With increasing experience of racing matters, and having a clear head, and being of sober habits, Mr. Swindell was not long in finding his services in demand as an adviser in some of the momentous turf affairs of the time. Crockford, with whom at times he used when he was making a book to cover his liabilities in the case of horses that he had overlaid, or backed one or two that he thought likely to win, gave him a word or two of recommendation, which resulted in his being occasionally employed to execute commissions on behalf of owners of horses who for good reasons did not wish to appear as backers of their own animals. Among the many who ultimately took him into their confidence were Mr. Merry, of Thormanby and Doncaster celebrity, and Sir Joseph Hawley. Success usually rewarded the efforts of Mr. Swindell when he undertook to carry through the kind of work which has been indicated. Having a very large connection among bookmakers, he was enabled to work the commissions he was entrusted with to the best advantage, and when the time came that those laying the odds became alarmed at being "had," he was able to obtain a choice of men to work for him, so that he could remain in the background and pull the strings quite as effectively as if he were acting openly in his own person. This is how he "worked the oracle" when he was entrusted by an owner with a big job in the handicap line--and that was the line he liked best, as it was in that description of race there was most room to do such an amount of business as would result in the winning of a large sum of money. As soon as he knew the name of the horse and the race for which it was to be backed, he would enter into consultation with one or other of his bookmaking acquaintances in order to devise a plan of campaign. The arrangement usually made was that the more responsible country bookmakers, _i.e._, those in the larger provincial towns and cities, should be communicated with, and be asked to lay the odds against "so and so" to a specific amount and at a given price, or no limit might be given in the matter of price; but a particular hour was generally named at which the commission was desired to be executed by the bookmaker or other appointed agent, so that all the money required was usually obtained by this plan of doing the work. In the course of a day it would become known that a very heavy commission had been worked on behalf of "so and so," for the "such and such" handicap, and in consequence the odds against that horse would be quoted at a rapidly lessening figure, much to the chagrin of those who had laid the larger or longer rates of odds, and who, awakening to what had happened, were desirous themselves of backing the horse so as to lessen the sum they would require to pay in the event of its winning the race it had been backed for. Persons who are employed to do commissions get, as a matter of course, to know "the strength of them," and if they fancy the horse