It was owned by one, Jake Bolton, a man of rugged exterior whose
integrity had become a proverb on the Turf. This man was Saltash's
erstwhile trainer, and a very curious bond existed between them. Utterly
unlike in every respect, the one as subtle as the other was simple, yet
the two men were friends. How it had come about neither of them quite
knew. When Saltash had been his employer, Jake Bolton had distrusted and
despised him, but by some means this attitude of his had become very
materially modified. He greeted Saltash now with the hand of friendship
which Saltash on his part was always ready to accept with a baffling
smile that was not wholly without irony. He was wont to say that any man
could make an enemy of him, but no man could keep him as such. Perhaps it
was that very volatility of his which made anything of the nature of
prolonged enmity an impossibility. He possessed also that maddening sense
of humour that laughs at deadly things. A good many people had tried to
take him seriously and had failed. He was never serious. As he used to
say with his mocking laugh, life was difficult enough without
complications of that sort. All he ever asked of it was a certain mead
of enjoyment. It was utterly unreasonable to expect anything else.
Happiness! What was it. A bursting bubble, no more. No lasting joy had
ever come his way, and he was fain to believe that such a thing did not
exist outside the covers of a book.

Jake Bolton could have told him otherwise, but he and Saltash never spoke
of abstract things. Saltash might have seen the deep content in the man's
eyes, but if he had, he would probably have scoffed at it. In any case
there was certainly no denying that he and Bolton had been cast in
different moulds, and that which gave life-long satisfaction to the
latter would have held the former for possibly but a very brief period.
As a woman friend who knew him well had once said of him, Charles Rex was