TINWALD DOWNS TO HALLHEATHS. 339 



to spare stables and hovels^ seven-and-twenty horses 

 stood there at one Caledonian Hunt. " The Mar- 

 quis's Stable/' with a racing plate nailed to the 

 door, and '^ The Shadow — loon 57 races'' still legible 

 within its circle, is now a byre with Ayrshire cows 

 and a tortoise-shell bull, not to mention the occa- 

 sional presence of a tortoise-shell tom-cat, which was 

 offered by an old woman to Sir Charles Phipps for 

 ^50, and, on the utter failure of that royal negotia- 

 tion, to Mr. Wilkin, junior, for one. The three-stall 

 stable was the stage upon which General Chasse 

 appeared in. one of his finest sensation dramas, car- 

 rying his boy George Gilchrist about by the hand, 

 and shaking him, as a tiger would a Bengalee, till help 

 arrived and they were forced asunder at the point of 

 the pitchfork. The lads slept in the granary, and 

 Jamie Heughan, who has been forty-eight years with 

 Mr. Wilkin, and three with his father before him, 

 slept there also with a stout cudgel. He was just 

 the man, as they say, in Scotland to " gar kings ken 

 they had a lith i' their necks /^ and being " a mad 

 sort of body,'^ if any lad talked at unhallowed hours 

 or tried to put upon him, he came down so hot and 

 heavy on the beds that, as Mr. Wilkin has it, ^'plenty 

 of your eminent trainers, Derby and Leger men, ivill 

 mind Jamie as long as ever they live.'' 



The principal course was '' once round from the 

 garden gate,'^ and year after year Mr. Wilkin might 

 be seen on his garden terrace with quite a troop of 

 friends. He was never at the St. Leger in his life^, 



2 z 2 



