THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



reply ; ' I have reason to believe we are all done about Rouge, 

 who has not a chance to win, and the other iilly has.' 



The upshot, liowever, was this : — Lord Dauntley could not 

 be found ; neither our hero nor Goodall had any ci-edit in the 

 ring, which, in an hour from that time, was broken up ; and to 

 the post went the fillies. The race was one of the quickest 

 ever seen over that course. Euphrosyne answering every stroke 

 of the whip and every dig of the spur — struggling, in short, to 

 the very last stride — was only beaten by a head, whereas the 

 favourite was at the extremity of the tail, or, as his owner said 

 of Eclipse's competitors, ' noivhere.' And the summing up of 

 the case was this : — Mr. Trueman won £300 by backing Rouge 

 to lose, the money being laid out for him by a friend ; and if 

 Euphrosyne had won the race, he would have pocketed £8000 

 on the event — in fact, to use his own words, let drop when very 

 drunk, he sJwnld from that hour Jtave been a gentleman. But it 

 now matters little : Mr. Trueman went to his account without 

 having been created a gentleman, by breaking his neck down 

 stairs, when in a state of beastly intoxication ; and our hero 

 purchased a lesson at no very great cost. 



Now, independently of the loss of the stakes, and the honour 

 of being a winner of the Oaks — an honour which, nevertheless, 

 must in this case have lain dormant for a time — there was one 

 very provoking circumstance to Frank Raby, in this foul 

 transaction. He could have sold Rouge for 1000 guineas, on 

 the strength of her place in the betting, whereas she was now 

 worth little more than as many half-crowns — in fact; she was 

 soon afterwards sold at about that figure. Euphrosyne, how- 

 ever, was valuable, and might have been sold for a very 

 considerable sum. To get rid of the thing altogether, however, 

 and to prevent the necessity of his applying to a friend to 

 enable him to paj^ the debts Lord Dauntley had made for him at 

 Tattersall's, and to discharge Mr. Trueman's bill, he accepted 

 an offer made to him, through Trueman, of 800 guineas for 

 her, which, with no great addition from his own present 

 resources, enabled him to discharge all obligations — that to 

 his friend Dauntley, for the original purchase of the hllies, 

 amongst the number. And there was one redeeming quality 

 in Mr. Trueman, the trainer : he left the world without betray- 

 ing the secret as to whom these fillies belonged ; and as our 

 hero had not made any admission to the ' leg,' who made the 



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