"What's gone with 'em all?" said the other, angrily. "A nightcap and a nosegay, I doubt, like the rest. But he loved his perfession, did Galloping Jack; an' many's the pleasant ride he took across the Down, and what not, afore he mounted his wooden horse on Tyburn Hill."
"We'll hope it never came to that," replied the other, with something of amusement in his tone.
"Ah! I'm afeared it's past hoping and praying for too," said the ostler. "But it's a gentleman's trade," he added, reverting to his own professional view of the highwayman's calling; "a gentleman's trade—I've always said so. Look what cattle they can afford to keep!"
"You're a judge of such matters, I suppose," observed the smoker in the taproom.
"Man and boy," answered the other, "I've been about horses nigh fifty year. If I don't know a good nag when I see 'un, master, well, I'd better give out, an' take on with some likelier trade."
"That's the right sort you dressed over awhile ago," continued the smoker, leaning out of window, and showing a tall, active frame, surmounted by a swarthy face, with the eager expression of a hawk.
The ostler set his bucket down, and winked.
"You're a judge," said he, "you are, and so you ought. There's a many passes through your hands, Master Cooper, but I never see you with such a nag as this here. He's a cut above you, everyway—he is."
"That's a good one!" answered the dark man, with a boastful laugh. "Why, Ike, you old fool! I tell you I owned that very horse myself, and I gave him—gave him away as a present to a friend of mine."
"But how came Galloping Jack to part with him?" asked the ostler, much interested. "I knowed the horse, bless ye, as well as the horse knowed me, when he came into the yard not two hours back; but he's in the hands of a real gentleman now, and as pretty a rider as ever drew a rein through his fingers. There was something about his seat as put me in mind of Jack, too, and something in the way he carried his hands; but I can't call to mind seeing Jack without a mask on. Speak up, Master Cooper: it couldn't be the man himself, could it now? I never heerd as he'd swung for sure."