244 Saddle and Sirloin. 



Still he seemed a most willing annual victim, and 

 " parted" so well, that, if he got value received, he 

 must have consumed nearly a ream of return-lists. 

 He first became such an especial character at Don- 

 caster when he led back his namesake to scale. He 

 was only seventy-four then ; but, ever after that, the 

 St. Leger jockeys looked for his hand-shake as the 

 seal of victory when they passed through the little 

 white gate of Fame. After Bill Scott died, he seemed 

 to have a great partiality for Nat. The last winning 

 horse he ever went to meet was The Lawyer, but he 

 did not lead him in. The trainers of the cracks 

 generally made a point of sending him word when 

 they would strip their horses for him to look 

 over, and he made a special point of visiting Old 

 Calabar. 



He was very fond of a morning at Whitewall, and 

 till within a fortnight of his death, he often said, " I 

 shall be able to go and see Mr. Scott again," and, in 

 fact, he quite built on that visit, which was never to 

 be. There was a languor and general failing about 

 him at Doncaster in " The Marquis's" year, and when 

 his friends noted that he gladly sat down between 

 the races, and came to the course in a carriage on the 

 Friday, they might well feel a foreboding that he had 

 paid his last visit to the " Moor." The real truth was 

 that he had rather martyred himself with a new pair 

 of top-boots (which he always had made at Don- 

 caster), and would not send home for a pair of easy 

 ones ; but still the decline had begun. 



A little quiet after Doncaster revived him, and he 

 was once more away by the early train to Holderness. 

 The late Mr. Leonard, of Hull, to whom he had sold 

 his beasts for many years, was too ill to meet him, as 

 of yore, and he did business with his son, and calcu- 

 lated the weight and value as closely as ever. He 

 talked with apparent zest of old friends and times in 

 Hull, but there were not lacking symptoms that his 



