"Well, sir, one can't help noticing it when one knows where to look for it, though p'raps a stranger mightn't see it. That there spot's a kind of a blemish, you see, to my mind; for, if it wasn't for that, the brute wouldn't have a white hair about him."
"That's just what I've been thinking," answered Victor. "Now, my friend is just the sort of man to turn up his nose at a horse with anything in the way of a blemish about him, especially if he sees it before he has tried the animal, and found out his merits. But I've hit upon a plan for getting the better of him, and I want you to carry it out for me."
"I'm your man, guv'nor, whatever it is."
The surgeon produced a phial from his pocket, and with the phial a small painters' brush.
"In this bottle there's a brown dye," he said; "and I want you to paint the white spot with that brown dye after you've groomed the 'Buffalo,' so that whenever my friend comes to claim the horse the brute may be ready for him. You must apply the dye three or four times, at short intervals. It's a pretty fast one, and it'll take a good many pails of water to wash it out."
Jim Hawkins laughed heartily at the idea of this manoeuvre.
"Why you are a rare deep one, guv'nor," he exclaimed; "that there game is just like the canary dodge, what they do so well down Seven Dials way. You ketches yer sparrer, and you paints him a lively yeller, and then you sells him to your innocent customer for the finest canary as ever wabbled in the grove—a little apt to be mopish at first, but warranted to sing beautiful as soon as ever he gets used to his new master and missus. And, oh! don't he just sing beautiful—not at all neither."
"There's the bottle, Hawkins, and there's the brush. You know what you've got to do."
"All right, guv'nor."
"Good night, then," said Victor, as he left the stable.