[Footnote 18:  No judge ever gave a race as won by half a head; but we let the whole passage stand as originally written.—­EDITOR.]

The Baron, who appears to have no taste for walking, still sticks to the punch mare, which Mr. Jorrocks steers to the newly formed ring aided by the Baron and the furze-bush.  Here they come upon Sam Spring, whose boy has just brought his spring-cart to bear upon the ring formed by the horsemen, and thinking it a pity a nobleman of any county should be reduced to the necessity of riding double, very politely offers to take one into his carriage.  Jorrocks accepts the offer, and forthwith proceeds to make himself quite at home in it.  The chorus again commences, and Jorrocks interrogates Sam as to the names of the brawlers.  “Who be that?” said he, “offering to bet a thousand to a hundred.”  Spring, after eyeing him through his spectacles, with a grin and a look of suspicion replies, “Come now—­come—­let’s have no nonsense—­you know as well as I.”  “Really,” replies Mr. Jorrocks most earnestly, “I don’t.”  “Why, where have you lived all your life?” “First part of it with my grandmother at Lisson Grove, afterwards at Camberwell, but now I resides in Great Coram Street, Russell Square—­a werry fashionable neighbourhood.”  “Oh, I see,” replies Sam, “you are one of the reg’lar city coves, then—­now, what brings you here?” “Just to say that I have been at Newmarket, for I’m blowed if ever you catch me here again.”  “That’s a pity,” replied Sam, “for you look like a promising man—­a handsome-bodied chap in the face—­don’t you sport any?” “O a vast!—­’unt regularly—­I’m a member of the Surrey ’unt—­capital one it is too—­best in England by far.”  “What do you hunt?” inquired Sam.  “Foxes, to be sure.”  “And are they good eating?” “Come,” replied Jorrocks, “you know, as well as I do, we don’t eat ’em.”  The dialogue was interrupted by someone calling to Sam to know what he was backing.

“The Bedlamite colt, my lord,” with a forefinger to his hat.  “Who’s that?” inquired Jorrocks.  “That’s my Lord L——­, a baron-lord—­and a very nice one—­best baron-lord I know—­always bets with me—­that’s another baron-lord next him, and the man next him is a baron-knight, a stage below a baron-lord—­something between a nobleman and a gentleman.”  “And who be that stout, good-looking man in a blue coat and velvet collar next him, just rubbing his chin with the race card—­he’ll be a lord too, I suppose?” “No,—­that’s Mr. Gully, as honest a man as ever came here,—­that’s Crockford before him.  The man on the right is Mr. C——­, who they call the ‘cracksman,’ because formerly he was a professional housebreaker, but he has given up that trade, and turned gentleman, bets, and keeps a gaming-table.  This little ugly black-faced chap, that looks for all the world like a bilious Scotch terrier, has lately come among us.  He was a tramping pedlar—­sold worsted stockings—­attended country courses, and occasionally bet a pair.  Now he bets thousands of pounds, and keeps racehorses.