nner like Bob. He
had also an exquisite genius for tumbling. Horses will occasionally
fall, and when they do, riders must follow them; but no one fell
so safely, recovered so actively, and was again so instantly in
the saddle as our friend; and, consequently, wherever there was a
steeple-chase to be run, where pluck, science, and practice were
wanting, there Bob was in requisition, and there he usually was
found. It was a great thing to secure his services; and knowing this,
Tony McKeon had, in his own way, long since, made Gayner his fast
friend; how, I cannot say, for Bob was much above being bought, and
though, no doubt, he made money by his races, he would have thought
little of shooting any one who was bold enough to offer to pay him
for riding. When in his cap, jacket, boots, and breeches, he would,
if he thought occasion required or his interests demanded it, wrangle
like a devil. Though its back were turned to him, he could see a
horse go on the wrong side of a post; and woe betide the man who came
to the scales as a winner an ounce below the weight. Bob, from long
practice, knew all these dodges, and he made the most of them. But
when once his cap was off, and his coat was on, he was a quiet, easy,
unassuming fellow--liked and petted by all he knew; for he never
spoke little of others nor bragged of himself.

He was now talking to another member of the same confraternity,
but of a very different character. He also had been sitting
dinnerless,--for both these gentlemen, in the pursuit of their
amusement, were obliged to starve and sweat themselves down to
a certain standard, about twenty pounds below their ordinary
weight,--and he was now also sucking a lemon. George Brown was the
second son of Jonas Brown, of Brown Hall, the magistrate by whom Tim
Reynolds and the others had been committed to Ballinamore, and, like
his father, was most unpopular in his own country. He was arrogant,
overbearing, conceited, and passionate--without any rank which could
excuse pride, or any acquirement that could justify conceit. It is,
however, as a gentleman jockey that we are at present to make his
acquaintance, and in that capacity he was about as much inferior to
the grooms by whom the horses were trained as Bob was superior to
them. He had courage enough, however, and would ride at anything; and
as his own relations and friends, for whom he rode, were tolerably
wealthy, and he was therefore generally well mounted, he sometim