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A VISIT TO MY DISCONTENTED COUSIN.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE JOCKEY.

HIS anecdote was pleasantly told, and well received. The conversation then became general, and we talked the usual round of weather, crops, and politics, and at last the subject of horse-racing and the Derby was brought up.

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'Pity the whole concern is so blackguard,' said the Colonel. 'From the racing peer to the betting peasant they are all scamps.'

'They are so, I believe,' said Mr. Rendelson, ' and yet I once had professionally to investigate a case which disclosed some singular traits among them of a different cast. The story is perfectly true, although so strange as hardly to seem credible. 'Very early in my professional life, and therefore a great many years ago, I was consulted by a gentleman of large fortune, well known on the turf, under the following singular circumstances. It seemed that my informant in the course of that year had a racehorse which was first favourite for one of the great races, and that this horse had broken down most suspiciously while almost in the act of winning the race. The owner I may call him Mr. Stanton, although that was not his real name -was exceedingly annoyed and disgusted, and particularly displeased with his trainer and jockey, by whom the animal was ridden. He resolved to dismiss the jockey, break up his stables, and give up the turf altogether.

'The jockey, whose name was Tom White, had previously stood very well in the racing world, as a keen and honest lad. He had been distressed beyond measure at his failure, and had shed bitter tears in the moment of defeat. He assured Mr. Stanton that the accident must have been owing to foul play-that

the horse had been got at somehow -and that without greater precautions than had been used, no gentleman need attempt to train.

'Mr. Stanton believed that this was substantially true, but was firmly convinced that Mr. Tom White was not unacquainted with the source of the calamity. He there fore remained firm to his resolution of selling his stud, and dismissing White, which last he did. Tom got an engagement in the North, and left that district of country altogether.

"Tom made but little remonstrance against his dismissal. What he most seemed to feel was leaving the yearling colts, in which he had taken much pride, and in particular one of which he had great expectations, and had called, on his own account, the "Red Rover." He was rather a bony shapeless animal, and judges thought little of him; but Tom, who revered no one's opinion but his own, was always loud in his praises to his master. His last words, as he was leaving were, "Don't 'ee sell the couts, squoiredon't 'ee sell 'Red Rover '-he be a rare 'un, he be; and with this friendly caution Tom White went on his way, and was seen no more.

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'In the spring following, Mr. Stanton advertised his stud for sale. Two days before the time appointed, the stud-groom presented himself to Mr. Stanton, while at breakfast, with a face of ashy paleness and trembling limbs.

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"Please sir, 'Red Rover' be stole was all his faltering tongue could express.

"""Red Rover' stolen! That is impossible, my lad. He was locked up in the stable last night-I saw it done myself."

6.66 They be off wi' him this morn

ing, anyhow," said the lad. "His stall was empty when we went at seven o'clock, and we can't see him nowhere."

Although Mr. Stanton had not the same exalted opinion of "Red Rover's" capacity that Tom White had, he thought him a promising colt, but so utterly unformed as hardly to have tempted a "professional" to such an act. But the audacity of the theft made him very indignant, and determined him to find out the perpetrator.

"The examination of the premises threw no light on the mystery, excepting that it became certain that, however accomplished, the theft had not been committed by violence. Nothing was broken-nothing out of order. The locks were entire, and the head man in the stables corroborated the lad in attesting that the doors were found locked in the morning.

'Such was the tale with which Mr. Stanton resorted to my advice. No clue whatever could be found to the perpetrator unless the ordinary and simple one, that the stable servants had connived at the theft. But Mr. Stanton owned that there had been nothing in their manner to warrant this suspicion, although he was entirely at a loss to account for the outrage on any other supposition.

'I did all I could under the circumstances. I advertised far and wide; I warned the great railway lines, and employed the most eminent detective whom Scotland Yard could furnish. But not the slightest trace could be discovered, excepting that a man had been stopped at Hexham, with a colt of which he would give no satisfactory account; but, as it was a grey, and "Red Rover" was a reddish-brown, the magistrate not only would not detain the man, but reprimanded the police for apprehending him when they had the description of the stolen horse in their hands.

'Nothing had been heard of Tom White since his departure, nor did any one know whither he had gone. It did cross Mr. Stanton's mind that if Tom White had been in the district he was not unlikely to have been of use in the inquiry. But no one had seen or heard of him, and Mr. Stanton was obliged to content himself with a second dismissal of his servants. The detective was always under the impression that the man at Hexham was truly the thief, and made no secret of his opinion that the magistrate who liberated him was a donkey; but he was

a taciturn potentate by nature, and never condescended to explain a clue which he had nevertheless followed up until it broke.

