of them were believed to be married, but their wives were never seen with them by any chance; for they never went into society, to the opera or the theatres; and they were always put into the bachelor quarters at country-houses, and into the topmost rooms at the hotels, where they treated the female domestics in a pleasant and genial way, a compound of the manners of the groom and the commercial bagman. They gathered in full force at the Crown and Sceptre that lovely July afternoon; for they knew that they would have a good dinner and wine without stint. Captain Dafter was there--a little wiry man with sandy scraps of whisker and a mean little white face, but who was the best amateur steeplechase rider in England, with limbs of steel and dauntless pluck. Next to him sat a fat, heavy-healed, large-jowled man, with a face the shape and colour of an ill-baked quartern loaf; a silent stupid-looking man, who ate and drank enormously, and said, and apparently understood, nothing; but who was no less a personage than the "Great Northern," as he was called, from having been born at Carlisle; the enormous bookmaker and King of the Ring, who began life as a plumber with eighteenpence, and was then worth hundreds of thousands. There, too, with his neatly-rolled whiskers and his neatly-tied blue bird's-eye scarf, with its plain solid gold horseshoe pin, was Dolly Clarke, the turf-lawyer. Years ago Dolly would have thought himself lucky if he ever made six hundred a-year. Six thousand is now nearer Dolly's annual income, all brought, about by his own talent, and "not standing on any repairs," as he put it, a quality which is to be found in the dictionary under the word "unscrupulousness;" for when old Mr. Snoxell, inventor of the Pilgrim's-Progress Leather for tender feet, died, and left all his money to his son Sam, who had been bred to the law, Sam took Dolly Clarke into partnership, and by combining shrewdness with bill-discounting and a military connection with a knowledge of turf-matters, they did a splendid business. You would almost mistake Dolly Clarke for a gentleman now, and Samuel Snoxell calls all the army by their Christian names. Next to Dolly Clarke was Mr. Bagwax, Q.C., always retained in cases connected with the turf, and rather preferring to be on the shaky and shady side, which affords opportunities for making great fun out of would-be-honest witnesses, and making jokes which, of all the persons in court, are not least understood, by Mr. Justice Martingale, who knows a horse from a wigblock, and is understood to have at one time heard the chimes at midnight. The redoubtable Jack Manby, called "the Bustard," because in his thickness of utterance he was in the habit of declaring that he "didn't, care about bustard so long as he got beef," was there; and old Sam Roller the trainer, looking something like a bishop, and something more like Mr. Soapey Sponge's friend, Jack Spraggon; and a