The latter was a dark chestnut with a white fetlock, standing full 16
hands (while the mare scarcely topped 15), well ribbed up, with a good
sloping shoulder, immense flat hocks, and sinewy thighs; his crest and
forehand were like a stallion's; and, when you looked at his quarters,
it was easy to believe what the Revesby stablemen said, "They could
shoot a man into the next county."

He was "orkarder than usual that morning," the groom remarked; perhaps
he did not fancy the crowd without the hounds, for he kept lashing out
perpetually, with vicious backward glances from his red eyes.

Then the riders showed: Livingstone in his own colors, purple and
scarlet cap, workmanlike and weather-stained; Forrester in the fresh
glories of light blue with white sleeves, his cap quartered with the
same.

Charley lingered a minute by Miss Raymond's side, taking her last
instructions, I suppose. She looked very nervous and pale, her jockey
pleasantly languid as ever.

The instant the chestnut was mounted he reared, and indulged in two or
three "buck-jumps" that would have made a weaker man tremble for his
back-bone, and then kicked furiously; but Guy seemed to take it all as a
matter of course, sitting square and erect; all he did was to drive the
sharp rowels in repeatedly, bringing a dark blood-spot out with each
stroke. It was not by love certainly that he ruled the Axeine. Then came
the preliminary gallops, the mare going easily on her bit, gliding over
the ground smoothly and springily; the horse shaking his head, and every
now and then tearing madly at the reins, without being able to gain a