“I’ll tell the truth,” says one, whom he describes as a “fine old man,” but leaves in kindly anonymity. “One match of the county I did sell, a match made by Mr. Osbaldeston at Nottingham. I had been sold out of a match just before, and lost £10, and happening to hear it, I joined two others of our eleven to sell, and get back my money. I won £10 exactly, and of this roguery no one ever suspected me; but many was the time I have been blamed for selling when as innocent as a babe.” Then this old innocent, with his delightful notions of _cavalleria rusticana_ and the wooing back of his £10, goes on to tell the means—hackneyed enough in themselves—by which the company of the Legs seduced the obstinacy of rustic virtue. “If I had fifty sons,” he said, “I would never put one of them, for all the games in the world, in the way of the roguery that I have witnessed. The temptation was really very great—too great by far for any poor man to be exposed to.” There is a pathetic dignity about this simple moralising that contrasts well with the levity of his previous confession, but the state of things that it shows is really very disgusting. It is another tribute to the merit of this first of English games that it should have lived through and have lived down such a morbid condition. “If gentlemen wanted to bet,” said Beldham, “just under the pavilion sat men ready, with money down, to give and take the current odds. These were by far the best men to bet with, because, if they lost, it was all in the way of business; they paid their money and did not grumble.” The manners of some of the fraternity must have changed, not greatly for the better, since then. “Still,” he continues, “they had all sorts of tricks to make their betting safe.” And then he quotes, or Mr. Pycroft quotes—it is not very clear, and does not signify—Mr. Ward as saying, “One artifice was to keep a player out of the way by a false report that his wife was dead.” It was as clever a piece of practical humour as it was honest. What a monstrous state of things it reveals! And then Beldham, inspirited by Mr. Pycroft’s geniality and brandy and water, goes on to assure him—as one who takes a view which the majority would condemn as childishly charitable—that he really does not believe, in spite of all that has been said, that any “gentleman,” by which he means “amateur,” has ever been known to sell a match, and he cites an instance in which for curiosity’s sake he put the honesty of a certain noble lord to the test by covertly proposing selling a match to him. But though his lordship, who seems to have been betting against his own side, had actually £100 on the match, even this inducement was not enough to tempt the nobleman from the paths of virtue.