“These grooms, Mr. Carvel,” he said to me, as we took a bottle in private inside, “these grooms are the very devil for superstition.  And once a horse gets a bad name with them, good-by to him.  Miller knew how to ride, of course, but like many another of them, was too damned over-confident.  I warned him more than once for getting young horses into a fret, and I’m willing to lay a ten-pound note that he angered Pollux.  ’Od’s life!  He is a vicious beast.  So was his father, Culloden, before him.  But here’s luck to you, sir!” says Mr. Astley, tipping his glass; “having seen you ride, egad!  I have put all the money I can afford in your favour.”

Before I left him he had given me several valuable hints as to the manner of managing that kind of a horse:  not to auger him with the spurs unless it became plain that he meant to kill me; to try persuasion first and force afterwards; and secondly, he taught me a little trick of twisting the bit which I have since found very useful.

Leaving the White Horse, I was followed into Piccadilly by the crowd, until I was forced to take refuge in a hackney chaise.  The noise of the affair had got around town, and I was heartily sorry I had not taken the other and better method of trying conclusions with the duke, and slapped his face.  I found Jack Comyn in Dover Street, and presently Mr. Fox came for us with his chestnuts in his chaise, Fitzpatrick with him.  At Hyde Park Corner there was quite a jam of coaches, chaises, and cabriolets and beribboned phaetons, which made way for us, but kept us busy bowing as we passed among them.  It seemed as if everybody of consequence that I had met in London was gathered there.  One face I missed, and rejoiced that she was absent, for I had a degraded feeling like that of being the favourite in a cudgel-bout.  And the thought that her name was connected with all this made my face twitch.  I heard the people clapping and saw them waving in the carriages as we passed, and some stood forward before the rest in a haphazard way, without rhyme or reason.  Mr. Walpole with Lady Di Beauclerk, and Mr. Storer and Mr. Price and Colonel St. John, and Lord and Lady Carlisle and Lady Ossory.  These I recognized.  Inside, the railing along the row was lined with people.  And there stood Pollux, bridled, with a blanket thrown over his great back and chest, surrounded still by the hunting-frocks, who had followed him from the White Horse.  Mixed in with these, swearing, conjecturing, and betting, were some to surprise me, whose names were connected with every track in England:  the Duke of Grafton and my Lords Sandwich and March and Bolingbroke, and Sir Charles Bunbury, and young Lords Derby and Foley, who, after establishing separate names for folly on the tracks, went into partnership.  My Lord Baltimore descended listlessly from his cabriolet to join the group.  They all sang out when they caught sight of our party, and greeted me with a zeal to carry me off my feet.  And my Lord Sandwich, having done me the honour to lay something very handsome upon me, had his chief jockey on hand to give me some final advice.  I believe I was the coolest of any of them.  And at that time of all others the fact came up to me with irresistible humour that I, a young colonial Whig, who had grown up to detest these people, should be rubbing noses with them.