"Heavily bribed, sir!" Mr. Filbert contracts his eyes, but sharpens up their expression, to look the suspicion down. "Bribed! it may not be hard to bribe a man, but it's not so easy to bribe a boy. What's the use of a hundred-pound note to a child of ten or twelve years old? Try him with a pen'north of apples, or a slice of pudding, and you have a better chance; though I would not give you the price of a sugar-stick for it. Nine out of ten of these lads would not have a hair of their horse's tails ruffled if they could help it; much more any such harm as drugs or downright poison. The boy and the horse are so fond of one another, that a racing stable is a regular happy family of boys and horses. When the foal is first born, it is turned loose into the paddock; and if his mother don't give him enough milk, the cow makes up the deficiency. He scampers about in this way for about a year: then he is 'taken up;' that is, bitted, and backed by a 'dumb-jockey'--a cross of wood made for the purpose. When he has got a little used to that, we try him with a speaking jockey--a child some seven or eight years old, who has been born, like the colt, in the stables. From that time till the horse retires from the turf, the two are inseparable. They eat, drink, sleep, go out and come in together. Under the directions of the trainer, the boy tells the horse what to do, and he does it; for he knows that he is indebted to the boy for every thing he gets. When he is hungry, it is the boy that gives him his corn; when he is thirsty, the boy hands him his water; if he gets a stone in his foot, the boy picks it out. By the time the colt is old enough to run, he and the boy have got to like one another so well that they fret to be away from one another. As for bribing! Why, you may as well try to bribe the horse to poison the boy, as the boy to let the horse be injured." "But the thing _has_ happened, Mr. Filbert?" "Not so much as is talked about. Sometimes a likely foal is sent to a training stable, and cracked up as something wonderful. He is entered to run. On trial, he turns out to be next to nothing; and the backers, to save their reputation, put it about that the horse was played tricks with. There is hardly a great race, but you hear something about horses going amiss by foul play." "Do many of these boys become jockeys?" "Mostly. Some of them are jockeys already, and ride 'their own' horses as they call them. Here comes one." A miniature man, with a horsewhip neatly twisted round the crop or handle, opens the gate. "Well, Tommy, how are you, Tommy?" "Well, sir, bobbish. Fine day, Mr. Filbert."