[Illustration: "ROBERT TRINDER, ESQ. , M. F. H. " _A Grand Filly. _]

All on the Irish Shore

Irish Sketches

By

E. OE. Somerville and Martin Ross

Authors of

"Some Experiences of an Irish R. M. , " "The Real Charlotte" "The SilverFox, " "A Patrick's Day Hunt" etc. , etc. 

With Illustrations by E. OE. Somerville

_SECOND IMPRESSION_

Longmans, Green, and Co. 

39 Paternoster Row, London

New York and Bombay

1903

CONTENTS. 

THE TINKER'S DOG

FANNY FITZ'S GAMBLE

THE CONNEMARA MARE

A GRAND FILLY

A NINETEENTH-CENTURY MIRACLE

HIGH TEA AT MCKEOWN'S

THE BAGMAN'S PONY

AN IRISH PROBLEM

THE DANE'S BREECHIN'

"MATCHBOX"

"AS I WAS GOING TO BANDON FAIR"

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"ROBERT TRINDER, ESQ. , M. F. H. "

"A SILENCE THAT WAS THE OUTCOME PARTLY OF STUPIDITY, PARTLY OF CAUTION, AND PARTLY OF LACK OF ENGLISH SPEECH"

"MR. GUNNING WAS LOOKIN' OUT FOR A COB"

ROBERT'S AUNT

THE BLOOD-HEALER

"THE GREY-HAIRED KITCHEN-MAID"

SWEENY

"MUSHA! MUSHA!"

"CROPPY"

A HIERARCH OF HORSE-DEALING

THE TINKER'S DOG

"Can't you head 'em off, Patsey? Run, you fool! _run_, can't you?"

Sounds followed that suggested the intemperate use of Mr. FreddyAlexander's pocket-handkerchief, but that were, in effect, produced byhis struggle with a brand new hunting-horn. To this demonstration aboutas much attention was paid by the nine couple of buccaneers whom he wasnow exercising for the first time as might have been expected, and itwas brought to abrupt conclusion by the sudden charge of two of themfrom the rear. Being coupled, they mowed his legs from under him asirresistibly as chain shot and being puppies, and of an imbecilefriendliness they remained to lick his face and generally make merryover him as he struggled to his feet. 

By this time the leaders of the pack were well away up a ploughed field, over a fence and into a furze brake, from which their rejoicing yelpsstreamed back on the damp breeze. The Master of the Craffroe Houndspicked himself up, and sprinted up the hill after the Whip and KennelHuntsman--a composite official recently promoted from the stableyard--in a way that showed that his failure in horn-blowing was not thefault of his lungs. His feet were held by the heavy soil, he tripped inthe muddy ridges; none the less he and Patsey plunged together over thestony rampart of the field in time to see Negress and Lily springingthrough the furze in kangaroo leaps, while they uttered long squeals ofecstasy. The rest of the pack, with a confidence gained in many asuccessful riot, got to them as promptly as if six Whips were behindthem, and the whole faction plunged into a little wood on the top ofwhat was evidently a burning scent. 

"Was it a fox, Patsey?" said the Master excitedly. 

"I dunno, Master Freddy: it might be 'twas a hare, " returned Patsey, taking in a hurried reef in the strap that was responsible for thesupport of his trousers. 

Freddy was small and light, and four short years before had been arenowned hare in his school paper-chases: he went through the wood at apace that gave Patsey and the puppies all they could do to keep withhim, and dropped into a road just in time to see the pack streaming up anarrow lane near the end of the wood. At this point they were reinforcedby a yellow dachshund who, with wildly flapping ears, and at thatcaricature of a gallop peculiar to his kind, joined himself to thehunters. 

"Glory be to Mercy!" exclaimed Patsey, "the misthress's dog!"

Almost simultaneously the pack precipitated themselves into a ruinedcabin at the end of the lane; instantly from within arose an uproar ofsounds--crashes of an ironmongery sort, yells of dogs, raucous humancurses; then the ruin exuded hounds, hens and turkeys at every one ofthe gaps in its walls, and there issued from what had been the doorway atall man with a red beard, armed with a large frying-pan, with which herained blows on the fleeing Craffroe Pack. It must be admitted that thespeed with which these abandoned their prey, whatever it was, suggesteda very intimate acquaintance with the wrath of cooks and the perils ofresistance. 

Before their lawful custodians had recovered from this spectacle, a talllady in black was suddenly merged in the _mêlée_, alternately callingloudly and incongruously for "Bismarck, " and blowing shrill blasts on awhistle. 

"If the tinker laves a sthroke of the pan on the misthress's dog, theLord help him!" said Patsey, starting in pursuit of Lily, who, with tailtucked in and a wounded hind leg buckled up, was removing herselfswiftly from the scene of action. 

Mrs. Alexander shoved her way into the cabin, through a filthy group ofgabbling male and female tinkers, and found herself involved in a wreckof branches and ragged tarpaulin that had once formed a kind of tent, but was now strewn on the floor by the incursion and excursion of thechase. Earthquake throes were convulsing the tarpaulin; a tinker woman, full of zeal, dashed at it and flung it back, revealing, amongst other_débris_, an old wooden bedstead heaped with rags. On either side of oneof its legs protruded the passion-fraught faces of the coupledhound-puppies, who, still linked together, had passed through the periodof unavailing struggle into a state of paralysed insanity of terror. Muffled squeals and tinny crashes told that conflict was still ragingbeneath the bed; the tinker women screamed abuse and complaint; andsuddenly the dachshund's long yellow nose, streaming with blood, workedits way out of the folds. His mistress snatched at his collar anddragged him forth, and at his heels followed an infuriated tom cat, which, with its tail as thick as a muff, went like a streak through theconfusion, and was lost in the dark ruin of the chimney. 

Mrs. Alexander stayed for no explanations: she extricated herself fromthe tinker party, and, filled with a righteous wrath, went forth to lookfor her son. From a plantation three fields away came the asphyxiatedbleats of the horn and the desolate bawls of Patsey Crimmeen. Mrs. Alexander decided that it was better for the present to leave the_personnel_ of the Craffroe Hunt to their own devices. 

It was but three days before these occurrences that Mr. Freddy Alexanderhad stood on the platform of the Craffroe Station, with a throbbingheart, and a very dirty paper in his hand containing a list of eighteennames, that ranged alphabetically from "Batchellor" to "Warior. " At hiselbow stood a small man with a large moustache, and the thinnest legsthat were ever buttoned into gaiters, who was assuring him that to noother man in Ireland would he have sold those hounds at such a price; astatement that was probably unimpeachable. 

"The only reason I'm parting them is I'm giving up me drag, and sellingme stock, and going into partnership with a veterinary surgeon in Rugby. You've some of the best blood in Ireland in those hounds. "

"Is it blood?" chimed in an old man who was standing, slightly drunk, atMr. Alexander's other elbow. "The most of them hounds is by the KerryRapparee, and he was the last of the old Moynalty Baygles. Black dogsthey were, with red eyes! Every one o' them as big as a yearling calf, and they'd hunt anything that'd roar before them!" He steadied himselfon the new Master's arm. "I have them gethered in the ladies'waiting-room, sir, the way ye'll have no throuble. 'Twould be as goodfor ye to lave the muzzles on them till ye'll be through the town. "

Freddy Alexander cannot to this hour decide what was the worst incidentof that homeward journey; on the whole, perhaps, the most serious wasthe escape of Governess, who subsequently ravaged the country for twodays, and was at length captured in the act of killing Mrs. Alexander'swhite Leghorn cock. For a young gentleman whose experience of houndsconsisted in having learned at Cambridge to some slight and painfulextent that if he rode too near them he got sworn at, the purchaser ofthe Kerry Rapparee's descendants had undertaken no mean task. 

On the morning following on the first run of the Craffroe Hounds, Mrs. Alexander was sitting at her escritoire, making up her weekly accountsand entering in her poultry-book the untimely demise of the Leghorncock. She was a lady of secret enthusiasms which sheltered themselvesbehind habits of the most business-like severity. Her books were modelsof order, and as she neatly inscribed the Leghorn cock's epitaph, "Killed by hounds, " she could not repress the compensating thought thatshe had never seen Freddy's dark eyes and olive complexion look so wellas when he had tried on his new pink coat. 

At this point she heard a step on the gravel outside; Bismarck uttered abloodhound bay and got under the sofa. It was a sunny morning in lateOctober, and the French window was open; outside it, ragged as a Russianpoodle and nearly as black, stood the tinker who had the day beforewielded the frying-pan with such effect. 

"Me lady, " began the tinker, "I ax yer ladyship's pardon, but me littledog is dead. "

"Well?" said Mrs. Alexander, fixing a gaze of clear grey rectitude uponhim. 

"Me lady, " continued the tinker, reverentially but firmly, "'twas aftherhe was run by thim dogs yestherday, and 'twas your ladyship's dog thatfinished him. He tore the throat out of him under the bed!" He pointedan accusing forefinger at Bismarck, whose lambent eyes of terror glowedfrom beneath the valance of the sofa. 

