Black Horse

At breakfast the next day, Albert leafed through the latest issue of the Bullfighting Daily and found that his odds had actually dropped. More precisely, the odds of winning the gold prize had fallen to six-to-one. Clearly, the Bullfighting Daily had noticed that someone had placed a large number of Galleons on him and hurriedly lowered the odds in alarm.

Even if the people at the Bullfighting Daily had rocks for brains, seeing someone throw a huge sum of Galleons into the pool would have told them something was wrong.

So far, almost no one believed that Number 17, Albert, would win the gold prize for the Barnaby Finley Excellent Spellcasting Technique competition. Even those who bet on him were merely small-time gamblers, and their wagers were limited.

But now, several people had placed bets, each throwing in a large sum of Galleons at once.

What did that mean?

No one understood it better than the people running the betting pool.

What Albert did not know was that his odds had already been cut three times.

The first time was when Bard put in five hundred Galleons. Seeing that someone else was willing to stake such a huge amount on Number 17 winning the gold prize, the organizers had been so frightened that they immediately lowered his odds to seven-to-one.

Later, the Bullfighting Daily discovered that more people had successively placed several hundred Galleons each, all betting that Albert would win the gold prize. They had no choice but to lower the odds again.

There was no helping it. Something unusual was always afoot.

With odds that high, if they actually had to pay out, they would lose the shirts off their backs.

"Those guys are really timid." Bard folded up the newspaper and said to Albert with a smile,