beast eno', an' a Portugal crown i' th' boot. Sooner take me chaunces o'
Tyburn on 'Ounslow 'Eath. An' Miller waurna able to sit 'im, 'tis no for
th' likes o' me to try. Th' bloody devil took th' shirt off Teddy's back
this morn. I adwises th' young Buckskin t' order 's coffin." Just then
he perceived me, and touched his cap, something abashed. "With
submission, sir, y'r honour'll take an old man's adwise an' not go near
'im."

Pollux's appearance, indeed, was not calculated to reassure me. He
looked ugly to exaggeration, his ears laid back and his nostrils as big
as crowns, and his teeth bared time and time. Now and anon an impatient
fling of his hoof would make the grooms start away from him. Since
coming to the inn he had been walked a couple of miles each day, with two
men with loaded whips to control him. I was being offered a deal of
counsel, when big Mr. Astley came in from Lambeth, and silenced them all.

"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