"Nonsense! I saw your dog; he was twice my dog's size, " said Bismarck'smistress decidedly, not, however, without a remembrance of the blood onBismarck's nose. She adored courage, and had always cherished a beliefthat Bismarck's sharklike jaws implied the possession of latentferocity. 

"Ah, but he was very wake, ma'am, afther he bein' hunted, " urged thetinker. "I never slep' a wink the whole night, but keepin' sups o' milkto him and all sorts. Ah, ma'am, ye wouldn't like to be lookin' at him!"

The tinker was a very good-looking young man, almost apostolic in type, with a golden red aureole of hair and beard and candid blue eyes. Theselatter filled with tears as their owner continued:--

"He was like a brother for me; sure he follied me from home. 'Twas hewas dam wise! Sure at home all me mother'd say to him was, "Where's theducks, Captain?" an' he wouldn't lave wather nor bog-hole round thecounthry but he'd have them walked and the ducks gethered. The pigscould be in their choice place, wherever they'd be he'd go around them. If ye'd tell him to put back the childhren from the fire, he'd ketchthem by the sleeve and dhrag them. "

The requiem ceased, and the tinker looked grievingly into his hat. 

"What is your name?" asked Mrs. Alexander sternly. "How long is it sinceyou left home?"

Had the tinker been as well acquainted with her as he was afterwardsdestined to become, he would have been aware that when she was mostjudicial she was frequently least certain of what her verdict was goingto be. 

"Me name's Willy Fennessy, me lady, " replied the tinker, "an' I'm goin'the roads no more than three months. Indeed, me lady, I think the timetoo long that I'm with these blagyard thravellers. All the friends Ihave was poor Captain, and he's gone from me. "

"Go round to the kitchen, " said Mrs. Alexander. 

The results of Willy Fennessy's going round to the kitchen werefar-reaching. Its most immediate consequences were that (1) he mendedthe ventilator of the kitchen range; (2) he skinned a brace of rabbitsfor Miss Barnet, the cook; (3) he arranged to come next day and repairthe clandestine devastations of the maids among the china. 

He was pronounced to be a very agreeable young man. 

Before luncheon (of which meal he partook in the kitchen) he had beenconsulted by Patsey Crimmeen about the chimney of the kennel boiler, hadsingle-handed reduced it to submission, and had, in addition, boiled themeal for the hounds with a knowledge of proportion and an untiringdevotion to the use of the potstick which produced "stirabout" of asmoothness and excellence that Miss Barnet herself might have been proudof. 

"You know, mother, " said Freddy that evening, "you do want another chapin the garden badly. "

"Well it's not so much the garden, " said Mrs. Alexander with alacrity, "but I think he might be very useful to you, dear, and it's such agreat matter his being a teetotaler, and he seems so fond of animals. Ireally feel we ought to try and make up to him somehow for the loss ofhis dog; though, indeed, a more deplorable object than that poor mangydog I never saw!"

"All right: we'll put him in the back lodge, and we'll give him Bizzy asa watch dog. Won't we, Bizzy?" replied Freddy, dragging the somnolentBismarck from out of the heart of the hearthrug, and accepting withoutrepugnance the comprehensive lick that enveloped his chin. 

From which it may be gathered that Mrs. Alexander and her son hadfallen, like their household, under the fatal spell of the fascinatingtinker. 

At about the time that this conversation was taking place, Mr. Fennessy, having spent an evening of valedictory carouse with his tribe in theruined cottage, was walking, somewhat unsteadily, towards the wood, dragging after him by a rope a large dog. He did not notice that he wasbeing followed by a barefooted woman, but the dog did, and, being anintelligent dog, was in some degree reassured. In the wood the tinkerspent some time in selecting a tree with a projecting branch suitable tohis purpose, and having found one he proceeded to hang the dog. Even inhis cups Mr. Fennessy made sentiment subservient to common sense. 

It is hardly too much to say that in a week the tinker had taken up aposition in the Craffroe household only comparable to that of Ygdrasil, who in Norse mythology forms the ultimate support of all things. Savefor the incessant demands upon his skill in the matter of solder andstitches, his recent tinkerhood was politely ignored, or treated as anescapade excusable in a youth of spirit. Had not his father owned a farmand seven cows in the county Limerick, and had not he himself threetimes returned the price of his ticket to America to a circle of adoringand wealthy relatives in Boston? His position in the kitchen and yardbecame speedily assured. Under his _régime_ the hounds were valeted asthey had never been before. Lily herself (newly washed, with "blue" inthe water) was scarcely more white than the concrete floor of the kennelyard, and the puppies, Ruby and Remus, who had unaccountably developed avirulent form of mange, were immediately taken in hand by theall-accomplished tinker, and anointed with a mixture whose verynoisomeness was to Patsey Crimmeen a sufficient guarantee of itsefficacy, and was impressive even to the Master, fresh from much anxiousstudy of veterinary lore. 

"He's the best man we've got!" said Freddy proudly to a dubious uncle, "there isn't a mortal thing he can't put his hand to. "

"Or lay his hands on, " suggested the dubious uncle. "May I ask if hiscolleagues are still within a mile of the place?"

"Oh, he hates the very sight of 'em!" said Freddy hastily, "cuts 'emdead whenever he sees 'em. "

"It's no use your crabbing him, George, " broke in Mrs. Alexander, "wewon't give him up to you! Wait till you see how he has mended the lockof the hall door!"

"I should recommend you to buy a new one at once, " said Sir George Ker, in a way that was singularly exasperating to the paragon's proprietors. 

Mrs. Alexander was, or so her friends said, somewhat given to vauntingherself of her paragons, under which heading, it may be admitted, practically all her household were included. She was, indeed, one ofthose persons who may or may not be heroes to their valets, but whosevalets are almost invariably heroes to them. It was, therefore, excessively discomposing to her that, during the following week, in thevery height of apparently cloudless domestic tranquillity, the housemaidand the parlour-maid should in one black hour successively demand anaudience, and successively, in the floods of tears proper to suchoccasions, give warning. Inquiry as to their reasons was fruitless. Theywere unhappy: one said she wouldn't get her appetite, and that hermother was sick; the other said she wouldn't get her sleep in it, andthere was things--sob--going on--sob. 

Mrs. Alexander concluded the interview abruptly, and descended to thekitchen to interview her queen paragon, Barnet, on the crisis. 

Miss Barnet was a stout and comely English lady, of that liberal fortythat frankly admits itself in advertisements to be twenty-eight. It wasunderstood that she had only accepted office in Ireland because, in thefirst place, the butler to whom she had long been affianced had marriedanother, and because, in the second place, she had a brother buried inBelfast. She was, perhaps, the one person in the world whose opinionabout poultry Mrs. Alexander ranked higher than her own. She now alloweda restrained acidity to mingle with her dignity of manner, scarcely morethan the calculated lemon essence in her faultless castle puddings, butenough to indicate that she, too, had grievances. _She_ didn't know whythey were leaving. She had heard some talk about a fairy or something, but she didn't hold with such nonsense. 

"Gerrls is very frightful!" broke in an unexpected voice; "owldstandards like meself maybe wouldn't feel it!"

A large basket of linen had suddenly blocked the scullery door, andfrom beneath it a little woman, like an Australian aborigine, deliveredherself of this dark saying. 

"What are you talking about, Mrs. Griffen?" demanded Mrs. Alexander, turning in vexed bewilderment to her laundress, "what does all thismean?"

"The Lord save us, ma'am, there's some says it means a death in thehouse!" replied Mrs. Griffen with unabated cheerfulness, "an' indeed'twas no blame for the little gerrls to be frightened an' they meetin'it in the passages--"

"Meeting _what_?" interrupted her mistress. Mrs. Griffen was an old andprivileged retainer, but there were limits even for Mrs. Griffen. 

"Sure, ma'am, there's no one knows what was in it, " returned Mrs. Griffen, "but whatever it was they heard it goin' on before them alwaysin the panthry passage, an' it walkin' as sthrong as a man. It whippedaway up the stairs, and they seen the big snout snorting out at themthrough the banisters, and a bare back on it the same as a pig; and thetwo cheeks on it as white as yer own, and away with it! And with thatMary Anne got a wakeness, and only for Willy Fennessy bein' in thekitchen an' ketching a hold of her, she'd have cracked her head on therange, the crayture!"

Here Barnet smiled with ineffable contempt. 

"What I'm tellin' them is, " continued Mrs. Griffen, warming with hersubject, "maybe that thing was a pairson that's dead, an' might be owin'a pound to another one, or has something that way on his soul, an' it'sin the want o' some one that'll ax it what's throublin' it. The like o'thim couldn't spake till ye'll spake to thim first. But, sure, gerrlshas no courage--"

Barnet's smile was again one of wintry superiority. 

"Willy Fennessy and Patsey Crimmeen was afther seein' it too lastnight, " went on Mrs. Griffen, "an' poor Willy was as much frightened! Hesaid surely 'twas a ghost. On the back avenue it was, an' one minute'twas as big as an ass, an' another minute it'd be no bigger than abonnive--"

"Oh, the Lord save us!" wailed the kitchen-maid irrepressibly from thescullery. 

