A 'oss is entered for a race--it's Rake what's to order his morning gallops, and his go-downs o' water.

It's past bearing to have a rascally chap what's been and gone and turned walet, set up over one's head in one's own establishment, and let to ride the high 'oss over one, roughshod like that!" And Mr.Willon, in his disgust at the equestrian contumely thus heaped on him, bit the straw savagely in two, and made an end of it, with a vindictive "Will yer be quiet there; blow yer," to the King, who was protesting with his heels against the conversation.
"Come, then, no gammon," growled his companion--the "cousin out o' Yorkshire" of the keeper's tree.
"What's yer figure, you say ?" relented Willon meditatively.
"Two thousand to nothing--come!--can't no handsomer," retorted the Yorkshire cousin, with the air of a man conscious of behaving very nobly.
"For the race in Germany ?" pursued Mr.Willon, still meditatively.
"Two thousand to nothing--come!" reiterated the other, with his arms folded to intimate that this and nothing else was the figure to which he would bind himself.
Willon chewed another bit of straw, glanced at the horse as though he were a human thing to hear, to witness, and to judge, grew a little pale; and stooped forward.
"Hush! Somebody'll spy on us.

It's a bargain." "Done! And you'll paint him, eh ?" "Yes--I'll--paint him." The assent was very husky, and dragged slowly out, while his eyes glanced with a furtive, frightened glance over the loose-box.
Then--still with that cringing, terrified look backward to the horse, as an assassin may steal a glance before his deed at his unconscious victim--the head groom and his comrade went out and closed the door of the loose-box and passed into the hot, lowering summer night.
Forest King, left in solitude, shook himself with a neigh; took a refreshing roll in the straw, and turned with an appetite to his neglected gruel.

Unhappily for himself, his fine instincts could not teach him the conspiracy that lay in wait for him and his; and the gallant beast, content to be alone, soon slept the sleep of the righteous..