boy adventured on the Derby favourite. He had loitered at the corner of Farringdon Street, and hung about the purlieus of Leather Lane, and lounged against posts, and besotted himself with beer in the dusky parlours of sporting publics in Newgate Market, in the intervals of freedom which his profession had afforded him; and even now, when his regiment was stationed at Castleford, he went up to London when ever he could get a day's leave, and went sneaking back to his old haunts, to meet the same seedy conspirators at the same street-corners, and to hold stealthy consultations in the same undertones, and with the same air of plotting an assassination or so.

Again and again he assured Mr. Dobb that the flimsy little I OU's, scrawled so carelessly in the weak illegible hand, should be faithfully redeemed. Henry Adolphus knew all his schemes; his secret intelligence about the outsider that was to win the Two Thousand, and didn't; his equally reliable information respecting the dark horse from Yorkshire, which had been artfully reported lame, but which was known by the deep ones to be a flyer, and was a safe winner for the Chester Cup. As the scent of blood to the beast of prey, so is the slang of the turf to weak mankind. The love of horse-racing seems to be innate in the human breast. There is no fascination so irresistible as the atmosphere of the betting-ring; no intoxication so overpowering as the excitement of the race-course; and no subtle amalgamation of southern blossoms that Mr. Rimmel can devise will ever be as popular as the simple perfume which he calls Jockey Club.

Henry Adolphus, trembling for his thirty pounds, was yet weak enough to heed the voice of the charmer, and to believe again and again in the reliable information, which always resulted in discomfiture. The two men studied Holt's betting-lists until the flimsy paper on which the price-current of the ring was printed grew soft and flabby with much folding and unfolding. They discussed the prospects of the racingseason until poor Matilda's shallow brain grew confused with their stablejargon; but the more they talked the deeper sank the feet of the brewer's clerk into that fatal quagmire which men call the turf. There were times when, instead of regretting his folly in having lent money to Catheron, Mr. Dobb bewailed his inability to speculate on his own account, so brilliant seemed the opportunity for speculation, so certain appeared the prospect of success. The better part of the racing-year had gone by; hope and despair had reigned alternately in Gervoise Catheron's breast. The Two Thousand and the One Thousand, the Metropolitan, the Derby, the Oaks, the Ascot Stakes and Cup, the Liverpool Plate, the Chester Cup, the Great Ebor,-all the grand spring and summer races had gone by; and Gervoise Catheron, backing outsiders with the desperate tenacity of a man who wants to win a large stake with the smallest capital, had lost his pitiful ventures one after another, borrowing wherever he could borrow, and pawning whatever he had to pawn, until at last the great autumnal contest was near at hand,

and the sporting universe began to talk about The Leger, the grand encounter of the year-the battle-ground where Greek meets Greek, and comes the tug of war which is perhaps to win the blue ribbon of the North for the victor of Epsom Downs or the conqueror of Newmarket.

The end of August was fast approaching, and from the end of August to the fifteenth of September was an interval only too brief for action; but as yet the lieutenant had not been able to raise a sixpence for a venture which he declared and believed might redeem the fortunes of the year. He knew the state of his friend Dobb's finances well enough to know that any appeal in that quarter would be fruitless. He had borrowed of his brother officers, and had sunk to the lowest depths of that degradation into which the habitual borrower, who never repays, must ultimately go down. He was in debt to all the tradesmen with whom he had any dealings; for small loans of money as well as for goods. Even poor little Dorothy's savings had not been sacred for him; and the sovereign produced for the picnic had been the last of a little hoard contained in a pasteboard Swiss cottage, which the faithful little maid had ruthlessly broken into for her lover's benefit. And in the only sporting-circle to which Mr. Catheron had access there was no such thing as credit. The bookmen with whom he had dealings sat in dingy parlours, with canvas-bags before them, and received the golden tribute of their votaries as fast as they could count the coins handed in to them.

The lieutenant grew moodier and moodier as the days went by, and no glimmer from the pole-star of hope lighted the dull horizon. And this time his information was so certain-this time there could be no chance of disappointment. The knowing ones were all agreed for once in a way; and the voices of Farringdon Street and Newgate Market were as the voice of one man.