"I shall speak to Fennessy myself about this, " said Mrs. Alexander, making for the door with concentrated purpose, "and in the meantime Iwish to hear no more of this rubbish. "

"I'm sure Fennessy wishes to hear no more of it, " said Barnet acridly toMrs. Griffen, when Mrs. Alexander had passed swiftly out of hearing, "after the way those girls have been worryin' on at him about it all themorning. Such a set out!"

Mrs. Griffen groaned in a polite and general way, and behind Barnet'sback put her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and winked at thekitchen-maid. 

Mrs. Alexander found her conversation with Willy Fennessy lesssatisfactory than usual. He could not give any definite account of whathe and Patsey had seen: maybe they'd seen nothing at all; maybe--as anobvious impromptu--it was the calf of the Kerry cow; whatever was in it, it was little he'd mind it, and, in easy dismissal of the subject, wouldthe misthress be against his building a bit of a coal-shed at the backof the lodge while she was away?

That evening a new terror was added to the situation. Jimmy theboot-boy, on his return from taking the letters to the evening post, fled in panic into the kitchen, and having complied with the etiquetteinvariable in such cases by having "a wakeness, " he described to adeeply sympathetic audience how he had seen something that was like awoman in the avenue, and he had called to it and it returned him noanswer, and how he had then asked it three times in the name o' God whatwas it, and it soaked away into the trees from him, and then there camesomething rushing in on him and grunting at him to bite him, and he wasfull sure it was the Fairy Pig from Lough Clure. 

Day by day the legend grew, thickened by tales of lights that had beenseen moving mysteriously in the woods of Craffroe. Even the hounds weresubpoenaed as witnesses; Patsey Crimmeen's mother stating that for threenights after Patsey had seen that Thing they were singing and screechingto each other all night. 

Had Mrs. Crimmeen used the verb scratch instead of screech she wouldhave been nearer the mark. The puppies, Ruby and Remus, had, after themanner of the young, human and canine, not failed to distribute theirmalady among their elders, and the pack, straitly coupled, went fordismal constitutionals, and the kennels reeked to heaven of remedies, and Freddy's new hunter, Mayboy, from shortness of work, smashed thepartition of the loose box and kicked his neighbour, Mrs. Alexander'scob, in the knee. 

"The worst of it is, " said Freddy confidentially to his ally andadviser, the junior subaltern of the detachment at Enniscar, who hadcome over to see the hounds, "that I'm afraid Patsey Crimmeen--the boywhom I'm training to whip to me, you know"--(as a matter of fact, theWhip was a year older than the Master)--"is beginning to drink a bit. When I came down here before breakfast this mornin'"--when Freddy wasfeeling more acutely than usual his position as an M. F. H. , he cut hisg's and talked slightly through his nose, even, on occasion, going sofar as to omit the aspirate in talking of his hounds--"there wasn't asign of him--kennel door not open or anything. I let the poor brutes outinto the run. I tell you, what with the paraffin and the carbolic andeverything the kennel was pretty high--"

"It's pretty thick now, " said his friend, lighting a cigarette. 

"Well, I went into the boiler-house, " continued Freddy impressively, "and there he was, asleep on the floor, with his beastly head on mykennel coat, and one leg in the feeding trough!"

Mr. Taylour made a suitable ejaculation. 

"I jolly soon kicked him on to his legs, " went on Freddy, "not that theywere much use to him--he must have been on the booze all night. Afterthat I went on to the stable yard, and if you'll believe me, the twochaps there had never turned up at all--at half-past eight, mindyou!--and there was Fennessy doing up the horses. He said he believedthat there'd been a wake down at Enniscar last night. I thought it wasrather decent of him doing their work for them. "

"You'll sack 'em, I suppose?" remarked Mr. Taylour, with martialseverity. 

"Oh well, I don't know, " said Mr. Alexander evasively, "I'll see. Anyhow, don't say anything to my mother about it; a drunken man is likea red rag to a bull to her. "

Taking this peculiarity of Mrs. Alexander into consideration, it wasperhaps as well that she left Craffroe a few days afterwards to staywith her brother. The evening before she left both the Fairy Pig and theGhost Woman were seen again on the avenue, this time by the coachman, who came into the kitchen considerably the worse for liquor andannounced the fact, and that night the household duties were performedby the maids in pairs, and even, when possible, in trios. 

As Mrs. Alexander said at dinner to Sir George, on the evening of herarrival, she was thankful to have abandoned the office of GhostlyComforter to her domestics. Only for Barnet she couldn't have left poorFreddy to the mercy of that pack of fools; in fact, even with Barnet tolook after them, it was impossible to tell what imbecility they were notcapable of. 

"Well, if you like, " said Sir George, "I might run you over there on themotor car some day to see how they're all getting on. If Freddy is goingto hunt on Friday, we might go on to Craffroe after seeing the fun. "

The topic of Barnet was here shelved in favour of automobiles. Mrs. Alexander's brother was also a person of enthusiasms. 

But what were these enthusiasms compared to the deep-seated ecstasy ofFreddy Alexander as in his new pink coat he rode down the main streetof Enniscar, Patsey in equal splendour bringing up the rear, unspeakablyconscious of the jibes of his relatives and friends. There was a selectfield, consisting of Mr. Taylour, four farmers, some young ladies onbicycles, and about two dozen young men and boys on foot, who, in orderto be prepared for all contingencies, had provided themselves with fivedogs, two horns, and a ferret. It is, after all, impossible to pleaseeverybody, and from the cyclists' and foot people's point of view theweather left nothing to be desired. The sun shone like a glisteringshield in the light blue November sky, the roads were like iron, thewind, what there was of it, like steel. There was a line of white on thenortherly side of the fences, that yielded grudgingly and inch by inchbefore the march of the pale sunshine: the new pack could hardly havehad a more unfavourable day for their _début_. 

The new Master was, however, wholly undaunted by such crumples in therose-leaf. He was riding Mayboy, a big trustworthy horse, whose love ofjumping had survived a month of incessant and arbitrary schooling, andhe left the road as soon as was decently possible, and made a lineacross country for the covert that involved as much jumping as couldreasonably be hoped for in half a mile. At the second fence PatseyCrimmeen's black mare put her nose in the air and swung round; Patsey'shands seemed to be at their worst this morning, and what their worstfelt like the black mare alone knew. Mr. Taylour, as Deputy Whip, waltzed erratically round the nine couple on a very flippant polo pony;and the four farmers, who had wisely adhered to the road, reached thecovert sufficiently in advance of the hunt to frustrate Lily's projectof running sheep in a neighbouring field. 

The covert was a large, circular enclosure, crammed to the very top ofits girdling bank with furze-bushes, bracken, low hazel, and stuntedScotch firs. Its primary idea was woodcock, its second rabbits; beaterswere in the habit of getting through it somehow, but a ride feasible forfox hunters had never so much as occurred to it. Into this, withpractical assistance from the country boys, the deeply reluctant houndswere pitched and flogged; Freddy very nervously uplifted his voice infalsetto encouragement, feeling much as if he were starting the solo ofan anthem; and Mr. Taylour and Patsey, the latter having made it up withthe black mare, galloped away with professional ardour to watchdifferent sides of the covert. This, during the next hour, they hadample opportunities for doing. After the first outburst of joy from thehounds on discovering that there were rabbits in the covert, and afterthe retirement of the rabbits to their burrows on the companiondiscovery that there were hounds in it, a silence, broken only by thefar-away prattle of the lady bicyclists on the road, fell round FreddyAlexander. He bore it as long as he could, cheering with falteringwhoops the invisible and unresponsive pack, and wondering what on earthhuntsmen were expected to do on such occasions; then, filled with thathorrid conviction which assails the lonely watcher, that the hounds haveslipped away at the far side, he put spurs to Mayboy, and cantered downthe long flank of the covert to find some one or something. Nothing hadhappened on the north side, at all events, for there was the faithfulTaylour, pirouetting on his hill-top in the eye of the wind. Two fieldsmore (in one of which he caught his first sight of any of the hounds, inthe shape of Ruby, carefully rolling on a dead crow), and then, underthe lee of a high bank, he came upon Patsey Crimmeen, the farmers, andthe country boys, absorbed in the contemplation of a fight betweenTiger, the butcher's brindled cur, and Watty, the kennel terrier. 

The manner in which Mr. Alexander dispersed this entertainment showedthat he was already equipped with one important qualification of aMaster of Hounds--a temper laid on like gas, ready to blaze at amoment's notice. He pitched himself off his horse and scrambled over thebank into the covert in search of his hounds. He pushed his way throughbriars and furze-bushes, and suddenly, near the middle of the wood, hecaught sight of them. They were in a small group, they were very quietand very busy. As a matter of fact they were engaged in eating a deadsheep. 

