The following is a case in point. A few years ago a man lost a heavy sum. He knew well that on the following Monday he _must_ pay or a fine bet he had of £5,000 to £50 would be at once scratched; the horse backed having in the interval become a great favourite for the race. In such case to settle was imperative, and a settlement was accomplished; how the sum necessary to pay what was due was obtained was never made public, but it became known to several persons that a robbery of jewels, of a suspicious kind, took place at that gentleman's residence on the Saturday night following the decision of the race. A footman was apprehended on suspicion, but his master, saying it could not possibly be he who stole the jewels, declined to prosecute. Happily for the lady whose gems had been purloined, her husband won his big bet, and she was able to shine in a newly bought suite of diamonds. A history of the rise and progress of betting would be full of interest. It takes two, and occasionally more than two, persons to make a bet, and, as has been indicated in a previous page, in the earlier days of horse-racing the amounts betted on both sides were usually deposited, or in racing _argot_ the money in dispute was "staked," in the hands of a third party till the event betted upon could be decided. No data exists to show when the professional bookmaker as we know him came upon the scene; but it may be taken for granted that the "penciller" was not evolved at once, but that the system grew by means of what it fed on, originating, doubtless, in the practice adopted by certain gentlemen who, having made a series of bets, were anxious in consequence to get "round," as the process of hedging is called, or, in other words, to be in a position not to lose their money, or, to put the matter still more explicitly, to possess a fair chance of winning something and losing nothing. At the beginning of racing, and for a considerable time thereafter, what little betting occurred took place chiefly on the racecourses; but as time elapsed several men distinguished themselves, or, at least, became notorious, as "betting men," both giving and taking the odds all round, and accepting the odium of sometimes being called "legs" (blacklegs) by such persons as only made single bets, and objected to the wholesale modes of betting which were coming into fashion. Before Tattersall's was established as a betting centre, many gentlemen made their bets in the way indicated, namely, among themselves and with one another on the racecourse, or at their clubs and in their houses, and in the more primitive days of sport nearly always staking the amounts betted with a third party. As betting on horse-racing increased in magnitude, both in the number of bets made and the amounts betted, the bookmaker, or professional betting man, became a necessity, and, as usual, demand soon created supply.