84 SPORTING STORIES 



let her down very quietly, and waded her across the brook, 

 to go up this ditch. She made a plunge or two, and I 

 went up it twenty yards, and into the field. I had still three 

 fences to jump, and a gate at the finish. My mare was so 

 beat I scrambled her on to them, and then we scrambled 

 out. The gate was locked, so I crammed her round the 

 gate-post between the gate and the hedge. She was just 

 like my old horse Bendigo — ^jump anywhere she could get 

 her head. So I got to the winning-post, and into the 

 farm-house, and had a glass of brandy and water before 

 he was out of the brook. It was the only steeplechase I 

 ever rode. I was to have ridden another the next week at 

 Cheltenham, only the horse broke down, and very glad I 

 was. I never wish to ride another." 



It was about this time that the sport was introduced 

 into France by M. de Thennberg, who established steeple- 

 chasing at Haras du Pen, 300 miles from Paris. A 

 handicap claiming race was set on foot, and ten or twelve 

 English horses entered. The peasants, in their zeal to 

 get a high test, secured and mortised together the stiffest 

 posts and rails so that nothing could break them, the 

 fences were built up with wires, a ditch was dammed 

 back until it swelled into a bog, and Multum in Parvo, a 

 fifteen-one Lincolnshire hunter, and Saucy Boy, with 

 heavily repaired hocks, were the only two that got over 

 the ground at all. Their victory roused the Frenchmen 

 to a frenzy of excitement. Jem Hill (not to be confounded 

 with the Jem Hills already mentioned), who rode Multum 

 in Parvo, was carried to scale on their shoulders. But 

 what Jem considered a greater triumph was when the 

 prefect of the commune insisted on paying him the 

 prize (a good sum) in five-franc pieces. " Only to think, 

 master," he said, as he literally staggered beneath the 

 weight of coin back to his tent, " that I should go and win 

 more money than I can carry." Next year Jem won again 

 on Stoker, when there was quite as much excitement and 

 much less to jump. 



Poor Jem's luck, however, was brought to an end by a 

 strange fatality. He was entrusted with the care of some 

 horses intended for the King of Sardinia, which he was to 



