CHASING AND RACING 213 



it unless you have the whole bunch of tricks up your 

 sleeve. Gee, if you begin monkeying with the 

 proposition you're sure going to get unstuck ! " 



These words of wisdom from the wizard of the 

 West have been amply justified, seeing what deplorable 

 horsemanship was obvious when " the crouch " came 

 into universal use. Sloan managed to win on horses 

 which had erstwhile been regarded as only fit for cats' 

 meat. Apart from his seat, he had the best of hands, and 

 always seemed to be on most excellent terms with his 

 mounts. The flail as a means of exacting an expiring 

 effort from a horse which had already exerted its last 

 normal effort to win was " off the map " as far as Tod 

 was concerned, for he was a genuine lover of horse-flesh. 



He was a manikin of brains, and a keen observer 

 and judge of humanity. It is true that his phenomenal 

 success and the adulation which it involved, caused his 

 cranium considerably to expand; but if you could get 

 him alone and in one of his more reasonable frames of 

 mind, you would discover in him a philosopher and a 

 wit, broad-minded, sympathetic, and with a heart out 

 of all proportion to the body which contained it. 



It had been supposed that Sloan's disappearance 

 from active connections with the Turf was due to his 

 being " warned off." Such, however, was not the case. 



He had been indulging in heavy betting on one 

 of his mounts, Codoman, on which he " had a hunch " 

 that he was sure to win the Cambridgeshire. 



This was, strictly speaking, against a rule, which, 



