136 KINGSCLERE 



not had any cause to vary his view or mitigate his 

 surprise since. Windgall was fourth in the Duke 

 of York Stakes at Kempton, but at the Newmarket 

 Houghton Meeting he was second in the Old 

 Cambridgeshire Handicap, giving i st. 10 lb. to 

 Pensioner, and again only beaten by a head. Had 

 he not run in the October Handicap, he might have 

 pulled off the Cambridgeshire, and La Fleche could 

 have hardly lost the Cesarewitch, therefore the 

 double event was on the cards. This brings us to 

 La Fleche. The sum paid for this yearling, five 

 thousand five hundred guineas, at the time the record 

 price, was enormous, and to many shrewd judges 

 appeared out of all reason. The purchase of thousand 

 and even two thousand guinea yearlings appeared 

 quite ordinary occurrences of the sale ring in com- 

 parison. It should properly be mentioned that it was 

 solely on the judgment of his Royal Highness the 

 Prince of Wales that Baron de Hirsch bid as high 

 for the prettily named daughter of St. Simon and 

 Quiver. Neither Lord Marcus Beresford nor John 

 Porter would have felt justified in advising the Baron 

 to go so far, although they were agreed that she 

 was a beautiful filly and the cream of the bowl. 

 It was a plucky thing on the part of Baron de 

 Hirsch to outbid the Duke of Portland, and the 

 magnificent career of the filly abundantly justi- 

 fied the judgment of the Prince of Wales. She cost 

 five thousand five hundred guineas, it is true, but 

 she won from first to last in stakes 31,153/. This 

 by the way. She ran unbeaten as a two-year-old, 