After this episode, there ensued a long and disconsolate period ofwandering from one bleak hillside to another, at the bidding of variousinformants, in search of apocryphal foxes, slaughterers of flocks ofequally apocryphal geese and turkeys--such a day as is discreetlyignored in all hunting annals, and, like the easterly wind that is itsparent, is neither good for man nor beast. 

By half-past three hope had died, even in the sanguine bosoms of theMaster and Mr. Taylour. Two of the farmers had disappeared, and the ladybicyclists, with faces lavender blue from waiting at various windy crossroads, had long since fled away to lunch. Two of the hounds werelimping; all, judging by their expressions, were on the verge of tears. Patsey's black mare had lost two shoes; Mr. Taylour's pony had ceased topull, and was too dispirited even to try to kick the hounds, and thecountry boys had dwindled to four. There had come a time when Mr. Taylour had sunk so low as to suggest that a drag should be run withthe assistance of the ferret's bag, a scheme only frustrated by theregrettable fact that the ferret and its owner had gone home. 

"Well we had a nice bit of schooling, anyhow, and, it's been a realeducational day for the hounds, " said Freddy, turning in his saddle tolook at the fires of the frosty sunset. "I'm glad they had it. I thinkwe're in for a go of hard weather. I don't know what I should have doneonly for you, old chap. Patsey's gone all to pieces: it's my belief he'sbeen on the drink this whole week, and where he gets it--"

"Hullo! Hold hard!" interrupted Mr. Taylour. "What's Governor after?"

They were riding along a grass-grown farm road outside the Craffroedemesne; the grey wall made a sharp bend to the right, and just at thecorner Governor had begun to gallop, with his nose to the ground and hisstern up. The rest of the pack joined him in an instant, and all swunground the corner and were lost to sight. 

"It's a fox!" exclaimed Freddy, snatching up his reins; "they alwayscross into the demesne just here!"

By the time he and Mr. Taylour were round the corner the hounds hadchecked fifty yards ahead, and were eagerly hunting to and fro for thelost scent, and a little further down the old road they saw a womanrunning away from them. 

"Hi, ma'am!" bellowed Freddy, "did you see the fox?"

The woman made no answer. 

"Did you see the fox?" reiterated Freddy in still more stentorian tones. "Can't you answer me?"

The woman continued to run without even looking behind her. 

The laughter of Mr. Taylour added fuel to the fire of Freddy's wrath: heput the spurs into Mayboy, dashed after the woman, pulled his horseacross the road in front of her, and shouted his question point-blank ather, coupled with a warm inquiry as to whether she had a tongue in herhead. 

The woman jumped backwards as if she were shot, staring in horror atFreddy's furious little face, then touched her mouth and ears and beganto jabber inarticulately and talk on her fingers. 

The laughter of Mr. Taylour was again plainly audible. 

"Sure that's a dummy woman, sir, " explained the butcher's nephew, hurrying up. "I think she's one of them tinkers that's outside thetown. " Then with a long screech, "Look! Look over! Tiger, have it!Hulla, hulla, hulla!"

Tiger was already over the wall and into the demesne, neck and neck withFly, the smith's half-bred greyhound; and in the wake of these championsclambered the Craffroe Pack, with strangled yelps of ardour, strivingand squealing and fighting horribly in the endeavour to scramble up thetall smooth face of the wall. 

"The gate! The gate further on!" yelled Freddy, thundering down theturfy road, with the earth flying up in lumps from his horse's hoofs. 

Mr. Taylour's pony gave two most uncomfortable bucks and ran away; evenPatsey Crimmeen and the black mare shared an unequal thrill ofenthusiasm, as the latter, wholly out of hand, bucketed after the pony. 

 * * * * *

The afternoon was very cold, a fact thoroughly realised by Mrs. Alexander, on the front seat of Sir George's motor-car, in spite ofenveloping furs, and of Bismarck, curled like a fried whiting, in herlap. The grey road rushed smoothly backwards under the broad tyres;golden and green plover whistled in the quiet fields, starlings and hugemissel thrushes burst from the wayside trees as the "Bollée, " utteringthat hungry whine that indicates the desire of such creatures to devourspace, tore past. Mrs. Alexander wondered if birds' beaks felt as coldas her nose after they had been cleaving the air for an afternoon; atall events, she reflected, they had not the consolation of tea to lookforward to. Barnet was sure to have some of her best hot cakes readyfor Freddy when he came home from hunting. Mrs. Alexander and SirGeorge had been scouring the roads since a very early lunch in search ofthe hounds, and her mind reposed on the thought of the hot cakes. 

The front lodge gates stood wide open, the motor-car curved its flightand skimmed through. Half-way up the avenue they whizzed past threepolicemen, one of whom was carrying on his back a strange and wormlikething. 

"Janet, " called out Sir George, "you've been caught making potheen!They've got the worm of a still there. "

"They're only making a short cut through the place from the bog; I'mdelighted they've found it!" screamed back Mrs. Alexander. 

The "Bollée" was at the hall door in another minute, and the mistress ofthe house pulled the bell with numbed fingers. There was no response. 

"Better go round to the kitchen, " suggested her brother. "You'll findthey're talking too hard to hear the bell. "

His sister took the advice, and a few minutes afterwards she opened thehall door with an extremely perturbed countenance. 

"I can't find a creature anywhere, " she said, "either upstairs ordown--I can't understand Barnet leaving the house empty--"

"Listen!" interrupted Sir George, "isn't that the hounds?"

They listened. 

"They're hunting down by the back avenue! come on, Janet!"

The motor-car took to flight again; it sped, soft-footed, through thetwilight gloom of the back avenue, while a disjointed, travellingclamour of hounds came nearer and nearer through the woods. Themotor-car was within a hundred yards of the back lodge, when out of therhododendron-bush burst a spectral black-and-white dog, with floatingfringes of ragged wool and hideous bald patches on its back. 

"Fennessy's dog!" ejaculated Mrs. Alexander, falling back in her seat. 

Probably Bismarck never enjoyed anything in his life as much as the alltoo brief moment in which, leaning from his mistress's lap in the prowof the flying "Bollée, " he barked hysterically in the wake of thepiebald dog, who, in all its dolorous career had never before had theawful experience of being chased by a motor-car. It darted in at theopen door of the lodge; the pursuers pulled up outside. There wereparaffin lamps in the windows, the open door was garlanded withevergreens; from it proceeded loud and hilarious voices and the jerkystrains of a concertina. Mrs. Alexander, with all, her most cherishedconvictions toppling on their pedestals, stood in the open doorway andstared, unable to believe the testimony of her own eyes. Was that theimmaculate Barnet seated at the head of a crowded table, in her--Mrs. Alexander's--very best bonnet and velvet cape, with a glass of steamingpotheen punch in her hand, and Willy Fennessy's arm round her waist?

The glass sank from the paragon's lips, the arm of Mr. Fennessy fellfrom her waist; the circle of servants, tinkers, and country peoplevainly tried to efface themselves behind each other. 

"Barnet!" said Mrs. Alexander in an awful voice, and even in that momentshe appreciated with an added pang the feathery beauty of a slice ofBarnet's sponge-cake in the grimy fist of a tinker. 

"Mrs. Fennessy, m'm, if you please, " replied Barnet, with a dignitythat, considering the bonnet and cape, was highly creditable to herstrength of character. 

At this point a hand dragged Mrs. Alexander backwards from the doorway, a barefooted woman hustled past her into the house, slammed the door inher face, and Mrs. Alexander found herself in the middle of the hounds. 

"We'd give you the brush, Mrs. Alexander, " said Mr. Taylour, as heflogged solidly all round him in the dusk, "but as the other lady seemsto have gone to ground with the fox I suppose she'll take it!"

 * * * * *

Mrs. Fennessy paid out of her own ample savings the fines inflicted uponher husband for potheen-making and selling drink in the Craffroe gatelodge without a licence, and she shortly afterwards took him to America. 

Mrs. Alexander's friends professed themselves as being not in the leastsurprised to hear that she had installed the afflicted Miss Fennessy(sister to the late occupant) and her scarcely less afflicted companion, the Fairy Pig, in her back lodge. Miss Fennessy, being deaf and dumb, isnot perhaps a paragon lodge-keeper, but having, like her brother, beenbrought up in a work-house kitchen, she has taught Patsey Crimmeen howto boil stirabout _à merveille_. 

FANNY FITZ'S GAMBLE

"Where's Fanny Fitz?" said Captain Spicer to his wife. 

They were leaning over the sea-wall in front of a little fishing hotelin Connemara, idling away the interval usually vouchsafed by the Irishcar-driver between the hour at which he is ordered to be ready and thatat which he appears. It was a misty morning in early June, the time ofall times for Connemara, did the tourist only know it. The mountainstowered green and grey above the palely shining sea in which they stood;the air was full of the sound of streams and the scent of wild flowers;the thin mist had in it something of the dazzle of the sunlight that wasclose behind it. Little Mrs. Spicer pulled down her veil: even after afortnight's fly-fishing she still retained some regard for hercomplexion. 

"She says she can't come, " she responded; "she has letters to write orsomething--and this is our last day!"

Mrs. Spicer evidently found the fact provoking. 

