JUajor Whyte Jllelville 



desire to save himself trouble and to have no unpleasantness. 

 But Mr. Sawyer was punished all the same. Did the 

 Honble. Crasher invent the punishment } Anyhow, he 

 persuaded Mr. Sawyer to sit behind Marathon, who had 

 never been in harness before, and a chestnut horse who 

 was a bad starter, in a phaeton to go out to dinner with 

 Parson Dove. Crasher was a most casual coachman with no 

 nerves, and contrived, either by accident or design, to give his 

 friend a really bad time, and on the way home drove clean 

 through a shut gate and smashed the whole turn-out to pieces. 

 The affair of Marathon is interesting because it opens 

 up the whole question of the ethics of horse-dealing. Did 

 our ancestors deliberately ' do ' their friends in this shame- 

 less manner 1 Of course literature is not sworn testimony. 

 But it is difficult to believe that Major Whyte Melville 

 would himself have suppressed the trial. Mr. Sawyer was 

 supposed to know how to ' play the game,' and yet he was 

 undoubtedly guilty of what we should call sharp practice. 

 To-day the buyer is almost too well protected. If he buys 

 a horse at auction described as a ' good hunter,' he can send 

 the animal back unless he can do pretty nearly everything 

 except talk. If he buys from a dealer he can try the horse 

 over made fences, or over the natural country, or in many 

 cases get a day's hunting on him for nothing, and then 

 send any vet. he likes to examine him. Perhaps real ras- 

 cality is reserved, as in ' Market Harhorough^' for private 

 dealings between friends. Maybe those people are right 

 who will buy a horse from any one except a close friend. 



67 