'Two years afterwards there was some curiosity excited at one of the great races of the year about a horse which was so completely "dark" as to be almost out of the betting altogether. The name of the owner under which he ran was a turfname assumed for the occasion; but he was understood to be the property of, or at least to be vouched for, by a well-known halfsquire half-trainer. But what he was, or where he was, no one knew. The "touts were utterly at fault. They could not discover the place at which he was training, and as no efforts they had made had led to any result, unfriended as the animal was by backers, there was considerable expectation created on his appearance.

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The horse could not be heard of the night before. Deserter" had not reported himself. But when the ground was cleared for the preliminary canter he appeared, and great was the rush to the front to see him. The first glimpse of him showed he was formidable; the long swinging, well-extended stride with which he took his canter impressed all the knowing ones. He was large and sinewy, powerful as well as handsome, but his colour was a

kind of mottled chesnut, such as is rarely found in thoroughbreds. Mr. Stanton was there, and to his surprise saw his old friend, Tom White, mounted on the cynosure of the day.

'The race was never in doubt. The stranger, hard held, remained behind the front horses until three hundred yards from the post, and then, let out, ran home by himself, amid the shouts and acclamations of the multitude.

'The race over, "Deserter" vanished as mysteriously as he came, and in spite of Mr. Stanton's inquiries, no tidings of Tom White could be discovered.

'A week afterwards a groom arrived at Mr. Stanton's, leading a reddish-brown thoroughbred of great power, and delivered to Mr. Stanton a note to the following effect:

Mr. Stanton-Sir, I send you back the 'Red Rover,' as I borrowed two years ago. I knew he could do it, if I got him away from the nobblers. So I borrowed him, and I beg your pardon if it was wrong. I have paid into your bank for you 2,500l., which was the stakes, and I hope you will overlook the time when Revenge' was nobbled.

Your most obedient servant,
T. WHITE.

I am off to Australia, and have made a pretty penny by the 'Deserter,' which was 'Red Rover.'

'However irregular Tom White's way of doing business was, of course, after such a result, Mr. Stanton could hardly find fault with it. He sent me the note, and begged of me to find Tom White and learn some more particulars; and with some difficulty I found him at Liverpool about to sail for Australia. When I assured him I had no hostile intentions, but quite the contrary, he gave me a full account of his proceedings. I translate Tom's Doric into vernacular.

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have done it. I punched his head handsome for it, however, soon after. But I durst not have split, and had to go; and serve me right. Only it broke my heart to lose the race, and leave 'Red Rover.'

"There's a many people," said Tom, "that thinks they're judges of a horse. Them swells think it, and snobs, and knowing coves of the ring. Lord bless you, sir, they knows nothing. They goes, and they looks, and feels, and tries a walk and a gallop, and looks wise, and thinks they are fly to everything. If you want to learn about a horse, you must see him all day and every day. They are like the women, sir. Unless you see them in all weathers you will never know anything about them; and even then it is not much to trust to. I knowed 'Red Rover.' He was a rough 'un to look at, and no one but myself had a thought of what he could do. But I knew that for his age he was a flyer and a stayer such as I never mounted afore.

""Well, I hears that 'Red Rover' was to be sold. I was mortal sorry, for I thought to myself that he would help the squire to win back the money he lost on 'Revenge.' But selling was a thing I could not suffer. So I resolved to steal himfor the squire.

"This was the way on it. When I was a bit of a boy, I used to travel with Ducrow, and learned a secret or two in horse-painting worth knowing. None of your stupid dyes, that you may see when the sun shines, making the coat hard and stary, like a plastered gable, This is a thing that won't wash off. Nothing takes it off but a preparation which is part of the secret. So I steals 'Red Rover'— walked him off easy at two in the morning, for I had a key of my own

rode him forty miles across the country to a quiet place I knew of, and painted him a splendid grey. It was really, sir, a pretty thing to

look at. We then set out together for Scotland; and barring that sharp-nosed bobby at Hexham, who must have been up to the dodge himself, no one challenged me. It would have done your heart good to have heard the jolly beak pitching into the bobby that a grey horse could not be a chestnut.

"I was then serving a master who was training another horse on the sly across the border. I put him up to my plan; and he went shares, as a gentleman should. And now you have my tale."

'The matter was kept very close at the time. Mr. Stanton made some inquiry to ascertain whether "Deserter's rather eccentric proceedings were in conformity with the rules of the Jockey Club; but he found everything square in that respect, and thought it unnecessary to take any further steps.'

"Thank you, Rendelson. Strange, if true, as they say. No offence, man, said our host,' as Rendelson's face darkened, 'we don't doubt you -it is only too good to be true. Shall we join the ladies ?'

