REMINISCENCES OF SONEPORE. 253 



other two starters never got over it. At Assensole where 

 he had not at first had an altogether good time, only win- 

 ning a couple of flat races with Liberty, an English gelding 

 by Blair Athol, he bought Daybreak in the selling race, and 

 won the best part of his price back in the Colliery Hurdles. 

 Daybreak had been the property of those well-known 

 Tirhoot Planters Mr. Edmund Macnaghten and the late 

 Mr. Fred Wingrove, best known to his familiars as Bug- 

 gins. At Ballygunge in '74 Bertie foolishly rode War Eagle 

 with one hand, having sprained his arm riding Merlin in the 

 big chase at Assensole and lost the race in consequence. At 

 Cawnpore he won the Leger with Daybreak and the Chase 

 too. At Lucknow riding as Mr. Rinaldo, for he was absent 

 from duty without leave, he won the Goomtee Chase on Mr. 

 Baker's grey Arab Sikunder, and a mile flat handicap on his 

 own mare Mermaid. At Meerut he won the Galloway Chase 

 on Phratos, belonging to Mr. Percy Hills of the Rifle Brigade. 

 Daybreak had by this time nearly broken him and he sold him 

 and Mermaid to a native sportsman and went back to his 

 head quarters Jhansi, but being unable to find any decent 

 excuse for his two months' absence without leave, he was 

 gazetted out, and the North-West Police lost a valuable if 

 somewhat erratic officer. But though out of harness Bertie 

 was not going to give up the game his soul loved so well, and 

 he succeeded in inducing Joe Rainford to sell him a horse 

 called Red Eagle, late Beggarman, and off he went to Luck- 

 now and opened the ball by winning the Trials on Dr. Deane's 

 Pilgrim, but in the chase Red Eagle refused. At Cawnpore he 

 came a cropper off Dignum's Don Juan in the chase and broke 

 his collar bone and a handful of his ribs on his right side, and 

 he was three weeks in bed. At Dehra in September, 1874 

 he won the Handicap Chase on his old horse Daybreak, now be- 

 longing to Jaffer who had seized him for training dues from 

 the nobleman Bertie had sold him to, the said nobleman being, 



