JAMES MERRY 



just outside the railway station ! This was certainly 

 a very severe test for a horse who had run a hard 

 race on the preceding day, but he stood it gallantly, 

 and stepped out as soundly as possible. Mr. Bland 

 of Newbury, a well-known veterinary surgeon, was 

 at once summoned to thoroughly examine him, 

 and wired to Mr. Merry at Epsom on the Friday, 

 " Slight fever in both fore-feet." This wire was 

 shown to Matt Plews, the plater to the stable, 

 whose terse comment, " He's a liar," was a good 

 deal more forcible than polite. It is a curious fact 

 that George Fordham's usual confidence quite 

 deserted him prior to this memorable Derby. He 

 sat in the weighing-room, looking very pale and 

 nervously biting his nails, and when Waugh tried 

 to cheer him up by telling him that he could not 

 possibly be beaten, all the reply he could get was, 

 " You never know ; there's no such thing as a 

 certainty." This was a very different spirit from 

 that in which he had mounted Lord Clifden, 

 observing, " No one but me knows how good this 

 horse is," and made all the running on him just 

 seven years previously, and, had his confidence 

 been less overweening upon that occasion, I do 

 not think that the name of Macaroni would ever 

 have been enrolled on the list of Derby winners. 



Thus the real cause of Macgregor's defeat is 

 still wrapped in apparently impenetrable mystery. 

 It is absolutely certain that the colt went about 

 the best gallop of his life on the Monday before 

 the race, that he was not " got at " in any way, and 

 that he did not break down in the course of the 

 struggle itself. James Waugh is utterly unable to 

 offer any solution of the enigma, and it seems very 

 unlikely now that the matter will ever be satis- 

 factorily cleared up. Relations had been somewhat 

 strained between Mr. Merry and his trainer ever 



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