But who would not be a successful jockey in these days of high retaining fees, special rewards, and popular favour? From the worldly point of view, judging things from the purely monetary standpoint, such an one looks down from his pinnacle upon the whole bench of Bishops, upon the Army, the Navy, the Church, the Stage, Literature, Art, and all the things that really count. You may not like it, but—“there you are,” and it is useless to point out that the old verb “to jockey” means “to cheat, to trick,” and must have derived from this profession. To one who might so point out this derivation, an obvious retort could be made that things have changed, and that as actors have risen from being in the eyes of the law mere roguish vagrants and “players of interludes,” so jockeys may now be honourable men. We cannot hark back to the times when every jock was made keep his place, and was paid less than his worth, instead of absurdly more. What were the rewards of the jockey in those days? He received five guineas if he won and three if he lost, and when a former Duke of Grafton sent his jockey two five-pound notes after winning both the One Thousand and the Two Thousand Stakes, with the injunction to “take care of them,” he was thought generous. In these days no jockey of repute, with the winning of classic races to his record, will get into the saddle for a smaller fee than £1,000, win or lose XXVII THE road on leaving Newmarket, at the crest of the High Street, branches in many directions from where a modern clock tower stands, like a policeman, in the parting of the ways. The Clock Tower, which, as a prominent and venerated landmark, and one of the principal features of Newmarket, it behoves us, in all humility, to spell with capital letters, was erected by one “Charley” Blanton, owner of Robert the Devil, in honour of Victoria the Good. The Clock Tower is Blanton’s, but the antithesis is our very own. Beyond this point the roads are reduced to two: that on the left leading direct to Thetford and Norwich; the right-hand fork conducting to Thetford by the loop road through Bury St. Edmunds. We will examine this road in detail before taking the direct route. This is the “Bury side” of the town mentioned in the Jockey Club notices of the gallops available for exercising the horses, and the triangular stretch of common in the fork of the roads is the place referred to on all such notices as “the Severals,” a name here in direct contradiction to its general meaning, which is an enclosed, as opposed to a common, field.