76 RACING, 



riding slowly towards the ring on the neatest of hacks, warranted 

 by Mr. Sheward to ' stand still, and let you write as long as you 

 fancy it.' The crisp west wind hardly stirs a lock of the thin 

 silky mane, which ruthless fashion has not yet decreed shall be 

 hogged, yet there is :ifeel in the air which reminds Sir Laudator 

 that in a few weeks the hack must rejoin his comrades at 

 Melton — a goodly string already, wanting only a few additions 

 — but such additions as those shall be if the good thing 

 comes off!— an 'if which will be decisively settled in the 

 course of the next half-hour. 



For it is an open secret that there is a flyer from Danebury 

 in the T.Y.C. handicap ; that the Marquis means having a 

 flutter, that the Duke is unusually sanguine, and that the legion 

 of stable-followers ' is 'going for the gloves.' A quarter of an 

 hour to the time fixed for what is reckoned the event of the 

 day — the actual stake a paltry hundred, the impending venture 

 a king's ransom. Even now the numbers are going up, as the 

 official with bracketed telescope reads them off from the board 

 by the weighing-room at the end of ' The Flat.' 



Eighteen runners — and a shout of * The field a hundred ! * 

 * No one names the winner for a pony ! ' rends the air. That the 

 betting shall open at evens is a point which has long ago been 

 settled by the members of that secret society whose means of 

 intercommunication are as mysterious as those of the Eastern 

 bazaars. The level money is quickly snapped up, and the cry 

 of ' I'll take odds ! ' is beginning to be heard, ere the Marquis is 



1 The propensity of racing men's servants to identify themselves somewhat 

 too closely with their masters' pursuits is sufficiently notorious. Admiral Rous, 

 sharp as he was, was not exempt from this annoyance. He had at one time a 

 retainer at Newmarket, who, under pretence of exercising the well-known hack 

 during the Admiral's absence, used to ride about in the morning and tout in the 

 most bare-faced manner. At last, during one of the meetings, Charles Blanton, 

 riding by the side of the Dictator, said, 'Admiral, if that old horse of yours 

 could talk, he might tell you every trial there's been on the Heath for the last 

 three weeks.* This rather opened the Admiral's eyes, and a short time after he 

 discovered his man perusing an unpublished handicap which had been left 

 in the writing-desk. The sentence ' Never more be officer of mine ' was of 

 course at once pronounced, though perhaps not exactly in those words, and 

 certainly not mitigated by the prefix ' I love thee.' 



