Boy Woodburn

 
Boy Woodburn

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Boy Woodburn, by Alfred Ollivant This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Boy Woodburn A Story of the Sussex Downs
Author: Alfred Ollivant
Release Date: March 11, 2006 [EBook #17965]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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BOY WOODBURN

By the same Author:
BOB, SON OF BATTLE THE GENTLEMAN REDCOAT CAPTAIN THE ROYAL ROAD THE BROWN MARE
[Illustration: FOUR-POUND-THE-SECOND
"Look at that head-piece. He's all the while a-thinkin', that hoss is. That's the way he's bred."]

BOY WOODBURN
A STORY OF THE SUSSEX DOWNS
By ALFRED OLLIVANT
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1918

Copyright, 1918, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages including the Scandinavian

TO THE MOTHER OF LAUGHTER

CONTENTS

PART I THE GIRL AND THE FOAL
BOOK I OLD MAT
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Trainer 3
II. Boy Shows Her Metal 8
III. Goosey Gander 13
IV. The Gypsy's Mare 19
V. Across the Downs 23
VI. Putnam's 32
VII. Ally Sloper 39
VIII. The Great Beast 44
BOOK II THE WATCHER
IX. Patience Longstaffe 55
X. Her Daughter 60
XI. Brazil Silver 69
XII. The Eton Man 76
XIII. Boy in Her Eyrie 81
XIV. Old Man Badger 90
XV. The Three J's 95
XVI. The Fat Man 100
XVII. Boy Sees a Vision 105
XVIII. Two on the Downs 114
XIX. Cannibal's National 120
XX. The Paddock Close 128
BOOK III SILVER MUG
XXI. The Berserker Colt 137
XXII. Ragamuffin 147
XXIII. The Duke's Hounds 153
XXIV. The Man With the Gamp 160
XXV. The Black Bird 170
XXVI. Jim Silver Goes To War 179
XXVII. The Fire in the Dusk 185
XXVIII. The Fat Man Goes Under 191
Battle 193

PART II THE WOMAN AND THE HORSE
BOOK IV THE TRIAL
XXIX. Albert Edward 201
XXX. The Bible Class 208
XXXI. God Almighty's Mustang 221
XXXII. The Fat Man Emerges 229
XXXIII. The Gallop 234
XXXIV. The Lover's Quarrel 245
BOOK V MONKEY BRAND
XXXV. The Dancer's Son 255
XXXVI. Monkey Sulks 262
XXXVII. The Early Bird 268
XXXVIII. Ikey's Own 272
XXXIX. The Queen of Kentucky 278
XL. Man and Woman 285
XLI. The Spider's Web 290
XLII. The Doper 294
XLIII. The Loose-box 299
XLIV. Monkey Brand Gets the Sack 306
BOOK VI MOCASSIN
XLV. Aintree 313
XLVI. The Sefton Arms 317
XLVII. On the Course 324
XLVIII. The Star-spangled Jacket 336
XLIX. The Last Card 356
L. The Fat Man Takes His Ticket 365
LI. Old Mat on Heaven and Earth 374
LII. Putnam's Once More 376


PART I
THE GIRL AND THE FOAL
BOOK I
OLD MAT
CHAPTER I
The Trainer
The Spring Meeting at Polefax was always Old Mat's day out. And it was part of the accepted order of things that he should come to the Meeting driving in his American buggy behind the horse with which later in the day he meant to win the Hunters' Steeplechase.
There were very few sporting men who remembered the day when Mat had not been a leading figure in the racing world. For sixty years he had been training jumpers, and he looked as if he would continue to train them till the end of time. Once it may be supposed he had been Young Mat, but he had been Old Mat now as long as most could recall. In all these years, indeed, he had changed very little. He trained his horses to-day at Putnam's, the farm in the village of Cuckmere, over the green billow of the Downs, just as he had done in the beginning; and he trained the same kind of horses in the same kind of way, which was entirely different from that of other trainers.
Mat rarely had a good horse in his stable, and never a bad one. He kept his horses in old barns and farm-stables, turning them out on to the chalk Downs in all seasons of the year with little shelter but the lee of a haystack or an occasional shed.
"I don't keep my hosses in no 'ot-house," he would say. "A hoss wants a heart, not a hot-water bottle. He'll get it on the chalk, let him be."
But if his horses were rough, they stood up and they stayed.
And that was all he wanted: for Mat never trained anything but jumpers.
"Flat racin' for flats," was a favourite saying of his. "'Chasin' for class."
And many of his wins have become historic; notably the Grand National in the year of Sedan--when Merry Andrew, who had three legs and one lung, so the story went, won for him by two lengths; and thirty years later Cannibal's still more astounding victory in the same race, when Monkey Brand out-jockeyed Chukkers Childers, the American crack, in one of the most desperate set-to's in the annals of Aintree.
There is a famous caricature of Mat leading in the winner on the first of these occasions. He looked then much as he