The story of the Diggers’ Stakes that year was a very simple one. It was rather a procession than a race. Kildare won with the greatest ease from The Pirate, while the rest of the field were beaten off. Good fellows on the Diamond Fields rejoiced, and for the most part had very substantial reasons for their joy.
Mr Gideon and his friends “the sharp division,” as they thought themselves, for once were shorn, and they look back to that race with anything but pleasure. Mr Gideon paid all his losses, for he was afraid that if he did not an attempt might be made to prove he had something to do with stealing Kildare, and was anxious for some time lest Bill Bledshaw, who was afterwards caught before he got rid of Brereton’s other horses, should give evidence against him. It remains only to say that Tom Bats had the pleasure of seeing Kildare win. His arm was well enough to allow him to be brought into Kimberley, and public feeling was so much in his favour, as the man who had rescued Kildare from the enemy, that the magistrate took a lenient view of the charge of assault on which he was brought up, and only inflicted a fine, which in a few minutes was raised for him by subscriptions of those who had backed Brereton’s game little horse.
Story 11.
A Queer Race.
“Who’s that man?” asked George Marshall of his friend Joe Warton, a Kimberley digger, as a slightly-made, good-looking man, dressed in a well-fitting suit of tweeds, which no colonial tailor could have turned out, walked past them as they were sitting on the stoop of the club.
“That man! why he is the hero of the day—our last distinguished visitor, Sir Harry Ferriard. You will hear all about him if you are long on the Fields, for every one is talking about him.”
“Sir Harry Ferriard! why he is the crack gentleman rider and owner of race-horses; the man who won last year’s ‘Grand National,’ what’s he doing up in Kimberley, of all places in the world?” asked George Marshall, looking through the door of the club at the gentleman in question with some interest.
“He is going a trip into the interior, when some friends of his for whom he is waiting arrive. I wish they would come and he were off, for I am sick of the sight of him. Since his arrival the camp in general has begun to take an interest in the British aristocracy. The proprietor of the club has procured a big ‘Peerage and Baronetage,’ which is always in use. Sir Harry of an evening tells stories of his friend Lord This, and the Duchess of Something Else, till one feels sick. Little Lazarus picked him up coming here in the coach. He likes you to think that he knew him at home, and that he is a fair sample of the pals he made in London. The little cad is as proud as a peacock of his friend Sir Harry, and is never tired of drawing him out and showing him off.”