking his cue from his pal.

The door opened, and a girl stood on the threshold.

“Who said Albert?” she asked.

The lads turned.

The young lady wore a long drab coat and had a fair pig-tail.  She was like Boy Woodburn and yet unlike her:  the figure much the same, the colouring identical.  But if it was Boy, the years had coarsened her and altered the expression in her eyes not for the better.

With swift, decisive steps she made for the platform amid the suppressed giggles of the lads.

Jerry made way for her at once.

The girl proceeded to rub out with the duster all the questions but the first.  Then she turned over the leaves of a Bible, wetting her thumb for that purpose, seized the pointer, and took her stand by the blackboard.