122 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



not wish their debtor to obtain the protection of a seat 

 in Parliament. Be that as it may, the incarceration of 

 " King " Hudson certainly cost Sir Harcourt Johnstone 

 the seat, and sent Mr Bagnall into Parliament : a result 

 which by him was doubtless regarded as an unmitigated 

 nuisance, for he was a busy man whom politics did not 

 interest in the slightest degree. 



That same year, 1868, the innovation of keeping terriers 

 at Rugby became established. I have already mentioned 

 the advent of Jester, whom I bought for 5 as a six-months- 

 old puppy from one Holmes of Cottingham, who had him 

 from his breeder, T. Wootton, of Mapperley, Nottingham, 

 and a rare good terrier Jester was. I soon became 

 possessed of others, and my friends aspired to terriers of 

 their own, so that I had to provide them, and did so, 

 nothing loth, much as you hear of boys nowadays doing 

 business with one another in stamps. 



An old photograph illustrating this phase of the career 

 of some of us may interest and amuse some of the readers 

 of this book. It shows Stuart Wortley with Vic. on the 

 right, Still on the left with Fret, Coles in the centre with 

 a terrier whose name I have forgotten, and Holden seated 

 on the floor, with a rough dog called Pepper. I am stand- 

 ing over them almost in the semblance of a benefactor. 

 Whether I had a dog there or not is lost to memory, but 

 if I had, he does not come into the picture. We used to 

 keep these terriers with Knight, the pastrycook, as already 

 stated in the case of Jester. Knight had the peculiar 

 privilege of being allowed to wheel his barrow of jam 

 tarts and such-like about the Close when matches were 

 on, and I often wondered if the other fellows would have 

 patronised him as they did had they been possessed of our 

 knowledge. The dogs used to live in tubs under the 

 shelves on which he rolled his paste, and on a shelf above 

 were pots of jam intermixed with pots of mange or other 

 ointment for dogs. Knight showed no favouritism as 

 between these various pots, and if he had occasion while 

 making tarts to rub ointment on the skin of one of the 



