ters came
pouring in to the clerk of the course from all quarters; some asking about
beds; some about breakfasts; some about stakes; some about stables; some
about this thing, some about that. Every room in the Old Duke of Cumberland
was speedily bespoke. Post-horses rose in price, and Dobbin and Smiler, and
Jumper and Cappy, and Jessy and Tumbler were jobbed from the neighbouring
farmers, and converted for the occasion into posters. At last came the
great and important day--day big with the fate of thousands of pounds; for
the betting-list vermin had been plying their trade briskly throughout the
kingdom, and all sorts of rumours had been raised relative to the qualities
and conditions of the horses.

Who doesn't know the chilling feel of an English spring, or rather of a day
at the turn of the year before there is any spring? Our gala-day was a
perfect specimen of the order--a white frost succeeded by a bright sun,
with an east wind, warming one side of the face and starving the other. It
was neither a day for fishing, nor hunting, nor coursing, nor anything but
farming. The country, save where there were a few lingering patches of
turnips, was all one dingy drab, with abundant scalds on the undrained
fallows. The grass was more like hemp than anything else. The very rushes
were yellow and sickly.

Long before midday the whole country was in commotion. The same sort of
people commingled that one would expect to see if there was a balloon to go
up, and a man to go down, or be hung at the same place. Fine ladies in all
the colours of the rainbow; and swarthy, beady-eyed dames, with their
stalwart, big-calved, basket-carrying comrades; gentle young people from
behind the counter; Dandy Candy merchants from behind the hedge;
rough-coated dandies with their silver-mounted whips; and Shaggyford
roughs, in their baggy, poacher-like coats, and formidable clubs; carriages
and four, and carriages and pairs; and gigs and dog-carts, and
Whitechapels, and Newport Pagnels, and long carts, and short carts, and
donkey carts, converged from all quarters upon the point of attraction at
Broom Hill.

If Farmer Scourgefield had made a mob, he could not have got one that would
be more likely to do damage to his farm than this steeple-chase one. Nor
was the assemblage confined to the people of the country, for the
Granddiddle Junction, by its connection with the great network of railways,
enabled all patrons of this truly national sport t