"If I had a million of money, I'd put every stiver of it on Twopenny Postman; and as much more as I could beg or borrow into the bargain. If any body would lay me a pony against my grandmother, I'd put her on, and not be afraid of the old lady coming to grief," had been heard to exclaim a gentleman of the blue-apron profession, who was the oracle of his circle, and whose lightest word was absorbed by eager listeners, and fondly dwelt upon in future converse. A fortune was to be made by Twopenny Postman, said the lieutenant's advisers; if a man only had a ten-pound note or so wherewith to venture. But Gervoise Catheron had neither "tenner" nor "fiver," as he said plaintively to his friend Dobb; and the chance would be lost.

The two men talked the affair over as they walked back to Castleford in the starlight that autumn evening, after escorting little Dorothy to the gates of Scarsdale.

"There never was such a chance," said Mr. Catheron. "The horse has been kept out of the way all this season; and as he never did much when he was a two-year-old, the public ain't sweet upon him. But I

think they ought to have had a sickener of your crack two-year-olds by this time, after the way they burnt their fingers with Prometheus for the Two Thousand; he beat every thing that was out on the T. Y. C. last year, and shut up like a telescope in the great race. Your crack two-year-olds are like your Infant Rosciuses and your precocious children whose names are Norval at three years old, and who don't know B from a bull's foot at twenty. Twopenny Postman is a great ugly rawboned animal, with a stride from here to yonder; and he hasn't been kept out of the way for nothing. Those who saw him run on the Curragh say his rush at the finish was just as if he'd been shot out of a gun. He's a Yorkshire horse, and he's entered under the name of Smithson; but there's three men interested in him. They know all about him in Hull. There's a publican, called Howden, has got a third share in him; and I know something of Howden. He's a deep one, is Howden. He and his chums have been backing the horse on the quiet ever since the spring. You could have had any odds a month or two ago; the swells are all on Lord Edinbro and Mr. Cheerful; and Twopenny Postman hasn't been inquired for any where till very lately. But he's been creeping up in the Manchester betting; they know what's what at Manchester, and you won't get more than fifteen to one; but even at that your tenner' will bring you in a hundred and fifty, and that's not bad interest for your money."

6

Mr. Dobb's mouth watered as the mouth of an epicure who hears the eloquent description of some impossible banquet. If the lieutenant had been able to back Twopenny Postman and had won a hundred and fifty, the IO U's which now seemed such miserable scraps of wastepaper might be converted into crisp bank-notes. Ah, then, what triumph to go to Matilda and say, “Behold the fruits of a prudent investment!" and he would be able to give her a new bonnet, and to treat himself to gorgeous velvet raiment, such as he had beheld with envy on the stalwart backs of the military dandies lounging in the Castleford High Street; and after doing this, he might still put fifty pounds in the bank in place of the abstracted thirty.

But then he had trusted in the voice of the lieutenant before to-day. How about the other outsiders in which Mr. Catheron had so confidently believed? How about Hydrophobia and Rhadamanthus, Mixed Biscuits, Newgate Calendar, and Alcibiades? all of whom had been represented to him as infallible,-all of whom had suffered ignominious defeat. Common-sense whispered to the brewer's clerk that Gervoise Catheron's information was a delusion and a snare; but the demon of speculation possessed himself of Mr. Dobb's other ear, and reminded him that a man cannot go on losing for ever, and that a speculator who has made half-a-dozen unlucky strokes is very likely to make a great coup on the seventh venture. Nor was Mr. Catheron himself slow to make use of this argument.

"Suppose Sir Josiah Morley had left off betting when he lost twenty thou. upon Skeleton," said the lieutenant, "where would he be now?

Suppose Mr. Cheerful had given up training after the defeat of GuttaPercha, the colt he gave two thousand five hundred for as a yearling? The secret of success on the turf is persistence; and the man who goes on long enough is sure to make a fortune. I know we've been deuced unlucky all the summer; but the tip I've got this time comes from a new quarter, and I know it's a safe quarter. However, say no more about it. I've got no money, and you can't lend me any, or get any body else to lend me any; so that settles the question."

