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, 



