One morning my groom came to me and said, "I think, sir, I can find a purchaser for Dreadnought, if you have no objection to selling him; he's a gentleman, sir, who would take great care of him and give him a good home." "Sell him!" said I. "Well, I should not object if he found a good master. I cannot ride him, and he is practically useless. What price does he seem inclined to offer?" "Well, he ain't made any offer, sir; but he seems a good deal took with him and to like the look of him. Perhaps, sir, he might come and see you. I told him that I thought a matter o' _fifteen pun_ might buy un. I dunnow whether I did right, sir, but I told un you would never take a farden less. I stuck to that." "No," said I, "certainly not, when the vet.'s bill was twelve pounds ten--not a farthing less, James." When the proposed purchaser came, he said, "It's a poor horse--a very poor horse; he wants a lot of looking after, and I shouldn't think of buying him except for the sake of seeing what I could do with him, for I am not fond of lumber, Mr. Hawkins--I don't care for lumber." It was straightforward, but I did not at the time see his depth of feeling. He was evidently intending to buy him out of compassion, as he had some knowledge of his ancestors. But I stuck to my fifteen pounds hard and fast, and at last he said, "Well, Mr. Hawkins, I'll give you all you ask, if so be you'll throw in the saddle and bridle!" I was tired of the negotiations, and yielded; so away went poor Dreadnought with his saddle and bridle, never for me to look on again. I was sorry to part with him, and the more so because his life had been unfortunate. But I was deceived in him as well as in his new master. From me he had concealed his merits, only to reveal them, as is often the case with latent genius, when some accidental opportunity offered. At that time Bromley in Kent was a central attraction for a great many second-class patrons of the sporting world. I know little about the events that were negotiated at Bromley and other small places of the kind, but there was, as I have been informed, a good deal of blackguardism and pickpocketing on its course and in its little primitive streets--lucky if you came out of them with only one black eye. They would steal the teeth out of your mouth if you did not keep it shut and your eyes open. However, Bromley races came on some time after the sale of my Dreadnought.... The next morning my groom came with a look of astonishment that seemed to have kept him awake all night, and said,-- "You'll be surprised to hear, sir, that our 'oss has won a fifty-pound prize at Bromley, and a pot of money besides in bets for his owner." "Won a prize!" said I. "Was it by standing on his head?" "Won a _race_, sir." "Then it must have been a walk-over."