Fortune, however, had still a smile or two in store for him, one of which may here be noticed. At the Merton sale there was offered a mean-looking foal which no one would look at, but in due time that same animal, then known as Bloomsbury, won the Derby of 1839, for which he had been entered and trained under the superintendence of William, a brother of Robert Ridsdale. Again the breath of rumour got to work; the winner of the race, it was asserted, was not the horse which it was represented to be, but another animal a year older. An objection lodged against the horse, not on that ground, but because of misdescription, was overruled by the stewards; but Mr. Fulwar Craven, owner of the second horse, claimed the stakes and raised an action for payment, in which, however, he was defeated. Bloomsbury never ran as a two-year-old, the Derby being his first race. As "Wildrake" says, in his "Pictorial Gallery of English Race-horses": "He was a most fortunate horse--though most unfortunate to his owners and backers. He won the Derby and a lawsuit. He caused the non-settlement of a settlement. He embroiled Lords and Commons, enriched poor men, impoverished wealth, and made all the world stare when their eyes were opened." Ridsdale, as has been indicated, lost his nerve; with confidence in himself gone, he forsook the old haunts where he had been so well received, he shunned his former intimates, and gradually became so reduced in purse as to be without a lodging. In the end he was found dead in a stable loft at Newmarket, with three-halfpence in his pocket. CROCKFORD. There is a story relating to the life of Crockford, or rather to his death, which has been so often told that it has come to be accepted as true. I have never myself, however, given credence to it, inquiry having satisfied me that the narrative is simply in the nature of a fable; but for all that it is worth repeating as being in some degree illustrative of the more "hectic" features of sport as it was carried on fifty or sixty years ago.