A JOURNEY DUE NORTH 253 



with the latter an occasional day's sport in the 

 season. It is true, his dogs lived in the attics and 

 his horses in the cellar, there being no sanitary 

 inspectors in those days. House rent must have 

 been very low, and the young squire did a good turn 

 now and then for a brewer, a corn-chandler, and the 

 butchers of Clare Market, and so pulled through until 

 better times came. 



However, this could not have been George, my 

 hero of the turf, for he was left an orphan in 1793, 

 only six 5'ears old. The Squire once rode on horse- 

 back a distance of two hundred miles in eight hours 

 and forty-two minutes. He sat in Parliament for 

 East Eetford, and fought duels with Lord George 

 Bentinck and the famous ex-pugilist and Member of 

 Parliament, Gully. 



'Lastly,' says a writer of the early thirties, 'Mr. 

 Osbaldeston has made his appearance on the Heath 

 [Newmarket] , not as the Hercules of horsemen, as 

 he proved himself in his awful match against time, 

 but as the owner of a string of race-horses. We had 

 rather see the Squire with his hounds in Northamp- 

 tonshire, where nothing can eclipse his fame.' 



Osbaldeston' s feats are set out, in more or less 

 detail, in no fewer than nine considerable works of 

 reference. He died in 1866. 



The rattle of the pole-chains of the mail-coach is 

 still heard in Scotland. It may be only a short career 

 which is left to the old Fort William coach from 

 Kingussie in the Highlands. But, meanwhile, where 



