54 



Silk and Scarlet. 



themselves so cunning. Dash me ! there was no 

 living dodge that dog wasn't up to. He won fifty times. 

 The Chicken took to drinking when he'd won his 

 battles ; quite an uncultivated man. He died of 

 consumption very early on. Those London bars killed 

 him. 



"Old Short Old Richards — "Short Odds" they 

 Odds." called him — was quite a Mr. Davis at 

 Croxton. What a hatful! of money he won on Mr. 

 Maher's Shugaroo ! it was a hundred to five against 

 him. He was a queerish dresser : brown kerseymere 

 breeches, those brown drill gaiters, and a brown coat 

 and spencer — often a whitish one in summer. He 

 had a choice flower in his button-hole reg'lar. He 

 began as a stocking-maker ; then he bet at the door 

 of a cock-pit ; and on that way. I've met him many 

 a time driving one horse and leading another behind 

 his gig to Newmarket. One of them was a big brown 

 seventeen hands high ; he'd change them about on 

 the road. His own corn always went with him in the 

 gig ; and such a sight of stockings ! They were like 

 money with him. Blame me ! if he didn't always 

 want to pay you in stockings. He had a mill he 

 called Bobbers Mill, near Nottingham ; he took a 

 good bit of the rent for that in stockings. When they 

 drew bricks for his house, he paid them that way. 

 Such a queer fist he wrote. I've often seen him out 

 at Wartnaby Stone Pits and Shoby Scholes ; the gen- 

 tlemen were at him the moment they see him, to lay 

 them against something. One day I hear them say — 

 " There s old Richards, if he hasn't come out hunting 

 with an umbrella r So he says, " /'// bet any one of 

 you five hundred you'll not hunt with or without an 

 umbrella wJien you're my age." " Who's to hold the 

 stakes ?" Captain White says. " Oh ! there'll be some 

 one left zuhen I'm gone ; zve'll leave it to him!' He 

 had a chestnut cob latter part of his time ; always rode 

 very slow. They tell me, eighteen months before his 



