properly--a thing that requires labour
and expenditure just the same as other farming operations. So the
silver tankard, won when 'cups' were not so common as now, is a
memorial of the old times before the plough turned up the sweet turf
of the racecourse.

Hilary does not bet beyond the modest 'fiver' which a man would be
thought unsociable if he did not risk on the horse that carries the
country's colours. But he is very 'thick' with the racing-people on
the Downs, and supplies the stable with oats, which is, I believe, not
an unprofitable commission. The historical anecdote of the Roman
emperor who fed his horse on gilded oats reads a little strange when
we first come across it in youth. But many a race-horse owner has
found reason since to doubt if it be so wonderful, as his own stud--to
judge by the cost--must live on golden fodder. Now, before I found
this out about the stable, it happened one spring day that I met
Hilary in the fields, and listened to a long tirade which he delivered
against 'wuts.'

The wheat was then showing a beautiful flag, the despised oats were
coming out in jag, and the black knots on the delicate barley straw
were beginning to be topped with the hail. The flag is the long narrow
green leaf of the wheat; in jag means the spray-like drooping awn of
the oat; and the hail is the beard of the barley, which when it is
white and brittle in harvest-time gets down the back of the neck,
irritating the skin of those who work among it. According to Hilary,
oats do not flourish on rich land; and when he was young (and
everything was then done right) a farmer who grew oats was looked upon
with contempt, as they were thought only fit for the poorest soil, and
a crop that therefore denoted poverty. But nowadays, thundered Hilary
in scorn, all farmers grow oats, and, indeed, anything in preference
to wheat.

Afterwards, at the Derby that year, methought I saw Hilary as I passed
the sign of the 'Carrion Crow:' the dead bird dangles from the top of
a tall pole stuck in the sward beside a booth. I lost him in the crowd
then. But later on in autumn, while rambling round the Chace, there
came on a 'skit' of rain, and I made for one of his barns for shelter.
There was Hilary in the barn with his men, as busy as they could well
be, winnowing oats. It seemed to me that especial care was being
taken, and on asking questions, to which the men silently replied with
a grin, Hilary presently blurted out that the d