The Betting Ring. 6i 



wildly about, as if some great and long pent-up revo- 

 lution had burst forth at last ; and near the Piccadilly 

 Circus especially, that favoured haunt of the Ring, the 

 delirium raged furiously. The rise and fall of the odds 

 on the eve of a great race were such delicate opera- 

 tions that the listers had outlying picquets watching 

 at each other's shops, to give instant intelligence if 

 there was a commission to skin them. The news flew 

 like wildfire from house to house, so that a commis- 

 sioner often found the odds altered long before he had 

 half finished his rounds. They had also paid spies among 

 the railway porters, especially at the Eastern Counties, 

 to tell them what horses were put on to the boxes for 

 Newmarket there; but the "velveteens" had but 

 little notion of their business, and when one of them 

 had spent all his dinner hour and several shillings in 

 cab hire, rushing about to his employers, to tell them 

 that Vermuth and not Aphrodite had gone down for 

 the One Thousand Guineas, it turned out that the little 

 groom had only been quizzing him. These little epi- 

 sodes were of constant occurrence. A London chamber- 

 maid happened, in the fulness of her heart, to tell an 

 old gentleman that she had won 8/., like a true- 

 hearted lass that she was, by backing Daniel O'Rourke 

 (because he came from her own county) for the Derby, 

 and her confidante instantly wrote to the Times, de- 

 manding to know if his dressing-case could any longer 

 be safe near such a dangerous maiden. There was the 

 metropolitan beadle, too, who backed Ninnyhammer 

 at 5/. to 5^,, and spent a most restless Sunday before 

 the Derby, in consequence of some one stealing his 

 list ticket for a joke. Little did the charity children 

 know what an agitated but yet ** noble sportsman" 

 preceded them, cocked-hat on head and stafi" in hand, 

 to church that day ! Then there was the widow, who 

 would have had to apply to the parish for a coffin for 

 her groom-husband, if she had not found a 100/. 

 winning Glauca ticket in his corduroys, and got some 