So we broke up, and returned to the drawing-room. I had no further conversation with the widow, for Mr. Rendelson entirely monopolised her, much, as I thought, to her chagrin. As I had a drive before me, I left early, amid many kind expressions of hope of a speedy return, and a very warm request on the part of Mrs. Carrington that Dagentree and I would come up and visit her in the course of the week. Rendelson shook hands with me with a cordiality which I thought more than the occasion called for, and with an eye which rather belied his smile.

CHAPTER XVII.

POLITICS.

I found Dagentree sitting up for me, and accepted his cordial invitation to smoke a cigar on the

verandah before retiring. He seemed singularly buoyant; and after I had recounted the adventures of the evening, I inquired after his proceedings.

'I prospered very well,' he said, and played abominably; but we defeated the curate notwithstanding.'

We,' I rejoined. 'Who were

we ?'

'Miss Wendover and I played together,' he explained, with the slightest tinge of consciousness in his manner. 'She is a very good player. I had a first-rate couple of hours on the river before you went, he added, palpably changing the subject.

It seems to have been a very good day for angling,' I suggested, maliciously; but he would not rise to my fly, and without further dwelling on the events of the day, we fell into more general talk.

'I wonder, Dagentree,' I said, 'that you should have so little humanity about you. Sybaritic as all around you is, do you think that the "unfeathered two-legged thing which you are ever was intended, in the fitness of things, to vegetate in this bower of roses until die in aromatic pain? If love stir you not, why should you be dead to ambition ?'

you

'What do you mean by ambition, my good benighted soul ?'

"The last infirmity' 'Oh, of course; the thing is as stale as the quotation. If I let "the tangles of Neæra's hair alone, I must " scorn delights," I suppose. But you know the end, " Comes the fell Fury." I had rather wait her ladyship here.'

And if all the world were to do as you do, what would become of us ?'

'If they all had 20,000l. a year, and did as I do, they would be uncommonly well off.'

P. 'Possibly: but how long do you think your 20,000l. a year would

remain to you, if this great social machine, which we call government, were never worked excepting by ignoble or mercenary hands?'

D. 'Every one to his part. The machine to my mind would run much more smoothly, and do its work much better, were there fewer hands engaged in its operations. Politics I hate.'

P. 'Wherefore, thou cynic of the woods ?'

D. 'It is a base part. I grant you, like many other things, it has its own attractions at a distance. To wield at will a fierce democracy, to labour for a country's good," and all the commonplaces of patriotism, are grand-sounding sentiments, and make the boyish pulse beat high with very laudable emotions. But the reality! It is like the pictures outside the menagerie compared with the sawdust, the gas, the evil odours, the hideous cries, and squalid wretchedness of the immured animals within. Political life is concentrated selfishness.'

P. 'I do not agree with you. The field of exertion is a noble one-the ends, when rightly estimated, the purest and most elevating of which the intellect is capable. The gold, of course, is not without alloy-no human merit is; but allowing a large discount for those who engage in public affairs from meaner motives, it is a magnificent feature of our country that her richest and noblest feel that it adds to their wealth and their nobility to be permitted to give their free services to the nation.'

D. ' Still the outside picture. But pay your money-and here the simile continues good-pay your money, and go inside. I do not say, with Walpole, that they all have their price in money value. He said, by the way, "All these men have their price," and I doubt not he was right; but how many of the august 658 enter that cage purely from love of their country; or, how many,

being there, coming with the ardour of youthful enthusiasm, or the matured philanthropy of middle age, can retain their self-respect for a session? The bloom is rudely rubbed off by the "whips" in the two first divisions.'

P. 'Of course, representative government must be party government, otherwise there would be but little security for political morality.'

D. Even so; but why require security for political morality, if the motives of the politicians were pure? Is it not simply because there are base ends to gain, and base motives which urge, that these must be held in by bit, bridle, and whip? You concede that if the individual be left to his own promptings, he would go astray; and you only restrain him by a compulsory merging of all individual opinion in a blind adherence to party leadership.' ship.

P. 'I grieve to hear you speak as one of the profane. Co-operation and concert are the talisman of success in all human affairs. May a soldier not fight his country's battles with courage and patriotism, because he sinks his individual opinion in the leader he follows ?'

D. 'Not a felicitous illustration, O feeble, but too honest lawyer. I should take thee at thy word. Men enter the House of Commons much as the recruit enters the army. A bit of blue ribbon--the sound of a drum-a shilling, and a pot of beer are the component parts of the patriotism of the British Grenadiers. Once in, he follows because he would be shot if he did not. Of course, when orators and poets recount our martial deeds, they sink the beer and the shilling, as you do. Nevertheless, not one of twenty of the coins rings true, or would bear rubbing.'

P. 'Nay, but I hold to my illustration. Granted that your bumpkin is translated, in many cases, into a hero by omnipotent beer, shall we

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