238 'LORD OF THE ISLES' 



One of the things that ' no fellow can understand ' is the 

 inducement which led Mr. Hill to keep backing Kings- 

 town for this event, against a horse that had just beaten 

 him. To one friend of that worthy who ventured to ask 

 him the question, he replied that ' the strong in battle 

 was not always victorious, nor the swift in the race,' a 

 quotation, if properly cited, worthy of a better appli- 

 cation. It had, however, its own significant meaning, 

 not difficult to guess. There is one gentleman, I think, 

 still living, who could, if he chose, give an account of the 

 whole thing that would at once satisfy the most sceptical 

 that Lord of the Isles was prevented winning the Derby 

 by some controllable circumstance, of which probably 

 no one but himself knows anything. The popular theory 

 was that the horse was not trained certainly a new 

 phase in my system of training ! This report was set on 

 foot by the jockey Aldcroft, who, however, was at the 

 time looked upon as himself not altogether free from 

 suspicion a fact that might account for his starting any 

 theory that would relieve him of the odium, aud put it 

 on the shoulders of another. Mr. Merry, indeed, told 

 me that Aldcroft had assured him that the horse had not 

 been trained, and that he could not be anything like the 

 horse he was on the Two Thousand day. 



As Aldcroft did not see the horse between the two 

 events before the morning of the race, he must have 

 drawn largely on his imaginative powers to reach such a 

 decisive conclusion. Yet he was believed before the 

 trainer, as jockeys are in the present day. What the 

 horse did, and how he was treated in the interval 

 between the two races, I may therefore briefly relate, as 

 it is information never given till now. After his return 

 from Newmarket, nothing interfered with his usual work 

 till ten days before the time, when he coughed. The 



