126 EACECOUKSE AND COVERT SIDE. 



difficulty of winning the race, the difficulty of 

 winning any money on it had to be encountered. 

 He had taken ^£120 to c£20 in the ring, but at 

 the idea that any one was backing Heartsease, 

 the offers contracted, and that with remarkable 

 rapidity. 



As a matter of fact Sir Thomas, by way of a 

 blind, had whispered it about pretty freely that 

 Heartsease was a good thing, and had invented 

 a glowing but purely imaginative account of a 

 trial in which Olive's mare had greatly dis- 

 tinguished herself, hoping thereby to expand the 

 price of Red Rover. Besides, when Heartsease 

 was hopelessly beaten, it would add an additional 

 pleasure to Red Rover's victory to watch the 

 long faces of his friends as he lamented to them 

 that '' in races of this sort one could never tell 

 what might happen." 



Sir Thomas wanted to make a good thing out 

 of it ; but in spite of the '' tip " he had tried to 

 circulate, it was soon hard to get an offer of 

 anything over even money about the favourite. 

 The worst of it was that he could not persuade 

 Crossley to pull the horse, as he and Banks had 

 hastened to get on themselves, and the market 

 was too precarious to make a revolution anything 

 like a certainty. While puzzling out the best 

 thing to be done, Sir Thomas came across Clive, 



