2oa The Best Fourteen-Hander in England. 



Russell's noted jump, which he had also witnessed and measured j 

 and this he considered wonderful for a pony. I borrowed a hat 

 and pea-jacket of the old man, and rode home in the evening on a 

 horse of his, leaving the little mare in his hands to see what he 

 could make of her, feeling confident in my own mind that 7 had 

 made a very bad day's work with my new purchase. 



Of course such an affair as this made a bit of a stir in a little 

 country neighbourhood, where people are dying for the want of 

 something to talk about j and a pretty story they got up about me. 

 " Give a dog a bad name and you hang him," is an old and a true 

 saying ; and as " casualty horses " generally prove to be casualty 

 horses in more ways than one to their owners, and as there was 

 generally a 'goodish deal of larking going on about us in those days 

 in which, as in duty bound, I took my part I was, as the police 

 would say, rather a marked man, and got the credit for many a lark 

 with which I had not the least to do. However, I could not deny 

 this last little freak, which no one was charitable enough to attribute 

 to its right cause that of accident. Oh, no ! it was all planned at 

 old Jackson's ! After a champagne breakfast, I had backed my- 

 self to clear the turnpike-gate, and reach the village where the old 

 nabob lived, in so many minutes j and the poor vet. (who was as 

 innocent as a child unborn of any foreknowledge that I was even 

 going to ride the little mare on that day) was, as they said, stationed 

 in the lane to see that it was done. 



Such was the tale that got bruited about in the morning, and 

 which, of course, reached the ears of the old nabob and his daughter. 

 Little did I know what strictures were passed upon my conduct by 

 all the old gossips in the neighbourhood j and it is perhaps as well 

 I did not. No one was a bit surprised at my leaping the turnpike- 

 stile, for they all said I was just the sort of fellow to do it j but to 

 choose the Sunday! of all days ! for such a feat, and just as every- 

 body was going into church it was disgraceful it was wicked it 

 was scarcely to be believed ! 



lu our little market-town we had a nasty little weekly paper, 



