ll sight of the audience, the manager would be put on his
trial for manslaughter.

Our race-tracks use up their yearly average of horses and men without
attracting remark. One would suppose that the risk being so great the
profits were enormous; but they are not. In "the game" as played on
our racecourses there is just a bare living for a good capable horseman
while he lasts, with the certainty of an ugly smash if he keeps at it
long enough.

And they don't need to keep at it very long. After a few good "shakings"
they begin to take a nip or two to put heart into them before they go
out, and after a while they have to increase the dose. At last they
cannot ride at all without a regular cargo of alcohol on board, and are
either "half-muzzy" or shaky according as they have taken too much or
too little.

Then the game becomes suicidal; it is an axiom that as soon as a man
begins to funk he begins to fall. The reason is that a rider who has
lost his nerve is afraid of his horse making a mistake, and takes a
pull, or urges him onward, just at the crucial moment when the horse is
rattling up to his fence and judging his distance. That little, nervous
pull at his head or that little touch of the spur, takes his attention
from the fence, with the result that he makes his spring a foot too far
off or a foot too close in, and--smash!

The loafers who hang about the big fences rush up to see if the jockey
is killed or stunned; if he is, they dispose of any jewellery he may
have about him; they have been known almost to tear a finger off in
their endeavours to secure a ring. The ambulance clatters up at a
canter, the poor rider is pushed in out of sight, and the ladies in the
stand say how unlucky they are--that brute of a horse falling after
they backed him. A wolfish-eyed man in the Leger-stand shouts to
a wolfish-eyed pal, "Bill, I believe that jock was killed when the
chestnut fell," and Bill replies, "Yes, damn him, I had five bob on
him." And the rider, gasping like a crushed chicken, is carried into the
casualty-room and laid on a little stretcher, while outside the window
the bookmakers are roaring "Four to one bar one," and the racing is
going on merrily as ever.

These remarks serve to introduce one of the fraternity who may be
considered as typical of all. He was a small, wiry, hard-featured
fellow, the son of a stockman on a big cattle-station, and began life as
a horse-breaker; he was naturally a horseman, able a