“It is the hill which will decide the matter, my Lord,” returned the trainer in a low tone; “the ground is rising already. There! and see, the black draws ahead.”
“Ay, the black has it!” cried Derrick with a frightful imprecation. “I will lay fifty-pounds to ten on Manylaws.”
“I take you, sir,” said the man in the broad-brim coolly, as with race-glass in hand he watched every movement of the horses who were now nearing the fir-clump: “there has something happened to that big-boned animal of yours, I fear. What is it, Chifney?”
He was about to pass the glass to the trainer, but Derrick roughly tore it from his grasp, and applied it to his own eyes. “It's one of his infernal jibs,” exclaimed he; “and yet—— Well done, Jack Withers; that's a five-pound note in your pocket.—Perhaps you'd like to look again, my Lord, for their position is a little altered.”
“The black is gaining fast,” ejaculated Captain Lisgard, his pale face aglow with excitement. “He has recovered all he lost by that false step. What a pace they are coming down the hill! By Heaven, The King is beaten! Tom is using the whip.”
“Just what I expected,” murmured the trainer.
There was a thunder of hoofs, the smack of a whip again and again, a flash of colour—first black, then bay—and the trial-race was over.
“In a second and a half less time than the last Derby,” said his Lordship drily, after consulting his stop-watch.
“I think I did not bring you here for nothing, my Lord,” said the trainer confidentially.
“Certainly not, Mr Chifney,” returned the other bitterly: “I find myself a poorer man than I had thought to be three minutes ago by fifty thousand pounds. Moreover, I have made the acquaintance of one of the greatest ruffians that I have ever met even upon a race-course. It is altogether an excellent morning's work.”