"On this information the favourite receded 33 to 1, " remarked CaptainSpicer. "I think you may as well chuck it, my dear. "

"I should like to beat them both!" said his wife, flinging a pebble intothe rising tide that was very softly mouthing the seaweedy rocks belowthem. 

"Well, here's Rupert; you can begin on him. "

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure!" said Rupert's sistervindictively. "A great teasing, squabbling baby! Oh, how I hate fools!and they are _both_ fools!--Oh, there you are, Rupert, " a well-simulatedblandness invading her voice; "and what's Fanny Fitz doing?"

"She's trying to do a Mayo man over a horse-deal, " replied Mr. RupertGunning. 

"A horse-deal!" repeated Mrs. Spicer incredulously. "Fanny buying ahorse! Oh, impossible!"

"Well, I don't know about that, " said Mr. Gunning, "she's trying prettyhard. I gave her my opinion--"

"I'll take my oath you did, " observed Captain Spicer. 

"--And as she didn't seem to want it, I came away, " continued Mr. Gunning imperturbably. "Be calm, Maudie; it takes two days and twonights to buy a horse in these parts; you'll be home in plenty of timeto interfere, and here's the car. Don't waste the morning. "

[Illustration: "A SILENCE THAT WAS THE OUTCOME PARTLY OF STUPIDITY, PARTLY OF CAUTION, AND PARTLY OF LACK OF ENGLISH SPEECH. "]

"I never know if you're speaking the truth or no, " complained Mrs. Spicer; nevertheless, she scrambled on to the car without delay. She andher brother had at least one point in common--the fanatic enthusiasm ofthe angler. 

In the meantime, Miss Fanny Fitzroy's negotiations were proceeding inthe hotel yard. Fanny herself was standing in a stable doorway, with herhands in the pockets of her bicycle skirt. She had no hat on, and themild breeze blew her hair about; it was light brown, with a brightnessin it; her eyes also were light brown, with gleams in them like theshallow places in a Connemara trout stream. At this moment they werescanning with approval, tempered by anxiety, the muddy legs of a leanand lengthy grey filly, who was fearfully returning her gaze frombetween the strands of a touzled forelock. The owner of the filly, asmall man, with a face like a serious elderly monkey, stood at her headin a silence that was the outcome partly of stupidity, partly ofcaution, and partly of lack of English speech. The conduct of the matterwas in the hands of a friend, a tall young man with a black beard, nimble of tongue and gesture, profuse in courtesies. 

"Well, indeed, yes, your ladyship, " he was saying glibly, "the breed ofhorses is greatly improving in these parts, and them hackney horses--"

"Oh, " interrupted Miss Fitzroy hastily, "I won't have her if she's ahackney. "

The eyes of the owner sought those of the friend in a gaze that clearlyindicated the question. 

"What'll ye say to her now?"

The position of the vendors was becoming a little complicated. They hadcome over through the mountains, from the borders of Mayo, to sell thefilly to the hotel-keeper for posting, and were primed to the lips withthe tale of her hackney lineage. The hotel-keeper had unconditionallyrefused to trade, and here, when a heaven-sent alternative was deliveredinto their hands, they found themselves hampered by the coils of acast-off lie. No shade, however, of hesitancy appeared on the opencountenance of the friend. He approached Miss Fitzroy with a mincingstep, a deprecating wave of the hand, and a deeply respectful ogle. Hewas going to adopt the desperate resource of telling the truth, but totell the truth profitably was a part that required rather more playingthan any other. 

"Well, your honour's ladyship, " he began, with a glance at the hotelostler, who was standing near cleaning a bit in industrious andsarcastic silence, "it is a fact, no doubt, that I mentioned here thismorning that this young mare was of the Government hackney stock. But, according as I understand from this poor man that owns her, he boughther in a small fair over the Tuam side, and the man that sold her couldtake his oath she was by the Grey Dawn--sure you'd know it out of hercolour. "

"Why didn't you say so before?" asked Miss Fitzroy, bending her straightbrows in righteous severity. 

"Well, that's true indeed, your ladyship; but, after all--I declare aman couldn't hardly live without he'd tell a lie sometimes!"

Fanny Fitz stooped, rather hurriedly, and entered upon a renewedexamination of the filly's legs. Even Rupert Gunning, after his briefand unsympathetic survey, had said she had good legs; in fact, he hadonly been able to crab her for the length of her back, and he, as FannyFitz reflected with a heat that took no heed of metaphor, was thegreatest crabber that ever croaked. 

"What are you asking for her?" she demanded with a sudden access ofdecision. 

There was a pause. The owner of the filly and his friend withdrew a stepor two and conferred together in Irish at lightning speed. The fillyheld up her head and regarded her surroundings with guilelesswonderment. Fanny Fitz made a mental dive into her bankbook, and arrivedat the varied conclusions that she was £30 to the good, that on that sumshe had to weather out the summer and autumn, besides pacifying variouscormorants (thus she designated her long-suffering tradespeople), andthat every one had told her that if she only kept her eyes open inConnemara she might be able to buy something cheap and make a pot ofmoney on it. 

"This poor honest man, " said the friend, returning to the charge, "sayshe couldn't part her without he'd get twenty-eight pounds for her; and, thank God, it's little your ladyship would think of giving that!"

Fanny Fitz's face fell. 

"Twenty-eight pounds!" she echoed. "Oh, that's ridiculous!"

The friend turned to the owner, and, with a majestic wave of the hand, signalled to him to retire. The owner, without a change of expression, coiled up the rope halter and started slowly and implacably for thegate; the friend took off his hat with wounded dignity. Every gestureimplied that the whole transaction was buried in an irrevocable past. 

Fanny Fitz's eyes followed the party as they silently left the yard, thefilly stalking dutifully with a long and springy step beside her master. It was a moment full of bitterness, and of a quite irrationalindignation against Rupert Gunning. 

"I beg your pardon, miss, " said the ostler, at her elbow, "would ye bewilling to give twenty pounds for the mare, and he to give back a poundluck-penny?"

"I would!" said the impulsive Fanny Fitz, after the manner of hernation. 

When the fishing party returned that afternoon Miss Fitzroy met them atthe hall door. 

"Well, my dear, " she said airily to Mrs. Spicer, "what sort of sporthave you had? I've enjoyed myself immensely. I've bought a horse!"

Mrs. Spicer sat, paralysed, on the seat of the outside car, disregardingher brother's outstretched hands. 

"Fanny!" she exclaimed, in tones fraught with knowledge of her friend'sresources and liabilities. 

"Yes, I have!" went on Fanny Fitz, undaunted. "Mr. Gunning saw her. Hesaid she was a long-backed brute. Didn't you, Mr. Gunning?"

Rupert Gunning lifted his small sister bodily off the car. He was a tallsallow man, with a big nose and a small, much-bitten, fair moustache. 

"Yes, I believe I did, " he said shortly. 

Mrs. Spicer's blue eyes grew round with consternation. 

"Then you really have bought the thing!" she cried. "Oh, Fanny, youidiot! And what on earth are you going to do with it?"

"It can sleep on the foot of my bed to-night, " returned Fanny Fitz, "andI'll ride it into Galway to-morrow! Mr. Gunning, you can ride half-wayif you like!"

But Mr. Gunning had already gone into the hotel with his rod and fishingbasket. He had a gift, that he rarely lost a chance of exercising, ofprovoking Fanny Fitz to wrath, and the fact that he now declined herchallenge may or may not be accounted for by the gloom consequent uponan empty fishing basket. 

Next morning the various hangers-on in the hotel yard were provided withoccupation and entertainment of the most satiating description. FannyFitz's new purchase was being despatched to the nearest railway station, some fourteen miles off. It had been arranged that the ostler was todrive her there in one of the hotel cars, which should then return witha horse that was coming from Galway for the hotel owner; nothing couldhave fitted in better. Unfortunately the only part of the arrangementthat refused to fit in was the filly. Even while Fanny Fitz wasfinishing her toilet, high-pitched howls of objurgation were rising, alarmingly, from the stable-yard, and on reaching the scene of actionshe was confronted by the spectacle of the ostler being hurtled acrossthe yard by the filly, to whose head he was clinging, while two helpersupheld the shafts of the outside car from which she had fled. All wereshouting directions and warnings at the tops of their voices, the hoteldog was barking, the filly alone was silent, but her opinions wereunmistakable. 

A waiter in shirt-sleeves was leaning comfortably out of a window, watching the fray and offering airy suggestion and comment. 

"It's what I'm telling them, miss, " he said easily, including Fanny Fitzin the conversation; "if they get that one into Recess to-night it'llnot be under a side-car. "

"But the man I bought her from, " said Fanny Fitz, lamentably addressingthe company, "told me that he drove his mother to chapel with her lastSunday. "

"Musha then, may the divil sweep hell with him and burn the broomafther!" panted the ostler in bitter wrath, as he slewed the filly to astandstill. "I wish himself and his mother was behind her when I wentputting the crupper on her! B'leeve me, they'd drop their chat!"

