On arrival up at Rannoch, however, one thing struck me as jolly strange, and that was that among the people I was asked to meet was one of the very worst blacklegs about town.

He had been a scamp from his cradle, a spendthrift at Eton and Oxford, a blackleg in his manhood.

I seemed to catch my audience quite accidentally by using a word tabooed at that time in sporting circles, because it represented the blacklegs of the racecourse, and was used as a nickname for rascaldom.