s he employed
himself in training some young horses to follow him about like
dogs and come at the call of his whistle. As my two friends
were talking with him Borrow sounded his whistle in a paddock
near the house, which, if I remember rightly, was surrounded by
a low wall. Immediately two beautiful horses came bounding over
the fence and trotted up to their master. One put his nose into
Borrow's outstretched hand and the other kept snuffing at his
pockets in expectation of the usual bribe for confidence and
good behaviour. Borrow could not but be flattered by the young
Cambridge men paying him the frank homage they offered, and he
treated them with the robust and cordial hospitality
characteristic of the man. One or two things they learnt which
I do not feel at liberty to repeat.

Mr. Arthur W. Upcher of Sheringham Hall, Cromer, also provided in _The
Athenaeum_[192] a quaint reminiscence of Borrow in which he recalled that
Lavengro had called upon Miss Anna Gurney. This lady had, assuredly with
less guile, treated him much as Frances Cobbe would have done. She had
taken down an Arabic grammar, and put it into his hand, asking for
explanation of some difficult point which he tried to decipher; but
meanwhile she talked to him continuously. 'I could not,' said Borrow,
'study the Arabic grammar and listen to her at the same time, so I threw
down the book and ran out of the room.' He soon after met Mr. Upcher, to
whom he made an interesting revelation:

He told us there were three personages in the world whom he had
always a desire to see; two of these had slipped through his
fingers, so he was determined to see the third. 'Pray, Mr.
Borrow, who were they?' He held up three fingers of his left
hand and pointed them off with the forefinger of the right: the
first Daniel O'Connell, the second Lamplighter (the sire of
Phosphorus, Lord Berners's winner of the Derby), the third,
Anna Gurney. The first two were dead and he had not seen them;
now he had come to see Anna Gurney, and this was the end of his
visit.

Mr. William Mackay, who now lives at Oulton Broad, where he has heard
all the village gossip about Borrow and his _menage_, and we may hope
has discounted it fully, furnishes me with the following impression of
Borrow, which is of a much later date than those I have just given:

I met Borrow in 1869