The Duke bent shaggy brows upon the little man.
"Were you?" he asked.
For a moment the old merry Monkey rose from the dead and twinkled. Then he stiffened like a dead man, touched his hat, and turned away.
The Duke clung to him.
He, too, had heard a story, and wished to know the rights and wrongs of it.
"Well, well," he said. "We must all hope the Putnam horse wins—for Mr. Silver's sake. Eh, what?"
"Yes, your Grace," replied the uncommunicative Monkey.
The night before the race the Duke, still hunting the trail tenaciously, stumbled, according to his own account, on Old Mat, and reported the substance of his interview with Monkey in that ingenuous way of his, half simple, half brutal, and all with an astonishing savoir-faire you would never have given him credit for.
"One thing," he ended, "he ain't blackguardin' you."
Mat seemed lost in memories.