She is for the scene of ‘Chillon John’s’ attempt to restore the respiration of his bank-book by wager; to wit, that he would walk a mile, run a mile, ride a mile, and jump ten hurdles, then score five rifle-shots at a three hundred yards’ distant target within a count of minutes; twenty-five, she says; and vows it to have been one of the most exciting of scenes ever witnessed on green turf in the land of wagers; and that he was accomplishing it quite certainly when, at the first of the hurdles, a treacherous unfolding and waving of a white flag caused his horse to swerve and the loss of one minute, seven and twenty seconds, before he cleared the hurdles; after which, he had to fire his shots hurriedly, and the last counted blank, for being outside the circle of the stated time.

So he was beaten.  But a terrific uproar over the field proclaimed the popular dissatisfaction.  Presently there was a cleavage of the mob, and behold a chase at the heels of the fellow to rival the very captain himself for fleetness.  He escaped, leaving his pole with the sheet nailed to it, by way of flag, in proof of foul play; or a proof, as the other side declared, of an innocently premature signalizing of the captain’s victory.

However that might be, he ran.  Seeing him spin his legs at a hound’s pace, half a mile away, four countrymen attempted to stop him.  All four were laid on their backs in turn with stupefying celerity; and on rising to their feet, and for the remainder of their natural lives, they swore that no man but a Champion could have floored them so.  This again may have been due to the sturdy island pride of four good men knocked over by one.  We are unable to decide.  Wickedness there was, the Dame says; and she counsels the world to ‘put and put together,’ for, at any rate, ’a partial elucidation of a most mysterious incident.’  As to the wager-money, the umpires dissented; a famous quarrel, that does not concern us here, sprang out of the dispute; which was eventually, after great disturbance ’of the country, referred to three leading sportsmen in the metropolitan sphere, who pronounced the wager ‘off,’ being two to one.  Hence arose the dissatisfied third party, and the letters of this minority to the newspapers, exciting, if not actually dividing, all England for several months.

Now the month of December was the month of the Dame’s mysterious incident.  From the date of January, as Madge Winch knew, Christopher Ines had ceased to be in the service of the Earl of Fleetwood.  At Esslemont Park gates, one winter afternoon of a North-east wind blowing ’rum-shrub into men for a stand against rheumatics,’ as he remarked, Ines met the girl by appointment, and informing her that he had money, and that Lord Fleetwood was ‘a black nobleman,’ he proposed immediate marriage.  The hymeneal invitation, wafted to her on the breath of rum-shrub, obtained no response from Madge until she had received evasive answers as to why the earl dismissed him, and whence the stock of money came.