With the usual fluctuations of a great battle, the contest went on until nearly a _hundred rounds_ were fought, lasting as many minutes, but no decisive effect was as yet observable. After this, however, Brassy could not come up to time. The event, therefore, was declared in Caunt's favour, and his opponent was carried off the field on a hurdle into the public-house, where I afterwards saw him in bed. Thus terminated the great fight of the day, but not thus my day's adventures. The sport was all that the most enthusiastic supporters of the Ring could desire. It no doubt had its barbarous aspects, regarded from a humanitarian point of view, but it was not so demoralizing as the spectacle of some poor creature risking his neck in a performance for which the spectator pays his sixpence, and the whole excitement consists in the knowledge that the actor may be dashed to pieces before his eyes. It was time now to leave the scene, so Charley and I went to look for our gig (evidence of gentility from the time of Thurtell and Hunt's trial for the murder of Mr. Weare). Alas! our respectability was gone--I mean the gig. In vindication of the wisdom and foresight of Charley and myself, I should like to mention that we had entrusted that valuable evidence of our status to the keeping of a worthy stranger dressed in an old red jacket and a pair of corduroy trousers fastened with a wisp of hay below the knees. When we arrived at the spot where he promised to wait our coming, he was gone, the horse and gig too; nor could any inquiries ascertain their whereabouts. Whether this incident was a judgment on the Quaker, as Wright suggested, or one of the inevitable incidents attendant on a prize-fight, I am not in a position to say; but we thought it served the Quaker right for letting us a horse that would not go until the gentleman in the red jacket relieved us of any further trouble on that account. Mistakes are so common amongst thieves that one can never tell how the horse got away; but if I were put on my oath, knowing the proclivities of the animal, I should say that he was backed out of the field. We were now, as it seemed, the most deplorable objects in creation: without friends and without a gig, wet through, shelterless, amidst a crowd of drunken, loathsome outcasts of society, with only one solitary comfort between us--a pipe, which Charley enjoyed and I loathed. Drink is always quarrelsome or affectionate, generally the one first and the other after. When the tears dry, oaths begin, and we soon found that the quarrelsome stage of the company had been reached. Amidst all this excitement we had not forgotten that this little matter of the prize-fight was but an incident on our journey to Newmarket. We knew full well that our present appearance would have found no recognition in the Mall. But we cared nothing for the Mall, as we were not known by the fashion in the racing world; and as for the others, we should like to avoid them in any world.