1 1 2 Silk and ScarleL 



answer ; and as faith was of course kept, a punish- 

 ing finish ended in a dead heat. Buckle always 

 whipped overhand, whereas Robinson never did, un- 

 less he was vexed with his horse. In this instance 

 he especially rejoiced in his opportunity, as while he 

 was buckling his rein the week before, in the Ditch 

 Stables, when they were about to try, the horse 

 savaged him, and not content with flinging him into a 

 corner, knelt upon him, and would have finished him 

 out of hand if Lords Exeter and Foley and Dick 

 Prince had not rushed to the rescue with their walking- 

 sticks. After being beat in his trial, Ardrossan went 

 home quietly enough, and then he flung his boy into 

 the manger, and bit off his thumb. It was for these 

 double enormities that Robinson paid him off in the 

 dead heat, and the horse never forgave him. Two 

 years after, when he visited Burleigh, Lord Exeter 

 at last prevailed upon him to enter his stable on the 

 assurance that " weve got him as qitiet as a lamb ;' 

 but the instant Ardrossan saw him, he broke his 

 halter, and his visitors were fain to scuttle out forth- 

 with. As years grew on he found a worthy successor 

 at Newmarket in Kesheng, who sent an eminent painter, 

 pots, palette, mahl-stick, and all on to his back 

 among the straw, and then bit off his lad's ear so 

 neatly that he has been christened " Kesheng" unto 

 this day. 



Another of these great matches was for five hundred 

 apiece between Dictator and Merlin. Each side had 

 some thirty thousand depending on the result, and 

 each jockey would have almost given his right hand 

 to win. Buckle waited with Dictator on the whip- 

 hand to the bushes, where the apparition of an old 

 woman with an unfurled umbrella made his horse 

 swerve to the left across Merlin's heels. This let 

 Robinson steal two lengths, and lost Buckle the race 

 by a neck, and a thousand pound fee from Mr. Blake 

 into the bargain. The whip race between Mameluke 



