136 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



when a yearling, for 250 guineas had won a race 

 at Newmarket in the spring of that year, and had 

 beaten Chorister easily in a rough gallop, when the 

 Duke's Northern and Southern lots met at exercise 

 on Doncaster Moor. Although the decision has 

 always been most bitterly impugned by the Sad- 

 dler's backers, Chorister (on whom his owner won 

 7,000 at very low odds) had the race given him by 

 " a short head ;" while Marcus, like Plenipo three 

 years afterwards, was the last but one. Before Sam 

 dismounted, he had come to the firm conclusion that 

 the horse had been poisoned ; and when a pony and 

 one or two more racers who had stood at the same 

 inn, died, and were found on dissection to be full of 

 arsenic, many called to mind how a certain ill- 

 favoured stranger had sat by the Doncaster Arms 

 copper on Sunday afternoon, pretending to read a 

 newspaper, as the stable-lads came for warm water ; 

 and how he casually, as it were, warned the servant- 

 maid when she arrived with her kettle, not to use 

 the water, as " it looks so yellow and greasy-like." 

 This, and the Ludlow affair of the following year 

 when Lord Darlington delivered as vigorous a dia- 

 tribe against horse cheats, on the betting-room table, 

 as Lord Stanley had done shortly before against 

 borough-mongers, on the table at Brockes's in- 

 flicted blots on the racing escutcheon of Doncaster 

 which a meeting with less innate vitality and less 

 powerful prestige could never have effaced. 



If Lord Darlington and Sam had met their match 

 in Bowton, when they tackled him with Voltaire at 

 Doncaster, they were doomed to a still more decisive 

 disappointment when they encountered the " chesnut 

 bullock" with Shillelah at Epsom. Connolly soon 

 placed all opposition at a discount, when he found 

 that Sam (who had lain much forwarder throughout 

 than was his wont) had settled "Our Jim" on Glen- 

 coe, and was trying to close with him. For five or 



