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Chukkers was not the only one who seized the situation. The bookies absorbed it in a flash the outsider's form, the jockey's colours, the significance of both. It was Old Mat's horse Old Mat who had sprung surprises on the ring so often in his time. Rumour had always said that the horse was by Berserker. Then they had disbelieved. Now well, he looked it. Suddenly the ring went mad.
He, as well as Austin, had proved false to Uncle Mat's prophecy; for far from falling in love with another girl within a year, he showed not the slightest indication of doing so, but seemed to find perfect satisfaction in the society of his own family, especially that portion of it in which Sylvia was, for the moment, to be found.
Tramps' fever will take me back there afore long. Tramps' fever will lay me down, some day, in the lonesome places, with my hand on my rifle and my face to the sky; and I shan't get up again till the crows and vultures come and carry me off piecemeal." "Lord bless us! how can you talk about yourself in that way?" cried Mrs. Peckover, shuddering at the grim image which Mat's last words suggested.
Blyth had been speaking, Mat's hands had been gradually stealing down deeper and deeper into the pockets of his trousers, until his finger and thumb, and a certain plastic substance hidden away in the left-hand pocket came gently into contact, just as Valentine left off speaking. "Let's have another toast," cried Mat, quite briskly, the instant the last word was out of his guest's mouth.
I looked away from Mat's gray eyes, and Beverly's head dropped on his arms, face downward looked at nothing but blue sky, and a graceful drooping flag; nothing but a half-sleepy, half-active fort; nothing but the yellow April floods far up-stream, between wooded banks tenderly gray-green in the spring sunshine. But I did not see any of these things then.
I don't remember to a' seen Lyddy cry more than two or three times in my life; she always hid away for that, when she couldn't help herself, bless her! 'Lydia grows more an' more like her father, said Mrs. Bower. 'She does, ma'am, she does. I used to say as she was like him, when she sat in my shop of a night and watched the people in and out. Her eyes was so bright-looking, just like Mat's.
Although the machinery of Mat's mind was constructed of very clumsy and barbaric materials; although book-learning had never oiled it, and wise men's talk had never quickened it; nevertheless, it always contrived to work on much as it was working now until it reached, sooner or later, a practical result.
Mat's look, as he stood listening among his neighbors, was now just as quietly vigilant, his manner just as gruffly self-possessed, as usual. But it had cost him a hard struggle that morning, in the solitude of one of his longest and loneliest walks, to compose himself or, in his favorite phrase, to "get to be his own man again."
Then they found a man's hat Bill's stick had knocked it off and by that hat and the red necktie the incendiary was brought to justice. The hat was big Mat's; he always wore a red necktie. Big Mat made no defence; he was simply stolidly indifferent to the whole proceedings. The only statement he made was that he had not fired four of the ricks, and he did not know who had done so.
No ordinary shocks could strike Mat's mind hard enough to make it lose its balance this shock prostrated it in an instant. In proportion as he gradually recovered his self-possession so did the desire strengthen in him to ascertain the resemblance between the two kinds of hair once more but in such a manner as it had not been ascertained yet.
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