On one occasion he rode his horse in a match in Knaresborough Forest. The ground was marked out by posts, including a circle of a mile, and the race was three times round. Great odds were laid against the blind man, because of his supposed inability to keep the course. But his ingenuity was never at fault. He procured a number of dinner-bells from the Harrogate inns and set men to ring them at the several posts. Their sound was enough to direct him during the race, and the blind man came in the winner! After the race was over, a gentleman who owned a notorious runaway horse came up and offered to lay a bet with Metcalf that he could not gallop the horse fifty yards and stop it within two hundred. Metcalf accepted the bet, with the condition that he might choose his ground. This was agreed to, but there was to be neither hedge nor wall in the distance. Metcalf forthwith proceeded to the neighbourhood of the large bog near the Harrogate Old Spa, and having placed a person on the line in which he proposed to ride, who was to sing a song to guide him by its sound, he mounted and rode straight into the bog, where he had the horse effectually stopped within the stipulated two hundred yards, stuck up to his saddle-girths in the mire. Metcalf scrambled out and claimed his wager; but it was with the greatest difficulty that the horse could be extricated. The blind man also played at bowls very successfully, receiving the odds of a bowl extra for the deficiency of each eye. He had thus three bowls for the other's one; and he took care to place one friend at the jack and another midway, who, keeping up a constant discourse with him, enabled him readily to judge of the distance. In athletic sports, such as wrestling and boxing, he was also a great adept; and being now a full-grown man, of great strength and robustness, about six feet two in height, few durst try upon him the practical jokes which cowardly persons are sometimes disposed to play upon the blind. Notwithstanding his mischievous tricks and youthful wildness, there must have been something exceedingly winning about the man, possessed, as he was, of a strong, manly, and affectionate nature; and we are not, therefore, surprised to learn that the land lord's daughter of "The Granby" fairly fell in love with Blind Jack and married him, much to the disgust of her relatives. When asked how it was that she could marry such a man, her woman-like reply was, "Because I could not be happy without him: his actions are so singular, and his spirit so manly and enterprising, that I could not help loving him." But, after all, Dolly was not so far wrong in the choice as her parents thought her. As the result proved, Metcalf had in him elements of success in life, which, even according to the world's estimate, made him eventually a very "good match," and the woman's clear sight in this case stood her in good stead.