"Sure I knew that young Geogheghan back in Westport, " remarked thewaiter, "and all the good there is about him was a little handy talk. Take the harness off her, Mick, and throw a saddle on her. It's littleI'd think meself of canthering her into Recess!"

"How handy ye are yerself with your talk!" retorted the ostler; "it'scanthering round the table ye'll be doing, and it's what'll suit yebetther!"

Fanny Fitz began to laugh. "He might ride the saddle of mutton!" shesaid, with a levity that, under the circumstances, did her credit. "You'd better take the harness off, and you'll have to get her to Recessfor me somehow. "

The ostler took no notice of this suggestion; he was repeating tohimself: "Ride the saddle o' mutton! By dam, I never heard the like o'that! Ride the saddle o' mutton--!" He suddenly gave a yell of laughing, and in the next moment the startled filly dragged the reins from hishand with a tremendous plunge, and in half a dozen bounds was out of theyard gate and clattering down the road. 

There was an instant of petrifaction. "Diddlety--iddlety--idlety!"chanted the waiter with far-away sweetness. 

Fanny Fitz and the ostler were outside the gate simultaneously: thefilly was already rounding the first turn of the road; two strides more, and she was gone as though she had never been, and "Oh, my nineteenpounds!" thought poor Fanny Fitz. 

As the ostler was wont to say in subsequent repetitions of the story:"Thanks be to God, the reins was rotten!" But for this it is highlyprobable that Miss Fitzroy's speculation would have collapsed abruptlywith broken knees, possibly with a broken neck. Having galloped intothem in the course of the first hundred yards, they fell from her asthe green withes fell from Samson, one long streamer alone remaining tolash her flanks as she fled. Some five miles from the hotel she met awedding, and therewith leaped the bog-drain by the side of the road and"took to the mountains, " as the bridegroom poetically described it toFanny Fitz, who, with the ostler, was pursuing the fugitive on anoutside car. 

"If that's the way, " said the ostler, "ye mightn't get her again beforethe winther. "

Fanny Fitz left the matter, together with a further instalment of thethirty pounds, in the hands of the sergeant of police, and went home, and, improbable as it may appear, in the course of something less thanten days she received an invoice from the local railway station, Enniscar, briefly stating: "1 horse arrd. Please remove. "

Many people, most of her friends indeed, were quite unaware that FannyFitz possessed a home. Beyond the fact that it supplied her with apermanent address, and a place at which she was able periodically todeposit consignments of half-worn-out clothes, Fanny herself was notprone to rate the privilege very highly. Possibly, two very elderlymaiden step-aunts are discouraging to the homing instinct; the factremained that as long as the youngest Miss Fitzroy possessed thewhere-withal to tip a housemaid she was but rarely seen within thedecorous precincts of Craffroe Lodge. 

Let it not for a moment be imagined that the Connemara filly was tobecome a member of this household. Even Fanny Fitz, with all heroptimism, knew better than to expect that William O'Loughlin, whodivided his attentions between the ancient cob and the garden, and ruledthe elder Misses Fitzroy with a rod of iron, would undertake theeducation of anything more skittish than early potatoes. It was to thestable, or rather cow-house, of one Johnny Connolly, that the newpurchase was ultimately conveyed, and it was thither that Fanny Fitz, with apples in one pocket and sugar in the other, conducted her ally, Mr. Freddy Alexander, the master of the Craffroe Hounds. Fanny Fitz'sfriendship with Freddy was one of long standing, and was soundly basedon the fact that when she had been eighteen he had been fourteen; andthough it may be admitted that this is a discrepancy that somewhat fadeswith time, even Freddy's mother acquitted Fanny Fitz of any ulteriormotive; and Freddy was an only son. 

"She was very rejected last night afther she coming in, " said JohnnyConnolly, manipulating as he spoke the length of rusty chain and bit ofstick that fastened the door. "I think it was lonesome she was on thethrain. "

Fanny Fitz and Mr. Alexander peered into the dark and vasty interior ofthe cow-house; from a remote corner they heard a heavy breath and thejingle of a training bit, but they saw nothing. 

"I have the cavesson and all on her ready for ye, and I was thinkingwe'd take her south into Mr. Gunning's land. His finces is very good, "continued Johnny, going cautiously in; "wait till I pull her out. "

Johnny Connolly was a horse trainer who did a little farming, or afarmer who did a little horse training, and his management of younghorses followed no known rules, and indeed knew none, but it wasgenerally successful. He fed them by rule of thumb; he herded them inhustling, squabbling parties in pitch-dark sheds; he ploughed them ateighteen months; he beat them with a stick like dogs when theytransgressed, and like dogs they loved him. He had what gardeners call"a lucky hand" with them, and they throve with him, and he had, moreover, that gift of winning their wayward hearts that comes neitherby cultivation nor by knowledge, but is innate and unconscious. Already, after two days, he and the Connemara filly understood each other; shesniffed distantly and with profound suspicion at Fanny and herofferings, and entirely declined to permit Mr. Alexander to estimate herheight on the questionable assumption that the point of his chinrepresented 15'2, but she allowed Johnny to tighten or slacken everybuckle in her new and unfamiliar costume without protest. 

"I think she'll make a ripping good mare, " said the enthusiastic Freddy, as he and Fanny Fitz followed her out of the yard; "I don't care whatRupert Gunning says, she's any amount of quality, and I bet you'll dowell over her. "

"She'll make a real nice fashionable mare, " remarked Johnny, opening thegate of a field and leading the filly in, "and she's a sweet galloper, but she's very frightful in herself. Faith, I thought she'd run up thewall from me the first time I went to feed her! Ah ha! none o' yerthricks!" as the filly, becoming enjoyably aware of the large space ofgrass round her, let fling a kick of malevolent exuberance at the twofox-terriers who were trotting decorously in her rear. 

It was soon found that, in the matter of "stone gaps, " the A B C ofIrish jumping, Connemara had taught the grey filly all there was tolearn. 

"Begor, Miss Fanny, she's as crabbed as a mule!" said her teacherapprovingly. "D'ye mind the way she soaks the hind legs up into her!We'll give her a bank now. "

At the bank, however, the trouble began. Despite the ministrations ofMr. Alexander and a long whip, despite the precept and example of Mr. Connolly, who performed prodigies of activity in running his pupil in atthe bank and leaping on to it himself the filly time after time eitherran her chest against it or swerved from it at the last instant with avigour that plucked her preceptor from off it and scattered Fanny Fitzand the fox-terriers like leaves before the wind. These latter weredivided between sycophantic and shrieking indignation with the filly fordeclining to jump, and a most wary attention to the sphere of influenceof the whip. They were a mother and daughter, as conceited, as craven, and as wholly attractive as only the judiciously spoiled ladies of theirrace can be. Their hearts were divided between Fanny Fitz and the cook, the rest of them appertained to the Misses Harriet and Rachael Fitzroy, whom they regarded with toleration tinged with boredom. 

"I tell ye now, Masther Freddy, 'tis no good for us to be goin' onsourin' the mare this way. 'Tis what the fince is too steep for her. Maybe she never seen the like in that backwards counthry she came from. We'll give her the bank below with the ditch in front of it. 'Tisn'tvery big at all, and she'll be bound to lep with the sup of watherthat's in it. "

Thus Johnny Connolly, wiping a very heated brow. 

The bank below was a broad and solid structure well padded with grassand bracken, and it had a sufficiently obvious ditch, of some three feetwide, on the nearer side. The grand effort was duly prepared for. Thebank was solemnly exhibited to the filly; the dogs, who had withunerring instinct seated themselves on its most jumpable portion, werescattered with one threat of the whip to the horizon. Fanny tore awaythe last bit of bracken that might prove a discouragement, and Johnnyissued his final order. 

"Come inside me with the whip, sir, and give her one good belt at thelast. "

No one knows exactly how it happened. There was a rush, a scramble, abackward sliding, a great deal of shouting, and the Connemara filly wascouched in the narrow ditch at right angles to the fence, with the wateroozing up through the weeds round her, like a wild duck on its nest; andat this moment Mr. Rupert Gunning appeared suddenly on the top of thebank and inspected the scene with an amusement that he made littleattempt to conceal. 

It took half an hour, and ropes, and a number of Rupert Gunning'shaymakers, to get Fanny Fitz's speculation on to its legs again, and Mr. Gunning's comments during the process successfully sapped Fanny Fitz'scontrol of her usually equable temper, "He's a beast!" she saidwrathfully to Freddy, as the party moved soberly homewards in theburning June afternoon, with the horseflies clustering round them, andthe smell of new-mown grass wafting to them from where, a field or twoaway, came the rattle of Rupert Gunning's mowing-machine. "A crabbingbeast! It was just like my luck that he should come up at that momentand have the supreme joy of seeing Gamble--" Gamble was the filly'srarely-used name--"wallowing in the ditch! That's the second time he'sscored off me. I _pity_ poor little Maudie Spicer for having such abrother!"

