'Very well, then; we'll have our trial spin there.' Then bending towards me he said very softly, 'Jim, my boy, it won't be my fault if we don't make a big haul over this race. There will be a lot of money about, and you've no objection, I suppose?'
'None whatever,' I answered. 'But do you think it's as certain as all that? Remember it's a pretty stiff course, and from what I heard this morning, the company your horse is likely to meet will be more than usually select.'
'I'm not the least afraid,' he answered 'My horse is a good one, and if he is well, will walk through them as if they were standing still. Especially with you on his back.'
I took this compliment for what it was worth, knowing that it was only uttered for the sake of giving me a bit of a fillip.
'I shall see you, then, this evening?' I said.
'This evening. Can you come to dinner?'
'I'm afraid not,' I answered; and with a parting salutation we separated and rode on our different ways.
When I reached the corner I turned and looked back at him, asking myself what there was about Whispering Pete that made him so different to other men. That he was different nobody could deny. Even the most commonplace things he did and said had something about them that made them different from the same things as done and said by other people. I must confess that, while I feared him a little, I could not help entertaining a sort of admiration for the man. Who and what was he? He had been in the township now, off and on, for two years, and during the whole of that time, with the exception of myself and a few other young men, he had made no friends at all. Indeed, he used to boast that he had no sympathy with men above a certain age, and it was equally certain that not one of the elderly inhabitants of the town, from my father and old McLeod downwards, had any sympathy or liking for him.