Then there was a letter
from a horse-trainer in Sydney to whom he had sent a racehorse, and
though this animal had done such brilliant gallops that the trainer
had three times telegraphed him that a race was a certainty--once
he went so far as to say that the horse could stop to throw a
somersault and still win the race--on each occasion it had always
come in among the ruck; and every time forty or fifty pounds of
Blake's money had been lost in betting. For Blake was a confirmed
gambler, a heavy card-player and backer of horses, and he had
the contempt for other people's skill and opinions which seems an
inevitable ingredient in the character of brilliant men of a certain
type.
He was a man of splendid presence, with strong features and clear
blue-grey eyes--the type of face that is seen on the Bench and among
the Queen's Counsel in the English Courts. He was quick-witted,
eloquent, and logical of mind. Among the Doyles and Donohoes he
was little short of a king. Wild, uneducated, and suspicious, they
believed in him implicitly. They swore exactly the things that he
told them to swear, spoke or were silent according as he ordered,
and trusted him with secrets which they would not entrust to their
own brothers. In that district he wielded a power greater than
the law.
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