ter. On matters connected with racing, his word was
infallible. He rode boldly, and always rode good horses; and, though
he was anything but rich, he managed to keep up a comfortable snuggery
at the Curragh, and to drink the very best claret that Dublin could
procure.

Walter Blake was a finished gambler, and thus it was, that with about
six hundred a year, he managed to live on equal terms with the richest
around him. His father, Laurence Blake of Castleblakeney, in County
Galway, was a very embarrassed man, of good property, strictly
entailed, and, when Walter came of age, he and his father, who could
never be happy in the same house, though possessing in most things
similar tastes, had made such a disposition of the estate, as gave the
father a clear though narrowed income, and enabled the son at once to
start into the world, without waiting for his father's death; though,
by so doing, he greatly lessened the property which he must otherwise
have inherited.

Blake was a thorough gambler, and knew well how to make the most of the
numerous chances which the turf afforded him. He had a large stud of
horses, to the training and working of which he attended almost as
closely as the person whom he paid for doing so. But it was in the
betting-ring that he was most formidable. It was said, in Kildare
Street, that no one at Tattersall's could beat him at a book. He had
latterly been trying a wider field than the Curragh supplied him and
had, on one or two occasions, run a horse in England with such success,
as had placed him, at any rate, quite at the top of the Irish sporting
tree.

He was commonly called "Dot Blake", in consequence of his having told
one of his friends that the cause of his, the friend's, losing so much
money on the turf, was, that he did not mind "the dot and carry on"
part of the business; meaning thereby, that he did not attend to the
necessary calculations. For a short time after giving this piece of
friendly caution, he had been nick-named, "Dot and carry on"; but that
was too long to last, and he had now for some years been known to every
sporting man in Ireland as "Dot" Blake.

This man was at present Lord Ballindine's most intimate friend, and he
could hardly have selected a more dangerous one. They were now going
down together to Handicap Lodge, though there was nothing to be done in
the way of racing for months to come. Yet Blake knew his business too
well to suppose that his presence was nec