The Leather Plater. 279 



of a registry office for all the horses which were for sale in the 

 neighbourhood. Lucky for the seller if John passed a favourable 

 verdict on his horse as he sat in solemn conclave smoking his pipe 

 on an evening among the parlour company at the Chequers. And 

 if old John once "crabbed" a horse, the sooner he was sent up to 

 TattersalTs or Aldridge's for unreserved sale, the better for if the 

 fact once got wind, no one on this country side would have looked 

 at him. 



John no sooner heard that it was I who had ridden up, than he 

 came waddling into the parlour to hear all the particulars of the 

 day's racing. Bad news travels fast, and although I had left the 

 course within an hour after the race, the intelligence of our horse's 

 defeat had already reached the Chequers. " Sorry to hear the colt," 

 for with some men who know when a horse was foaled he remains 

 a colt for an indefinite period, " got beat to-day," was his greeting as 

 he shook my hand, and " Excuse me, sir, but I think you made a mis- 

 take this time put him into rather too good company. He did not 

 come of a fast sort. Lots of staying and jumping blood in him, 

 but neither dam or sire had ever pace. I knew them both well. 

 Hope you did not get hit very hard, sir," was his oracular disquisi- 

 tion, after I had sketched him the leading features of the race. 

 Then telling me that he would come in and have a bit of chat with 

 me as soon as I had done my supper, he toddled out of the room, 

 evidently fully impressed with the idea that it was the "colt's" lack 

 of pace, and nothing else, that had lost us the race. It appears that 

 Tom, who rode him, thought so too j but then he did not express 

 his opinion quite so mildly. 



After supper old John again appeared, bearing in two smoking 

 tumblers of hot brandy-and-water and pipes (his "treat," as he 

 observed), and drawing our chairs into the fire, we proceeded to 

 talk over the day's racing, and to canvass the merits and demerits 

 of every horse in the neighbourhood. The fund of horsey lore 

 which the old man possessed was extraordinary. 



Towards the close of our tete-a-tete, and when I was getting rather 

 yawning for a man who has been on horseback all day tires at 



