Gaunt laughed good-naturedly, and began to push a way through the crowd. “I’ll do my best, Peggy; but I sha’n’t be best pleased if I come home second, after being reckoned an easy first so long.”
He borrowed running-gear from the landlord of the inn, and a low hum went up from the crowd when they saw him step out again into the sunlight. For it was known that one of the big fell-racers from the Lake Country had entered for to-day’s struggle, and until now there had seemed no chance that Linsall could keep the honour within its own borders. At a meeting less happy-go-lucky and more set about with rules than this, there might have been trouble touching Gaunt’s late entry. But Linsall’s rule was that, till the moment when the starter shouted “Go,” any man was free to take his place along the line of combatants.
As Gaunt moved quietly to his place, he was stopped by a shabby-genteel man, whose appearance seemed oddly out of keeping with the ruddy farmer-folk about him.
“Beg pardon, Mr. Gaunt, but you mean to run to-day?” whispered the stranger.
Gaunt nodded; he had followed horse-racing too long to have any doubt as to what was coming.
“You’ll upset all our bets, then, and poor men have to make their living. See, now, Mr. Gaunt, you’re well off, I know, but the richest need more, and if you’d a mind to fall out o’ the race—”
Reuben Gaunt, if by force of nature a crooked man when his affections were in case, was scrupulously straight in other matters; he had a plentiful lack of self-guidance, but no meanness; and the suggestion of the shabby-genteel man touched his temper to the quick.
“Here, lads,” he broke in, turning to the group of strapping lads who stood nearest to him. “Here’s one who wants me to run crooked for sake of a five pound note. Just cool his heels for him in the river.”
It was all over before the crowd had time to realize the meaning of the uproar. The intruder into Linsall’s peace was carried at a running pace to the pool under the bridge, was thrown in and seen to clamber up the further bank and seek cover like a fox. The farm-lads laughed and shrugged their shoulders, and went back to see the start of the race. They had upheld Linsall’s reputation for a race run fairly and with keenness, and there was little chance that other out-at-elbows gentry would try to-day to disturb that reputation.
Gaunt took his place on the starting line. There were nine of them—lean and wiry fellows all, since upland farming seldom makes for too much flesh—and next to Reuben was the Lake Country runner, Bownas by name. Long in limb, lithe and spare in the body, he dwarfed Gaunt by a good four inches, and seemed built for this business of capturing the race.