i 4 2 KINGSCLERE 



Beresford, and Mr. Portal paid a visit to Kingsclere. 

 They saw the horses at five o'clock, or ' afternoon 

 stable.' Naturally, special interest attached to the 

 inspection of Orme. While looking him over 

 Porter noticed that saliva was oozing through the 

 muzzle which he always wore when he was being 

 dressed, owing to a habit he had of biting his chain. 

 After finishing with him, the trainer visited the 

 remainder of the horses accompanied by his dis- 

 tinguished guests, and then came back to Orme, 

 when he re-examined the horse and cross-examined 

 the boy. Had the latter noticed anything wrong 

 with his charge before ? The youngster replied in 

 the negative. Porter removed the muzzle, and 

 made as searching an inspection of the horse's 

 mouth as was possible under the circumstances. 

 As it was the period of teeth-shedding, the trainer 

 thought that Orme had accidentally parted with a 

 tooth. Thereupon he wired to Leoffler, the horse 

 dentist at Newmarket, to come to Kingsclere and 

 look at Orme. He arrived and extracted an incisor, 

 which, however, would have come away in the 

 natural course of shedding. Leoffler, nevertheless, 

 stoutly declared that the tooth was diseased. That 

 declaration, however, Porter takes leave to think 

 was sheer nonsense. The tooth was sound enough. 

 As to the odour which the operator detected, it 

 simply arose from the decomposed food which clung 

 to it. But poor Leoffler was at the time evidently 

 suffering from mental excitement. It will be re- 

 membered that the diseased tooth theory was taken 



