On a Tuesday morning in January, in the frost, the forge cat at Sedgebrook got down off the Duke of Brigstock's coat.
She had sat on it every morning for fifteen months. It was a good blue coat. The duke who owned it had married the farrier of that forge, and blew her bellows most mornings, and left his coat folded on the end of the shoe-bench while he did it. As far as the cat was concerned, it had been provided by Providence.She got down off it now with no hurry at all. She walked the length of the bench past the shoe-boxes and the rasps. At the far end, nearest the fire, a second coat had been folded that morning by a stranger. It was dark green, a heavy country frieze: thick, coarse wool, near enough a blanket. She got up onto it, and turned round once, and sat. Then she shut her eyes.The stranger was standing in the doorway. He was a very big man, fair, in his shirtsleeves, with his hat in his hands, and he had been told by the Duke of Brigstock that at this forge you took your coat off, folded it on the bench, and stood where you were put. He had done the first two, and nobody had yet put him anywhere, so he looked at the cat."She's on your coat, Horatio," said the Duke of Brigstock from the bellows. He said it without turning round. He was on a worn flagstone by the bellows-pole in his shirtsleeves with coal-dust in his hair, pulling the pole down long and letting it rise, and the fire in front of him was orange and deep and had a heart in it."I see she is," said the stranger.That was one sentence. He had two more in him, on a good day, before he ran out.His name was Horatio, and he was the Duke of Walsingham, and he was thirty-one, and he had ridden into Northamptonshire the day before with a difficult young grey and half the hunting season still in front of him. He had been at Cambridge with Justinian Brigstock, who was the only man alive who had ever heard him talk for an hour without stoppingโand it had been to a horse.The grey stood in the yard now, tied to the ring by the trough, with his ears back. He was four years old and would not stand for a smith; three in Norfolk had gone home with their aprons torn. Justinian had written in November: Bring him to Sedgebrook, and don't talk to the farrier.