LEATHER-FLAPPING 163 



" By gor ! but he's a great la'nching 'oss ! " ejaculated 

 he, when he gazed at the tall, gaunt form of our supposed 

 champion. 



I have told in another book how I humoured the 

 butcher's whim, and after a gallop in which I rode Drum 

 Major and easily beat Brown Shales I suffered him to 

 take both horses to the leather-flapping fixture at Haxby, 

 where the course was down a sandy lane, and there he and 

 his brother Anthony entered both the horses. Drum 

 Major won his race, but Brown Shales just failed to win 

 his. They were heat races, and after Drum Major had 

 passed the post easily first in the second heat as he had 

 done in the first the judge, who sat in a wagon and had 

 been taking a drink and not looking, declared it a dead heat. 

 John Batty was speechless with indignation, and said to 

 me : " Wait till I get three penn'orth o' rum into me, and 

 then I'll talk tiv him !" 



However, the third heat intervened, and as Drum Major 

 won that beyond all possible doubt, even the " three 

 penn'orth of rum " did not prevent anger from evaporating. 



Those old country " leather-flapping " races were quite 

 good sport in their way, and nothing at all akin to the 

 hybrid fixtures which from time to time of late years 

 have been organised as a miserable substitute for racing 

 under Jockey Club rules. 



We were much encouraged by the form Drum Major, 

 in a totally untrained condition, had shown at Haxby, 

 and decided to run him at a much more ambitious meeting 

 at My ton, in Major Stapylton's park. Having treated 

 his joints with " neurasthenipponskelesterizo " and stood 

 him daily in the running water that flows from Newburgh 

 fishpond ; having also galloped him and sweated him 

 round the town's pasture morning by morning and I 

 rode him myself generally, for our own groom could not 

 be persuaded to go fast enoughwe finally galloped him 

 on Hambleton with a big, raw five-year-old by Pontifex, 

 bred by John Coates of Angram, and called after that 

 farm. This horse had been lent to my sister on trial, and 



