As Druse walked rapidly towards the bridge, he met Jowett. Jowett was
one of the few men in either town for whom the Ry had regard, and the
friendliness had had its origin in Jowett's knowledge of horseflesh.
This was a field in which the Ry was himself a master. He had ever been
too high-placed among his own people to trade and barter horses except
when, sending a score of Romanys on a hunt for wild ponies on the hills
of Eastern Europe, he had afterwards sold the tamed herd to the highest
bidders in some Balkan town; but he had an infallible eye for a horse.
It was a curious anomaly also that the one man in Lebanon who would not
have been expected to love and pursue horse-flesh was the Reverend Reuben
Tripple to whom Ingolby had given his conge, but who loved a horse as he
loved himself.
He was indeed a greater expert in horses than in souls. One of the
sights of Lebanon had been the appearance in the field of the "Reverend
Tripple," who owned a great, raw-boned bay mare of lank proportions, the
winner of a certain great trotting-race which had delighted the mockers.
For two years Jowett had eyed Mr. Tripple's rawbone with a piratical eye.
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