LAYERS OF ALL SORTS 



for the double, Handicap and Flying Stakes. I was 

 to step in and get all the good offers I could. Straight 

 out, double and treble for the principal handicaps — 

 it was at Muswellbrook, where I have explained 

 Frank Slavin came from. I went back to the hotel 

 and found the little bunch making offers. It was about 

 eleven o'clock in the morning. I backed Hesitation 

 straight out at five to one, got a hundred to eight 

 about the double, and twenty to one in some instances 

 about the treble. They all thought that the principal 

 race was a gift for a horse named Comet, owned by the 

 Hon. John Eales, a man remarkable for having had his 

 carriage drives laid with a shipload of gravel he im- 

 ported from England so that he could walk on " British 

 soil." Comet had once carried a butcher's boy round 

 West Maitland in New South Wales, but was thorough- 

 bred, and one day, being put in a race for hacks, won so 

 easily that Mr Eales had him trained, and he figured 

 very well in some important handicaps in Sydney and 

 elsewhere. He seemed a certainty that day, but my 

 friend, the ex-preacher, was very confident about his 

 horse, Hesitation. Not to prolong the story, he won 

 the treble. They were very sick when the settling 

 came to be done that evening at the local hotel, where 

 the stakes for the races were paid over. I received 

 over six hundred pounds, two hundred of which was 

 in cheques. I gave the ex-parson the two cheques and 

 a hundred odd in ready. He demurred at the cheques, 

 but I had begun to be wise. I might just as well have 

 given him all the ready, for they got up a nice little 

 game of blind hookey or banker for me that evening, 

 and as I had bought wine I had all the undamped 

 confidence of youth that I could run my luck, but they 

 slid the aces for themselves, and I parted with score 

 after score of pounds. 



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