Lord Darlington and Mr. Thornhill. 135 



charge, he told his friends that he felt as if he could 

 have stopped and danced with pleasure, as he knew 

 that none of the fourteen could touch his Sailor now. 

 If Jem Bland had still been Mr. Ladbroke's coachman 

 he might have perhaps had this weather secret con- 

 fided to him, instead of losing so heavily on Sailor as 

 he did. As it turned out, Will had taken the mud 

 measure of his horses most exactly ; and Mr. Thorn- 

 hill was so confident from the same cause, that he 

 made Sailor as good a favourite as anything before 

 starting, and won 23,ooo/. on him. At this period Mr. 

 Thornhill was about forty years of age, and weighed 

 23st. 3lbs., or about 3lbs. more than a sporting Suffolk 

 farmer, one Mr. Dobito, who had a great love for 

 trotting horses, and used often to sell him a nag. 

 These had been so well accustomed to Mr. D.'s 

 weight, when they came to hand, that Mr. Thornhill 

 regularly rode on the Heath, and only took to the 

 yellow phaeton and the greys in the few last years of 

 his life. Sam's racing career after the Derby was 

 most ignoble, as he was a bad-constitutioned horse, 

 and, like Shoveller, lost all form ; but Sailor's chance 

 was cut short by death during that very autumn. 

 Will Chifney had taken him out on the Heath as usual 

 one morning, and was watching the string as they rose 

 the hill from the bushes, when he suddenly observed 

 him stop in his stride, cross his legs, stagger about two 

 hundred yards, and then drop. He had broken a 

 blood-vessel in the chest, and was quite dead before 

 Will could gallop up to him and get off his hack. 

 The horse must have lost all consciousness in an in- 

 stant, as, for the first time in his life, he crossed the 

 road at the Turn of the Lands, without taking it at a 

 flying jump, as was his eccentric and unvarying prac- 

 tice, even though he might be in the iron grip of Sam 

 himself. He fell dead about seventy yards on the 

 Newmarket side of it, and it darted instantly through 

 Will's mind that there could be no hope, as he had 



