It behoves an innocent to be careful how he has that “bit on,” for the Heath at race-time is no place for the guileless stranger with a few odd sovereigns to lose. There are those here whose sole mission in life is to plunder the unwary, and who have the keenest scent for what they elegantly term a “mug.” Their method is a simple one, as you who have the curiosity to test it may find. You hang listlessly over the rails and assume the virtuous air, even if you have it not, of being unspotted from the world. If that, on the other hand, be your usual wear—why, then so much the better. The experimentalist in this sort will not have long to wait before he gets a bite. Already, while he is taking up his position and gazing around with the air of one quite new to racing, he has been singled out from the surrounding crowds and marked down for attack by sharpers who are past-masters in the little frailties of human nature. Two men approach our innocent in being, or in seeming, and one of them, under his very nose, pays a little heap of glittering sovereigns—or counters—into the other’s palm, with the remark that if he, the payee, had only sprung a little more on that dead cert, the winnings would have been really _worth_ winning. Poor human nature swallows that bait as eagerly as trout rise to May flies, and when those two practical philosophers accidentally, as it were, take their victim into their confidence, his gold is already as good as gone. It seems the winner owes his luck to his very good friend here who is “in the know,” and, with an inexhaustible series of good tips from the Ring, is willing—nay, eager—to give, not only his friend, but the most casual pick-up acquaintance of even less than five minutes’ standing, the full benefit of that information which, if applied in the way he presently suggests, has the power of transmuting your silver into gold, and of increasing your solitary sovereign into tens and twenties. No sport is more enjoyable than that of fooling sharks of this description; it is its own exceeding great reward. You can play them as the fisherman does the salmon, and lead them on with ingenuous innocences and artful idiotcies until they who think they have the greatest simpleton on earth to deal with, find themselves at length fairly gaffed and landed.