“My beauty, won’t you cut those German fellows down!” muttered Rake, the enthusiast, in the saddling inclosure.  “As for those fools what go agin you, you’ll put them in a hole, and no mistake.  French horse, indeed!  Why, you’ll spread-eagle all them Mossoos’ and Meinherrs’ cattle in a brace of seconds—­”

Rake’s foe, the head groom, caught him up savagely.

“Won’t you never learn decent breeding?  When we wins we wins on the quiet, and when we loses we loses as if we liked it; all that braying, and flaunting, and boasting is only fit for cads.  The ’oss is in tip-top condition; let him show what he can do over furren ground.”

“Lucky for him, then, that he hasn’t got you across the pigskin; you’d rope him, I believe, as soon as look at him, if it was made worth your while,” retorted Rake, in caustic wrath; his science of repartee chiefly lay in a successful “plant,” and he was here uncomfortably conscious that his opponent was in the right of the argument, as he started through the throng to put his master into the “shell” of the Shire-famous scarlet and white.

“Tip-top condition, my boy—­tip-top, and no mistake,” murmured Mr. Willon for the edification of those around them as the saddle-girths were buckled on, and the Guards’ Crack stood the cynosure of every eye at Iffesheim.

Then, in his capacity as head attendant on the hero, he directed the exercise bridle to be taken off, and with his own hands adjusted a new and handsome one, slung across his arm.

“’Tis a’most a pity.  ’Tis a’most a pity,” thought the worthy, as he put the curb on the King; “but I shouldn’t have been haggravated with that hinsolent soldiering chap.  There, my boy! if you’ll win with a painted quid, I’m a Dutchman.”

Forest King champed his bit between his teeth a little; it tasted bitter; he tossed his head and licked it with his tongue impatiently; the taste had got down his throat and he did not like its flavor; he turned his deep, lustrous eyes with a gentle patience on the crowd about him, as though asking them what was the matter with him.  No one moved his bit; the only person who could have had such authority was busily giving the last polish to his coat with a fine handkerchief—­that glossy neck which had been so dusted many a time with the cobweb coronet-broidered handkerchiefs of great ladies—­and his instincts, glorious as they were, were not wise enough to tell him to kick his head groom down, then and there, with one mortal blow, as his poisoner and betrayer.

The King chafed under the taste of that “painted quid”; he felt a nausea as he swallowed, and he turned his handsome head with a strange, pathetic astonishment in his glance.  At that moment a familiar hand stroked his mane, a familiar foot was put into his stirrup, Bertie threw himself into saddle; the lightest weight that ever gentleman-rider rode, despite his six-foot length of limb.  The King, at the well-known touch, the well-loved voice, pricked his