THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 149 



disputing with, served me thus : having won ten pounds 

 from him yesterday, I went up to him to-day, and said, 

 very civilly, ' I will thank you for ten pounds ; ' on which 

 he replied, 'I beg pardon, sir, / have ten pounds to receive 

 from you.' " 



" And did you pay the fellow ? " said Lady Charlotte. 



" I did not/' replied Frank, " but I lost the ten pounds 

 I won from him. Then that old Irishman is, I under- 

 stand, famous for making wrangles, and disputing bets 

 which he loses. But the greatest adept of them all, is the 

 well-dressed rascal you first saw me speaking to. He has 

 a method of half-shutting one eye, so as to give the 

 appearance of being blind of it. This device serves him 

 in two ways. When he makes a bet with a stranger, he 

 appears blind of an eye, previous to the event being de- 

 cided ; if the bet is lost, he shows two good eyes, and 

 the stranger being in pursuit of a one-eyed man to pay 

 him his money, overlooks him in the crowd, and, of 

 course, never gets paid. Then, again, I heard of his 

 doing a very neat thing, the other day, by the help of 

 this accommodating eye. He lost twenty pounds to a 

 stranger, on a race, having his eye closed when he made 

 the bet. On the result being against him, he thus 

 addressed his antagonist, with his eye wide open : ' I 

 believe, sir, I owe you twenty pounds.' ' You mistake 

 sir,' replied the other, ' I had only one bet on the race, 

 and that was icith a one-eyed gentleman.' " 



" Well, really, Francis," observed Lady Charlotte, " I 

 think you must be a very great simpleton to have any- 

 thing to do with such scoundrels ; in fact, it is only 

 with simpletons that they dare to play such tricks. As 

 you cannot be a match for them, I hope you will, from 

 this time forth, have nothing more to do with them." 



Our hero made no reply, and so the matter dropped. 



The other incident which occurred is of a more harmless 

 nature. In the days to which I am now alluding, it was 

 the custom for the public dinners, or " ordinaries," as 

 they are termed, at race meetings, to be attended by the 

 gentlemen of rank and wealth in the neighbourhood, as 

 well as, occasionally, by a few whose situation in life, 

 although respectable, did not allow of their being in such 

 good company on any other occasion. Amongst the latter 

 class was a wealthy young yeoman, fond of racing and 

 hunting almost to insanity, but who, from his appearance 