In spite of this discouraging _début_, the filly's education went on andprospered. She marched discreetly along the roads in long reins; shechamped detested mouthfuls of rusty mouthing bit in the processdescribed by Johnny Connolly as "getting her neck broke"; she trottedfor treadmill half-hours in the lunge; and during and in spite of allthese penances, she fattened up and thickened out until that greatauthority, Mr. Alexander, pronounced it would be a sin not to send herup to the Dublin Horse Show, as she was just the mare to catch anEnglish dealer's eye. 

"But sure ye wouldn't sell her, miss?" said her faithful nurse, "andMasther Freddy afther starting the hounds and all!"

Fanny Fitz scratched the filly softly under the jawbone, and thought ofthe document in her pocket--long, and blue, and inscribed with the toofamiliar notice in red ink: "An early settlement will oblige". 

"I must, Johnny, " she said, "worse luck!"

"Well, indeed, that's too bad, miss, " said Johnny comprehendingly. "There was a mare I had one time, and I sold her before I went toAmerica. God knows, afther she went from me, whenever I'd look at herwinkers hanging on the wall I'd have to cry. I never seen a sight of hertill three years afther that, afther I coming home. I was coming out o'the fair at Enniscar, an' I was talking to a man an' we coming downDangan Hill, and what was in it but herself coming up in a cart! "An' Ididn't look at her, good nor bad, nor know her, but sorra bit but sheknew me talking, an' she turned in to me with the cart! Ho, ho, ho!'says she, and she stuck her nose into me like she'd be kissing me. Bedam, but I had to cry. An' the world wouldn't stir her out o' that tillI'd lead her on meself. As for cow nor dog nor any other thing, there'snothing would rise your heart like a horse!"

 * * * * *

It was early in July, a hot and sunny morning, and Fanny Fitz, seated onthe flawless grassplot in front of Craffroe Lodge hall-door, was engagedin washing the dogs. The mother, who had been the first victim, wasmorosely licking herself, shuddering effectively, and coldly ignoringher oppressor's apologies. The daughter, trembling in every limb, wasstanding knee-deep in the bath; one paw, placed on its rim, was readyfor flight if flight became practicable; her tail, rigid with anguishwould have hummed like a violin-string if it were touched. Fanny, withher shirt-sleeves rolled up to her elbows, scrubbed in the soap. Aclipped fuchsia hedge, the pride of William O'Loughlin's heart, screenedthe little lawn and garden from the high road. 

"Good morning, Miss Fanny, " said a voice over the hedge. 

Fanny Fitz raised a flushed face and wiped a fleck of Naldyre off hernose with her arm. 

"I've just been looking at your mare, " went on the voice. 

"Well, I hope you liked her!" said Fanny Fitz defiantly, for the voicewas the voice of Rupert Gunning, and there was that in it that in thisconnection acted on Miss Fitzroy as a slogan. 

"Well, 'like' is a strong word, you know!" said Mr. Gunning, moving onand standing with his arms on the top of the white gate and meetingFanny's glance with provoking eyes. Then, as an after-thought, "Do youthink you give her enough to eat?"

"She gets a feed of oats every Sunday, and strong tea and thistlesthrough the week, " replied Fanny Fitz in furious sarcasm. 

"Yes, that's what she looks like, " said Rupert Gunning thoughtfully. "Connolly tells me you want to send her to the show--Barnum's, Isuppose--as the skeleton dude?"

"I believe you want to buy her yourself, " retorted Fanny, with a viciousdab of the soap in the daughter's eye. 

"Yes, she's just about up to my weight, isn't she? By-the-bye, youhaven't had her backed yet, I believe?"

"I'm going to try her to-day!" said Fanny with sudden resolve. 

"Ride her yourself!" said Mr. Gunning, his eyebrows going up into theroots of his hair. 

"Yes!" said Fanny, with calm as icy as a sudden burst of struggles onthe part of the daughter would admit of. 

Rupert Gunning hesitated; then he said, "Well, she ought to carry aside-saddle well. Decent shoulders, and a nice long--" Perhaps he caughtFanny Fitz's eye; at all events, he left the commendation unfinished, and went on, "I should like to look in and see the performance, if Imay? I suppose you wouldn't let me try her first? No?"

He walked on. 

"Puppy, _will_ you stay quiet!" said Fanny Fitz very crossly. She evenslapped the daughter's soap-sud muffled person, for no reason that thedaughter could see. 

"Begorra, miss, I dunno, " said Johnny Connolly dubiously when thesuggestion that the filly should be ridden there and then was made tohim a few minutes later; "wouldn't ye wait till I put her a few turnsunder the cart, or maybe threw a sack o' oats on her back?"

But Fanny would brook no delay. Her saddle was in the harness-room:William O'Loughlin could help to put it on; she would try the filly atonce. 

Miss Fitzroy's riding was of the sort that makes up in pluck what itwants in knowledge. She stuck on by sheer force of character; that shesat fairly straight, and let a horse's head alone were gifts ofProvidence of which she was wholly unconscious. Riding, in her opinion, was just getting on to a saddle and staying there, and making the thingunder it go as fast as possible. She had always ridden other people'shorses, and had ridden them so straight, and looked so pretty, that--other people in this connection being usually men--such trifles asriding out a hard run minus both fore shoes, or watering her mountgenerously during a check, were endured with a forbearance not frequentin horse owners. Hunting people, however, do not generally mount theirfriends, no matter how attractive, on young and valuable horses. FannyFitz's riding had been matured on well-seasoned screws, and she salliedforth to the subjugation of the Connemara filly with a self-confidenceformed on experience only of the old, and the kind, and the cunning. 

The filly trembled and sidled away from the garden-seat up to whichJohnny Connolly had manoeuvred her. Johnny's supreme familiarity withyoung horses had brought him to the same point of recklessness thatFanny had arrived at from the opposite extreme, but some lingeringremnant of prudence had induced him to put on the cavesson headstall, with the long rope attached to it, over the filly's bridle. The latterbore with surprising nerve Fanny's depositing of herself in the saddle. 

"I'll keep a holt o' the rope, Miss Fanny, " said Johnny, assiduouslyfondling his pupil; "it might be she'd be strange in herself for thefirst offer. I'll lead her on a small piece. Come on, gerr'l! Come onnow!"

The pupil, thus adjured, made a hesitating movement, and Fanny settledherself down into the saddle. It was the shifting of the weight thatseemed to bring home to the grey filly the true facts of the case, andwith the discovery she shot straight up into the air as if she had beenfired from a mortar. The rope whistled through Johnny Connolly'sfingers, and the point of the filly's shoulder laid him out on theground with the precision of a prize-fighter. 

"I felt, my dear, " as Fanny Fitz remarked in a letter to a friend, "asif I were in something between an earthquake and a bad dream and achurn. I just _clamped_ my legs round the crutches, and she whirled therest of me round her like the lash of a whip. In one of her flights shenearly went in at the hall door, and I was aware of William O'Loughlin'ssnow-white face somewhere behind the geraniums in the porch. I think Iwas clean out of the saddle then. I remember looking up at my knees, andmy left foot was nearly on the ground. Then she gave another flourish, and swung me up on top again. I was hanging on to the reins hard; infact, I think they must have pulled me back on to the saddle, as I_know_ at one time I was sitting in a bunch on the stirrup! Then I heardmost heart-rending yells from the poor old Aunts: 'Oh, the begonias! OFanny, get off the grass!' and then, suddenly, the filly and I wereperfectly still, and the house and the trees were spinning round me, black, edged with green and yellow dazzles. Then I discovered that someone had got hold of the cavesson rope and had hauled us in, as if wewere salmon; Johnny had grabbed me by the left leg, and was trying todrag me off the filly's back; William O'Loughlin had broken two pots ofgeraniums, and was praying loudly among the fragments; and Aunt Harrietand Aunt Rachel, who don't to this hour realise that anything unusualhad happened, were reproachfully collecting the trampled remnants of thebegonias. "

It was, perhaps unworthy on Fanny Fitz's part to conceal the painfulfact that it was that distinguished fisherman, Mr. Rupert Gunning, whohad landed her and the Connemara filly. Freddy Alexander, however, heardthe story in its integrity, and commented on it with his usual candour. "I don't know which was the bigger fool, you or Johnny, " he said; "Ithink you ought to be jolly grateful to old Rupert!"

"Well, I'm not!" returned Fanny Fitz. 

After this episode the training of the filly proceeded with more systemand with entire success. Her nerves having been steadied by an hour inthe lunge with a sack of oats strapped, Mazeppa-like, on to her back, she was mounted without difficulty, and was thereafter ridden daily. Bythe time Fanny's muscles and joints had recovered from their firstattempt at rough-riding, the filly was taking her place as a reasonablemember of society, and her nerves, which had been as much _en évidence_as her bones, were, like the latter, finding their proper level, andbecoming clothed with tranquillity and fat. The Dublin Horse Show drewnear, and, abetted by Mr. Alexander, Fanny Fitz filled the entry formsand drew the necessary cheque, and then fell back in her chair and gazedat the attentive dogs with fateful eyes. 

"Dogs!" she said, "if I don't sell the filly I am done for!"

