THE BETTING RING. 69 



wildly about, as if some great and long pent-up revo- 

 lution had burst forth, at last ; and near the Picca- 

 dilly Circus especially, that favoured haunt of the 

 Ring, the delirium raged furiously. The rise and 

 fall of the odds on the eve of a great race were such 

 delicate operations that the listers had outlying pic- 

 quets watching at each other's shops, to give instant 

 intelligence if there was a commission to skin them. 

 The news flew like wildfire from house to house, so 

 that a commissioner often found the odds altered 

 long before he had half finished his rounds. They 

 had also paid spies among the railway porters, espe- 

 cially at the Eastern Counties, to tell them what 

 horses were put on to the boxes for Newmarket there ; 

 but the " velveteens" had but little notion of their 

 business, and when one of them had spent all his 

 dinner hour and several shillings in cab hire, rushing 

 about to his employers, to tell them that Vermuth 

 and not Aphrodite had gone down for the One Thou- 

 sand Guineas, it turned out that the little groom had 

 only been 'quizzing him. These little episodes were 

 of constant occurrence. A London chambermaid 

 happened, in the fulness of her heart, to tell an old 

 gentleman that she had won 8, like a true-hearted 

 lass that she was, by backing Daniel O'Rourke (be- 

 cause he came from her own county) for the Derby, 

 and her confidante instantly wrote to the Times, de- 

 manding to know if his dressing-case could any 

 longer be safe near such a dangerous maiden. There 

 was the metropolitan beadle, too, who backed Ninny- 

 hammer at 5 to 5s., and spent a most restless Sun- 

 day before the Derby, in consequence of some one 

 stealing his list ticket for a joke. Little did the 

 charity children know what an agitated but yet 

 "noble sportsman" preceded them, cocked-hat on 

 head and staff in hand, to church that day ! Then 

 there was the widow, who would have had to apply to 

 the parish for a coffin for her groom-husband, if she 

 had not found a 100 winning Glauca ticket in his 



