Trials. 141 



course Charles was the best, though Hetman could 

 have beaten him for speed at a mile and a half; and 

 the knotty point now was, which was the safest horse 

 of the two to carry the stable money for the St. Leger. 

 Ever since his Liverpool victory, Harry Edwards had 

 pronounced Hetman a v/onder, but George Taylor 

 was in the saddle on that eventful morning, and after 

 a finish up the Pigburn Hill, in which every ounce was 

 jobbed or spurred out of them for the time being, 

 Scott just contrived to win by a head. Alas ! that 

 such a finish should find no record in Weatherby ! 

 Newminster's St. Leger trial at Doncaster was a 

 widely different affair. The Corporation Steward had 

 only the office from the landlord of The Salutation, 

 (where the trainer and jockeys sat out the night,) to 

 take up the chains by four o'clock, and their party 

 stole quietly out of their parlour down the meadows 

 behind to meet the horses in Carr-lane. In their 

 innocence, they thought it a monstrous good thing if 

 Newminster could run with Backbiter at /lbs., whereas 

 " Sim" had him so far beat at the Red House, that 

 when they saw but one horse looming through the 

 mist, they concluded that it must of a surety be the 

 old one, and that Beeswing's son had been pulled up. 

 Hambleton was always, from its The Velocipede 

 springy peat subsoil, a favourite trial Trial, 



ground for Whitewall, and they duly repaired to it in 

 the year of Mundig, alias " The Red Cow." It was 

 there too that Scott on Lady le Gros, and Holmes on 

 Touchstone, had a measure, and each firmly believed 

 that the other had been " foxing a bit." Here, too. 

 Bob Heseltine showed Bill how The Cure could dis- 

 pose of Alice Hawthorne at weight for age, and by 

 repeating the exhibition to friend upon friend, caused 

 old Forth's white hat to be hurled aloft after the St. 

 Leger instead of his own. It was the scene too of the 

 atal breakdown of Velocipede, in the greatest trial 

 that was ever yet run. George Izard came with the 



