Oh! the falsehood of this man—to say that I had never been out of private hands, and that I was thoroughly sound. I really felt as if I could have kicked him—not very hard, but in such a way as to warn him not to tell such fibs again. The groom trotted me to and fro, then pulled up, and a number of men proceeded to examine me.
‘He’s been down, ain’t he?’ asked a short, thick-set man, who spoke in a husky voice, as if he had a hair or straw in his throat.
‘I believe he knocked himself in the paddock, Mr. Harkaway,’ replied the auctioneer; ‘a mere graze, though—the skin was barely broken.’
‘He grazed a tenner off him,’ said Mr. Harkaway, with a short laugh; adding in a whisper to a man, apparently his friend, who stood beside him, ‘But he is the sort of nag I want; and I will have him.’
The bidding for me, in spite of the signs of my fall, was very brisk, and I soon ran up to forty pounds; then a few fell away, and I increased to fifty. At this sum all left me but Mr. Harkaway and a man in a sort of grazier’s suit, with a face so positively cruel, that I shudder even now when I think of it. Mr. Harkaway had a dissipated, reckless look, which reminded me of Richards; and if I could have had my will, I would have chosen another master; but he was better than the grazier, and I earnestly hoped that he would show the longer purse.
‘Fifty-five,’ said the grazier.
‘Six,’ said Mr. Harkaway.
‘Seven,’ cried the other.
‘Eight,’ returned Mr. Harkaway.
‘Nine,’ shouted the grazier.