The evil day had been warded off, however, by means of Stephen Whitelaw's money, and William Carley meant to act more cautiously, more honestly even, in future.

He would keep clear of race-courses and gambling booths, he told himself, and of the kind of men who had beguiled him into dishonourable dealing.
"I have had an uncommon narrow squeak of it," he muttered to himself occasionally, as he smoked a meditative pipe, "and have been as near seeing the inside of Portland prison as ever a man was.

But it'll be a warning to me in future.

And yet who could have thought that things would have gone against me as they did?
There was Sir Philip Christopher's bay colt Pigskin, for instance; that brute was bound to win." February came to an end; and when March once began, there seemed no pause or breathing-time for Ellen Carley till the 10th.

And yet she had little business to occupy her during those bleak days of early spring.