This man had a riding-boy called Brunt--a lad from Perth, West Australia--and
he taught Brunt, with a trainer's whip, the hardest thing a jock can learn--to
sit still, to sit still, and to keep on sitting still. When Brunt fairly
grasped this truth, Shackles devastated the country. No weight could stop him
at his own distance; and The fame of Shackles spread from Ajmir in the South,
to Chedputter in the North. There was no horse like Shackles, so long as he
was allowed to do his work in his own way. But he was beaten in the end; and
the story of his fall is enough to make angels weep.
At the lower end of the Chedputter racecourse, just before the turn into the
straight, the track passes close to a couple of old brick- mounds enclosing a
funnel-shaped hollow. The big end of the funnel is not six feet from the
railings on the off-side. The astounding peculiarity of the course is that, if
you stand at one particular place, about half a mile away, inside the course,
and speak at an ordinary pitch, your voice just hits the funnel of the brick-
mounds and makes a curious whining echo there. A man discovered this one
morning by accident while out training with a friend. He marked the place to
stand and speak from with a couple of bricks, and he kept his knowledge to
himself.
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