George turned away, and went up to the jockey, but at the sick look on the poor youth’s face the angry words died off his tongue.

“All right, Tipping; I’m not going to rag you.”  And with the ghost of a smile he passed into the Ambler’s stall.  The groom had just finished putting him to rights; the horse stood ready to be led from the field of his defeat.  The groom moved out, and George went to the Ambler’s head.  There is no place, no corner, on a racecourse where a man may show his heart.  George did but lay his forehead against the velvet of his horse’s muzzle, and for one short second hold it there.  The Ambler awaited the end of that brief caress, then with a snort threw up his head, and with his wild, soft eyes seemed saying, ‘You fools! what do you know of me?’

George stepped to one side.

“Take him away,” he said, and his eyes followed the Ambler’s receding form.

A racing-man of a different race, whom he knew and did not like, came up to him as he left the paddock.

“I suppothe you won’t thell your horse, Pendythe?” he said.  “I’ll give you five thou. for him.  He ought never to have lotht; the beating won’t help him with the handicappers a little bit.”

‘You carrion crow!’ thought George.

“Thanks; he’s not for sale,” he answered.

He went back to the stand, but at every step and in each face, he seemed to see the equation which now he could only solve with X2.  Thrice he went into the bar.  It was on the last of these occasions that he said to himself:  “The horse must go.  I shall never have a horse like him again.”

Over that green down which a hundred thousand feet had trodden brown, which a hundred thousand hands had strewn with bits of paper, cigar-ends, and the fragments of discarded food, over the great approaches to the battlefield, where all was pathway leading to and from the fight, those who make livelihood in such a fashion, least and littlest followers, were bawling, hawking, whining to the warriors flushed with victory or wearied by defeat:  Over that green down, between one-legged men and ragged acrobats, women with babies at the breast, thimble-riggers, touts, walked George Pendyce, his mouth hard set and his head bent down.

“Good luck, Captain, good luck to-morrow; good luck, good luck!...  For the love of Gawd, your lordship!...  Roll, bowl, or pitch!”

The sun, flaming out after long hiding, scorched the back of his neck; the free down wind, fouled by foetid odours, brought to his ears the monster’s last cry, “They’re off!”

A voice hailed him.

George turned and saw Winlow, and with a curse and a smile he answered: 

“Hallo!”

The Hon. Geoffrey ranged alongside, examining George’s face at leisure.

“Afraid you had a bad race, old chap!  I hear you’ve sold the Ambler to that fellow Guilderstein.”

In George’s heart something snapped.