Station supplies, even for bad stations, run into a lot of money, and the store account was approaching a hundred pounds.

Then there was a letter from a horse-trainer in Sydney to whom he had sent a racehorse, and though this animal had done such brilliant gallops that the trainer had three times telegraphed him that a race was a certainty--once he went so far as to say that the horse could stop to throw a somersault and still win the race--on each occasion it had always come in among the ruck; and every time forty or fifty pounds of Blake's money had been lost in betting.
For Blake was a confirmed gambler, a heavy card-player and backer of horses, and he had the contempt for other people's skill and opinions which seems an inevitable ingredient in the character of brilliant men of a certain type.
He was a man of splendid presence, with strong features and clear blue-grey eyes--the type of face that is seen on the Bench and among the Queen's Counsel in the English Courts.

He was quick-witted, eloquent, and logical of mind.

Among the Doyles and Donohoes he was little short of a king.

Wild, uneducated, and suspicious, they believed in him implicitly.