But the question was by no means to be set at rest thus easily. The image of the ugly raw-boned horse haunted Mr. Dobb in the dead of the night, and his rest was broken by the visions of financial triumphs that might have been his if he had possessed a ten-pound note. Five pounds advanced to Catheron would have recompensed that gentleman for his information, and would have brought him in seventy-five pounds, out of which Henry Adolphus would have claimed sixty. With the other five the clerk could have speculated on his own account, and would have stood to win another seventy-five; and by this means the sixteenth of September would have beheld him possessed of a hundred and thirty-five pounds-the nucleus of a colossal fortune. Had Lafitte as much with which to begin his mighty career? Tumbling his long greasy hair feverishly upon what seemed a peculiarly lumpy pillow, Mr. Dobb beheld himself in a brilliant future; doing little bills for the Castleford officers at thirty per cent, and renewing them for another fifteen. Nor was the range of his mind's eye limited to this glowing vision: far away in the immeasurable distance of dreamland, he saw the image of a man leaning against a pillar of the Stock Exchange, while his fellow-men gazed reverently on his rhadamanthine countenance as if they would therefrom divine the secrets of empires-and the name of that man was Dobb.

The clerk went to his office, looking pale and flabby of aspect, the next morning; and writing to a customer on business connected with the brewery, he found himself beginning:

"We take the Twopenny Postman to inform you that our X, XX, and XXX of last March are now," &c. &c.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE GATHERING OF THE DOBBITES.

HAVING pledged himself to the carrying out of the entertainment which he had himself originated, Mr. Dobb was not the man to draw back, however distracted he might be by other interests. As prime mover of the picnic on Lemley Hills, Mr. Dobb's honour was involved in the success of the entertainment; so between the twenty-fifth of August and the first of September he had very little time to think of Twopenny Postman. The day came in due course, and was exactly the kind of day that all picnickers would demand of Providence, if they dared beseech so temporal a boon-a regular blazer; a day on which the leaves

seem to crackle and blister, and the brown turf on the hill-side has an odour of hay; a day on which the cloudless blue sky makes you wink as you look heavenward; a day on which pleasure-seekers who issue forth blonde and delicate of aspect go home at night with the complexions of Red Indians. The picnickers assembling in Mrs. Dobb's small sitting-room congratulated one another on the weather, and wore off the ceremonial edges of intercourse by that means.

No social gathering could have been inaugurated with greater ceremony. Mrs. Dobb, who was nothing unless she was intensely polite, had enough to do in making ceremonial presentations. There was Mr. Spinner's sister, who had to be introduced to Mrs. Pocombe; and there was Mr. Smith's mother-a mysterious old woman in a poke bonnetwho had not been invited, and who had to be introduced to every body. There were more new bonnets and more dazzling garments of every description than had been seen collected together on the pavement before Amanda Villas within the memory of the inhabitants; and confidential murmurs of "fifteen and nine," "seventeen and sixpence, my dear, and reduced from seven-and-twenty on account of the lateness of the season," might have been heard among the ladies; while even the men congratulated one another facetiously on their splendour of appearance.

"An early rise in the current price of starch may be safely prophesied by any one who beholds Spinner's waistcoat. I saw that buff doeskins were looking lively, and I can understand the reason, now I contemplate my noble Pocombe's legs. Never mind the creases in that blue frock of yours, Sanders; that young man at Cawly's does not know how to fold a coat. I had mine ironed when I took it out last Saturday night; but do not blush, my Sanders; there is no shame in honest poverty." Thus, in the abandon of his gaiety, said Mr. Dobb, as he stood amongst his Lares and Penates, with a decanter in one hand and a glass in the other. The decanter contained a cordial composed of gin, sugar, and orangepeel; which compound Henry Adolphus declared was almost as good as curaçoa; but then "almost" is a very wide word.

An omnibus had been hired for the conveyance of the party, and that vehicle overshadowed Mr. Dobb's mansion, while the clerk regaled his friends in the parlour. To the denizens of Amanda Villas, stationed at windows and lounging on door-steps, an omnibus might have been the newest and rarest object in creation, so fondly did they gaze upon the vehicle, on which "Railway Station," "Roxborough Arms," "Castleford," "King's Head," were inscribed in gilded capitals. But although an omnibus devoted to the public service may be the most commonplace of conveyances, there is something almost awful in the idea of an omnibus withdrawn from its common uses and placed at the disposal of an individual. To have the destiny of an omnibus in one's own hands; to be able to order that mighty vehicle to the right or the left; to take it up narrow lanes and ignominious turnings; to keep it standing unconscionable periods before one's own door, is to feel a sense of power