Trials. 



131 



great an adept as Oakley. With such proofs of his 

 form to guide them, they got well on him for the 

 Ascot Cup ; and as Nat was engaged for Alarm, Jem 

 Robinson was put up. Unfortunately the bay made 

 " a merry rascal" of himself at the post, broke his 

 bridle, and put his jockey down ; and when he did get 

 off, he jumped the road, and his leg gave way. His 

 half-brother, Surplice, had been tried high enough in 

 public before he migrated from Sussex to New- 

 market ; but Stockwell, with what the touts guessed 

 to be nine stone seven, (for who has yet penetrated the 

 Asiatic mystery of an Exeter trial T) was seen catch- 

 ing in succession seven or eight who were turned loose 

 to make play, and only failing to reach little Midas, 

 with nearly, three stone less by a neck. 



Wilts has its great Fyfield trial, wherein Teddington 

 and Storyteller at even weights routed The Ban at 

 2 1 lbs., and Vatican at 61bs., as effectually as the 

 Royalists had done the Roundheads and Fygeid Ben- 

 Sir William Waller, on Roundaway Down, hams, and Hey- 

 two hundred seasons before. The Let- *^^°P' 

 combe Downs can also take up the tale for Berk- 

 shire. It was there that Tom Parr asked Saucebox, 

 on the Friday before the St. Leger, to be as good as 

 Scythian, in the Chester Cup, and with Fanny Gray 

 to make the running, and Mortimer to take it up at 

 the end of a mile, got an answer in the affirmative, 

 with five lengths to spare. Here, too, Weathergage 

 met Melford, three years his senior, and with all his 

 Worcestershire honours fresh upon him, and made so 

 light of him at evens, that his party found that the 

 Goodwood Stakes secret was well worth having, albeit 

 they had been bound over to lay thirty to one to 200/., 

 for the possession of it. On we go to Oxfordshire, 

 and the scene shifts back thrice seven years, to the 

 ruins of Heythrop and its richly-wooded dells. Start- 

 ing in one of them, at Painter's signal, just below the 

 kennels, the mighty Coronation might be seen " suffer- 



K 2 



