Charley and I were always great friends; we had seen so much together, especially of what is called “the world,” which I use in a different sense from that in which we were now to seek adventures.  We had seen so much of its good and evil, its lights and shades, and had so many memories in common, that they formed the groundwork of a lasting friendship.

He was the only son of an almost too indulgent father, who was the very best example of an old English gentleman of his day you could ever meet.  He also had seen a good deal of life, and was not unfamiliar with any of its varied aspects.  He was intellectual and genial, and dispensed his hospitality with the most winning courtesy.  To me he was all kindness, and I have a grateful feeling of delight in being able in these few words to record my affectionate reverence for his memory.  It was at his house in Pall Mall that I met John Leech and Percival Leigh.

But I digress as my mind goes back to these early dates, and unless I break away, Charley and I will not reach Newmarket in time for the first race.  It happened that when we made this memorable visit I had an uncle living at The Priory at Royston, which was some five-and-twenty miles from Newmarket, where the big handicap, I think the Cesarewitch, was to be run the following day, or the next—­I forget which.

But an interesting episode interrupted our journey to the Heath.  To our surprise, and no little to our delight, there was to be an important meeting of the “Fancy” to witness a great prize-fight between Jack Brassy and Ben Caunt.

Ben Caunt was the greatest prize-fighter, both in stature and bulk, as well as in strength, I ever saw.  He looked what he was—­then or soon after—­the champion of the world.

Brassy, too, was well made, and seemed every whit the man to meet Caunt.  The two, indeed, were equally well made in form and shape, and as smooth cut as marble statues when they stripped for action.

The advertisements had announced that the contest was to come off at, “or as near thereto as circumstances permitted” (circumstances here meaning the police), the village of Little Bury, near Saffron Walden.

At the little inn of the village some of the magnates of the Ring were to assemble on the morning of the fight for an early breakfast, to which Charley and I had the good fortune to be invited by Jack Brassy’s second, Peter Crawley, another noted pugilist of his day.

It was different weather from that we enjoyed in the early morning, for the rain was now pouring down in torrents, and we had a drive of no less than fifteen miles before us to the scene of action.  Vehicles were few, and horses fewer.  Nothing was to be had for love or money, as it seemed.  But there was at last found one man who, if he had little love for the prize-ring, had much reverence for the golden coin that supported it.  He was a Quaker.  He had an old gig, and, I think, a still older horse, both of which I hired for the journey—­the Quaker, of course, pretending that he had no idea of any meeting of the “Fancy” whatever.  Nor do I suppose he would know what that term implied.