Lord Darlington and Mr. Thornhill. 129 



caster Moor. Although the decision has always been 

 most bitterly impugned by the Saddler's backers, 

 Chorister (on whom his owner won ^ooo/. 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 after- 

 noon, 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 diatribe against horse cheats, on the 

 betting-room table, as Lord Stanley had done shortly 

 before against boroughmongers, on the table at 

 Brookes's inflicted 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 Rowton, when they tackled him with Voltaire at 

 Doncaster, they were doomed to a still more decisive 

 disappointment when they encountered the " chestnut 

 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 Glencoe, 

 and was trying to close with him. For five or six 

 strides he lost sight of Sam altogether, and then found 

 him, as if by magic at his girths. Jem Bland, who 

 stood to win along with Halliday some 6o,ooo/., and 

 whose well-known slogan of " Whool lay agin Shey- 

 lay-lee ?" had pierced the ears of the Ring for months 



K 



