Happily help was at hand.

A man on a chestnut pony was standing on the turf not twenty yards away.

“Give me a hand up, will you?” he panted.  “That ——­ of a dog!”

The young man approached.

“By all means,” he said, in a deep, familiar voice.

It was Silver.

Joses did not mind that.  He was not at all above taking a hand from an enemy in an emergency.

And young Silver seemed surprisingly kind.  Big men usually were.

The young man got off his pony, came to the edge of the cliff, and gave the perspiring tout his hand.  With a heave and a lurch Joses scrambled to the top.

How strong the fellow was!  No horse would ever get away with him.

“Good of you,” panted the fat man, rising to his feet.

“Not at all,” replied Silver.  “It was less trouble to pull you up than to come down to you.”

There was a note in his quiet voice Joses did not like.

“What you mean?” he asked.

“I’m going to give you a hiding,” observed the other mildly.

Joses looked aghast at his rescuer and snorted.  He shot forward his shaggy face, and the action seemed to depress his chest and obtrude his stomach.

“Whaffor?” he asked, in tones that betrayed the fact that such experiences were not entirely new to him.

“I don’t know,” said Silver in his exasperatingly lazy way.  “I feel I’d rather like to.”

He seemed quietly amused, much more so than was Joses.  And he meant what he said.  His clean, calm face, his mouth so determined and yet so mild, his steady eyes and the thrust of his jaw, all betrayed his resolution.

“Here, stow it!” stammered the fat man.  “Chuck the chaff.  A gentleman!”

“I’m not chaffing,” said Silver in a matter-of-fact way.  “How d’you like it?”

“What ye mean?”

“Will you put your hands up—­or will you take it lying?”

His pony’s rein was over the young man’s arm; and they were standing on the edge of the cliff.  Joses, weighing his chances with the swift and comprehending eye of fear, marked it greedily.  Silver was young, strong, an athlete; but he was handicapped.

Joses’s cunning was returning to reinforce his doubtful heart.

“That’s Heart of Oak, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Is it?” said the young man.

“The model polo pony,” continued Joses.  “Refused L600 for him at Islington, didn’t you?  And I don’t blame you.  You’re rich, we all know, Mr. Silver.  L600’s no more to you than sixpence to me.  But there’s the pony!  You can’t replace him.  Pity if he got away here on the edge of the cliff and all.”

For the second time that morning Joses’s luck deserted him.

“I’ll hold your pony,” said a deep voice from behind.

The fat man turned.

Boy Woodburn stood behind him.

Fresh from the sea, her hair in short, thick plaits of gold, dark and wet and bare; with the eyes of a sword and the colour of an apple-blossom; the brine upon her and the brown of wind and sun; in her breeches, boots, and jersey, her big dog straining on his lead, she looked like Diana turned post-boy.