280 . The Leather Plater. 



length, even of talking about horses, that most prolific of all 

 sources of conversation old John observed, that " he thought he 

 knew of a colt which would just suit me, if I could only buy him 

 right." 



" Do you ?" I carelessly answered -, " and where is that ?" 

 The fact is, he had just woke me up out of a brown study, in 

 which I was engaged in drawing up a mental balance-sheet a kind 

 of profit and loss account between the brown horse and myself 

 and trying to calculate how many horses it would take to ruin a 

 man of my means, if he was in the habit of bringing them out 

 over and over again to be beaten, as I was just then doing. 

 " You know Shark's Lodge, up at Holliwell ?" inquired he. 

 " Oh, yes, near the gibbet, where our hounds often meet." 

 ''Well, do you know old Jack Radford, who lives up there ?" 

 " I've seen the old beggar, but I can't say I know much of him ; 

 nor do I want, if all I hear is true, for they tell me a rougher, 

 surlier old customer never breathed." 



"Yes, he is certainly not very polished, but old Jack's a good 

 sort at bottom, for all that. I've known him many years before 

 ever he came into this country, and I never knew him tell a lie 

 or put a friend in the hole in his life. Now he's got a two-year-old 

 bay colt will be three this grass by Mulatto out of his old black 

 mare Plover, that will make a galloper some day or other, or I'm 

 out in my reckoning. Now you take my advice get rid of this 

 one; he'll only lose you heaps of money. He'll never be fast 

 enough for a steeple-chase, but is just the very horse to carry 

 Charley, the first whip j and he's a good-looking one too. They'll 

 give you all the money you ask for him up at the stables ; I've had 

 a little conversation with my brother on the subject. And you take 

 and buy old Jack Radford's colt, and go into leather plating at once. 

 He's as near thorough-bred as Eclipse for, though the old mare 

 has got a stain, there's not many besides old Jack and myself can 

 tell you where it lies yet he'll always be a half-bred 'un, and 

 nothing else ; and you'll be able to run him for any half-bred 

 stakes in England, when and where you please." He then launched 



