not least, what you thought, while its mild yet radiant beams were
turned upon you. One thing was quite certain: that blue eye had seen a
great deal. More, it had enjoyed the seeing. And its owner had a way of
wiping it as he ended some tale of rascality, successful or exposed,
with his habitual cliché--"I wep a tear. I did reelly," which made you
realize that the only tears it had in fact ever wept were in truth tears
of suppressed laughter over the foolishness of mortals. It had never
mourned over a lost sinner, though it had often winked over one. And it
had profound and impenetrable reserves.

And the trainer's ups and downs in life, if all the stories were true,
had been amazing. At one time it was said that he was worth a cool
£100,000, and at another a minus quantity. But rich or poor, he never
changed his life by an iota, jogging soberly along his appointed if
somewhat tortuous way.

Old Mat was nothing if not a character. And if he was by no means more
scrupulous than the rest of his profession, he had certain steadfast
virtues not always to be found in his brethren of the Turf. He never
drank, he never smoked, and, win or lose, he never swore. A great
raconteur, his stories were most amusing and never obscene. And when
late in life he married Patience Longstaffe, the daughter of the
well-known preacher of _God-First_ farm on the North of the Downs
between Lewes and Cuckmere, nobody was much surprised. As Mr. Haggard,
the Vicar of Cuckmere, said,

"Mat could always be expected to do the unexpected."

That Patience Longstaffe, the Puritan daughter of Preacher Joe, should
marry the old trainer was a matter of amazement to all. But she did; and