“See here, Baltimore,” he said, “I'm not squeamish. But I'm cursed if I like to hear a man who may die any time between bottles talk so.”
His Lordship took the rebuke with an oath, and presently hobbled down the stairs of the great and silent house to the stable court, where two grooms were in waiting with the horse. He was an animal of amazing power, about sixteen hands, and dapple gray in colour. And it required no special knowledge to see that he had a devil inside him. It gleamed wickedly out of his eye.
“'Od's life, Richard!” cried Charles, “he has a Jew nose; by all the seven tribes I bid you 'ware of him.”
“You have but to ride him with a gold bit, Richard,” said Comyn, “and he is a kitten, I'll warrant.”
At that moment Pollux began to rear and kick, so that it took both the 'ostlers to hold him.
“Show him a sovereign,” suggested Fox. “How do you feel, Richard?”
“I never feared a horse yet,” I said with perfect truth, “nor do I fear this one, though I know he may kill me.”
“I'll lay you twenty pounds you have at least one bone broken, and ten that you are killed,” Baltimore puts in querulously, from the doorway.
“I'll do this, my Lord,” I answered. “If I ride him, he is mine. If he throws me, I give you twenty pounds for him.”
The gentlemen laughed, and Baltimore vowed he could sell the horse to Astley for fifty; that Pollux was the son of Renown, of the Duke of Kingston's stud, and much more. But Charles rallied him out by a reference to the debt at quinze, and an appeal to his honour as a sportsman. And swore he was discouraging one of the prettiest encounters that would take place in England for many a long day. And so the horse was sent to the stables of the White Horse Cellar, in Piccadilly, and left there at my order.