ve minutes, to see if her own well-trained bays were standing quiet,
as they always did, there was not a restive horse or awkward rider on
the ground but attracted the good lady's ever watchful sense of danger.
"He'll be thrown! I'm sure he will! foolish man, why don't he get off!"
"Oh, oh! there they go! they're off, those horrid horses! they'll never
stop 'em!" Such were the interjections, accompanied with extraordinary
shudderings and drawings of the breath, with which Mrs John Leicester,
her eyes fixed on some distant point, occasionally broke in upon the
general conversation, sometimes with a vehemence that startled even her
nephew and eldest daughter, though, to do them justice, they paid very
little attention to any of us.

Just as I was meditating something desperate, in order to relieve myself
from the office of soother-general of Mrs Leicester's imaginary terrors,
and to bring Flora's sunny face once more within my line of vision, (she
had been turning the back of her bonnet upon me perseveringly for the
last ten minutes,) a general commotion gave us notice that the horses
were started, and the race begun. The hill on which we were stationed
was close to the winning-post, and commanded a view of pretty nearly the
whole ground from the start. The race, as, I suppose, pretty nearly like
other steeple-chases, and there is the less need for me to describe it,
because a very full and particular account appeared in the _Bell's Life_
next ensuing. The principal impressions which remain on my mind, are of
a very smart gentleman in black and crimson, mounted on a very powerful
bay, who seemed as if he had been taking it easy, who came in first, and
after having been sufficiently admired by an innocent public, myself
among the number, as the winner, turned out to have gone on the right
hand instead of the left, of some flag or other, and to have lost the
race accordingly; and of a very dirty-looking person, who arrived some
minute or two afterwards without a cap, whose jacket was green and his
horse grey, so far as the mud left any colour visible, and who, to the
great disappointment, of the ladies especially, turned out to be the
real hero after all.

We had made arrangements to have an independent beefsteak together after
the race, in preference to joining the sporting ordinary announced as
usual on such occasions; but the squire insisted on Leicester bringing
us both to dine with his party at five. After a few modest