and he knew he had twelve hundred a year after paying the interest of the old incumbrances.  They hadn’t advanced him much since he came of age; certainly not above five thousand pounds; and it surely was very hard he could not get five or six hundred pounds when he wanted it so much; it was very hard that he shouldn’t be able to do what he liked with his own, like the Duke of Newcastle.  However, the money must be had:  he must pay Blake and Tierney the balance of what they had won at whist, and the horse couldn’t go over the water till the wind was raised.  If he was driven very hard he might get something from Martin Kelly.  These unpleasant cogitations brought him over the third half mile, and he rode through the gate of Handicap Lodge in a desperate state of indecision.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Dot,” he said, when he met his friend coming in from his morning’s work; “and I’m deuced sorry to do it, for I shall be giving you the best horse of his year, and something tells me he’ll win the Derby.”

“I suppose ‘something’ means old Jack Igoe, or that blackguard Grady,” said Dot.  “But as to his winning, that’s as it may be.  You know the chances are sixteen to one he won’t.”

“Upon my honour I don’t think they are.”

“Will you take twelve to one?”

“Ah! youk now, Dot, I’m not now wanting to bet on the horse with you.  I was only saying that I’ve a kind of inward conviction that he will win.”

“My dear Frank,” said the other, “if men selling horses could also sell their inward convictions with them, what a lot of articles of that description there would be in the market!  But what were you going to say you’d do?”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do:  I’ll agree to your terms providing you’ll pay half the expenses of the horses since the last race each of them ran.  You must see that would be only fair, supposing the horses belonged to you, equally with me, ever since that time.”

“It would be quite fair, no doubt, if I agreed to it:  it would be quite fair also if I agreed to give you five hundred pounds; but I will do neither one nor the other.”

“But look here, Dot—­Brien ran for the Autumn Produce Stakes last October, and won them:  since then he has done nothing to reimburse me for his expense, nor yet has anything been taken out of him by running.  Surely, if you are to have half the profits, you should at any rate pay half the expenses?”

“That’s very well put, Frank; and if you and I stood upon equal ground, with an arbiter between us by whose decision we were bound to abide, and to whom the settlement of the question was entrusted, your arguments would, no doubt, be successful, but—­”

“Well that’s the fair way of looking at it.”

“But, as I was going to say, that’s not the case.  We are neither of us bound to take any one’s decision; and, therefore, any terms which either of us chooses to accept must be fair.  Now I have told you my terms—­the lowest price, if you like to call it so,—­at which I will give your horses the benefit of my experience, and save you from their immediate pecuniary pressure; and I will neither take any other terms, nor will I press these on you.”