The mother scratched languidly behind her ear till she yawned musically, but said nothing. The daughter, who was an enthusiast, gave a suddenbound on to Miss Fitzroy's lap, and thus it was that the cheque wascountersigned with two blots and a paw mark. 

None the less, the bank honoured it, being a kind bank, and not desirousto emphasise too abruptly the fact that Fanny Fitz was overdrawn. 

In spite of, or rather, perhaps, in consequence of this fact, it wouldhave been hard to find a smarter and more prosperous-looking young womanthan the owner of No. 548, as she signed her name at the season-ticketturnstile and entered the wide soft aisles of the cathedral of horses atBallsbridge. It was the first day of the show, and in token of FannyFitz's enthusiasm be it recorded, it was little more than 9. 30 A. M. Fanny knew the show well, but hitherto only in its more worldly andsocial aspects. Never before had she been of the elect who have a horse"up, " and as she hurried along, attended by Captain Spicer, at whosehouse she was staying, and Mr. Alexander, she felt magnificentlyconscious of the importance of the position. 

The filly had preceded her from Craffroe by a couple of days, under thecharge of Patsey Crimmeen, lent by Freddy for the occasion. 

"I don't expect a prize, you know, " Fanny had said loftily to Mr. Gunning, "but she has improved so tremendously, every one says she oughtto be an easy mare to sell. "

The sun came filtering through the high roof down on to the long rows ofstalls, striking electric sparks out of the stirrup-irons and bits, andadding a fresh gloss to the polish that the grooms were giving to theircharges. The judging had begun in several of the rings, and every nowand then a glittering exemplification of all that horse and groom couldbe would come with soft thunder up the tan behind Fanny and her squires. 

"We've come up through the heavy weights, " said Captain Spicer; "thetwelve-stone horses will look like rats--" He stopped. 

They had arrived at the section in which figured "No. 548. Miss F. Fitzroy's 'Gamble, ' grey mare; 4 years, by Grey Dawn, " and oppositethem was stall No. 548. In it stood the Connemara filly, or rathersomething that might have been her astral body. A more spectral, deplorable object could hardly be imagined. Her hind quarters had fallenin, her hips were standing out; her ribs were like the bars of a grate;her head, hung low before her, was turned so that one frightened eyescanned the passers-by, and she propped her fragile form against thepartition of her stall, as though she were too weak to stand up. 

To say that Fanny Fitz's face fell is to put it mildly. As she describedit to Mrs. Spicer, it fell till it was about an inch wide and five mileslong. Captain Spicer was speechless. Freddy alone was equal to demandingof Patsey Crimmeen what had happened to the mare. 

"Begor, Masther Freddy, it's a wonder she's alive at all!" repliedPatsey, who was now perceived to be looking but little better than thefilly. "She was middlin' quiet in the thrain, though she went to lep outo' the box with the first screech the engine give, but I quietened hersome way, and it wasn't till we got into the sthreets here that she wentmad altogether. Faith, I thought she was into the river with me threetimes! 'Twas hardly I got her down the quays; and the first o' thimalecthric thrams she seen! Look at me hands, sir! She had me swingin'on the rope the way ye'd swing a flail. I tell you, Masther Freddy, themwas the ecstasies!"

Patsey paused and gazed with a gloomy pride into the stricken faces ofhis audience. 

"An' as for her food, " he resumed, "she didn't use a bit, hay, nor oats, nor bran, bad nor good, since she left Johnny Connolly's. No, nor drink. The divil dang the bit she put in her mouth for two days, first andlast. Why wouldn't she eat is it, miss? From the fright sure! She'll donothing, only standing that way, and bushtin' out sweatin', and watchingout all the time the way I wouldn't lave her. I declare to God I'mheart-scalded with her!"

At this harrowing juncture came the order to No. 548 to go forth to Ring3 to be judged, and further details were reserved. But Fanny Fitz hadheard enough. 

"Captain Spicer, " she said, as the party paced in deepest depressiontowards Ring 3, "if I hadn't on a new veil I should cry!"

"Well, I haven't, " replied Captain Spicer; "shall I do it for you? Uponmy soul, I think the occasion demands it!"

"I just want to know one thing, " continued Miss Fitzroy. "When does yourbrother-in-law arrive?"

"Not till to-night. "

"That's the only nice thing I've heard to-day, " sighed Fanny Fitz. 

The judging went no better for the grey filly than might have beenexpected, even though she cheered up a little in the ring, and foundherself equal to an invalidish but well-aimed kick at afellow-competitor. She was ushered forth with the second batch of therejected, her spirits sank to their former level, and Fanny'saccompanied them. 

Perhaps the most trying feature of the affair was the reproving sympathyof her friends, a sympathy that was apt to break down into almostirrepressible laughter at the sight of the broken-down skeleton of whoseprowess poor Fanny Fitz had so incautiously boasted. 

"Y' know, my dear child, " said one elderly M. F. H. , "you had no businessto send up an animal without the condition of a wire fence to the DublinShow. Look at my horses! Fat as butter, every one of 'em!"

"So was mine, but it all melted away in the train, " protested Fanny Fitzin vain. Those of her friends who had only seen the mare in thecatalogue sent dealers to buy her, and those who had seen her in theflesh--or what was left of it--sent amateurs; but all, dealers and thegreenest of amateurs alike, entirely declined to think of buying her. 

The weather was perfect; every one declared there never was a bettershow, and Fanny Fitz, in her newest and least-paid-for clothes, lookedbrilliantly successful, and declared to Mr. Rupert Gunning that nothingmade a show so interesting as having something up for it. She evenencouraged him to his accustomed jibes at her Connemara speculation, andpersonally conducted him to stall No. 548, and made merry over itsmelancholy occupant in a way that scandalised Patsey, and convinced Mrs. Spicer that Fanny's pocket was even harder hit than she had feared. 

On the second day, however, things looked a little more hopeful. 

"She ate her grub last night and this morning middlin' well, miss, " saidPatsey, "and"--here he looked round stealthily and began towhisper--"when I had her in the ring, exercisin', this morning, therewas one that called me in to the rails; like a dealer he was. 'Hi! greymare!' says he. I went in. 'What's your price?' says he. 'Sixty guineas, sir, ' says I. 'Begin at the shillings and leave out the pounds!' sayshe. He went away then, but I think he's not done with me. "

"I'm sure the ring is our best chance, Patsey, " said Fanny, her voicethrilling with the ardour of conspiracy and of reawakened hope. "Shedoesn't look so thin when she's moving. I'll go and stand by the rails, and I'll call you in now and then just to make people look at her!"

"Sure I had Masther Freddy doing that to me yestherday, " said Patsey;but hope dies hard in an Irishman, and he saddled up with all speed. 

For two long burning hours did the Connemara filly circle in Ring 3, andduring all that time not once did her owner's ears hear the longed-forsummons, "Hi! grey mare!" It seemed to her that every other horse in thering was called in to the rails, "and she doesn't look so very thinto-day!" said Fanny indignantly to Captain Spicer, who, with Mr. Gunning, had come to take her away for lunch. 

"Oh, you'll see, you'll sell her on the last day; she's getting fitterevery minute, " responded Captain Spicer. "What would you take for her?"

"I'm asking sixty, " said Fanny dubiously. "What would _you_ take forher, Mr. Gunning--on the last day, you know?"

"I'd take a ticket for her, " said Rupert Gunning, "back to Craffroe--ifyou haven't a return. "

The second and third days crawled by unmarked by any incident of cheer, but on the morning of the fourth, when Fanny arrived at the stall, shefound that Patsey had already gone out to exercise. She hurried to thering and signalled to him to come to her. 

"There's a fella' afther her, miss!" said Patsey, bending very low andwhispering at close and tobacco-scented range. "He came last night tobuy her; a jock he was, from the Curragh, and he said for me to be inthe ring this morning. He's not come yet. He had a straw hat on him. "

Fanny sat down under the trees and waited for the jockey in the strawhat. All around were preoccupied knots of bargainers, of owners makingtheir final arrangements, of would-be-buyers hurrying from ring to ringin search of the paragon that they had now so little time to find. Butthe man from the Curragh came not. Fanny sent the mare in, and sat onunder the trees, sunk in depression. It seemed to her she was the onlyperson in the show who had nothing to do, who was not clinking handfulsof money, or smoothing out banknotes, or folding up cheques andinterring them in fat and greasy pocket-books. She had never known thisaspect of the Horse Show before, and--so much is in the point ofview--it seemed to her sordid and detestable. Prize-winners with theircoloured rosettes were swaggering about everywhere. Every horse in theshow seemed to have got a prize except hers, thought Fanny. And not aman in a straw hat came near Ring 3. 

She went home to lunch, dead tired. The others were going to see thepolo in the park. 

"I must go back and sell the mare, " said Fanny valiantly, "or else takethat ticket to Craffroe, Mr. Gunning!"

"Well, we'll come down and pick you up there after the first match, youpoor, miserable thing, " said Mrs. Spicer, "and I hope you'll find thatbeast of a horse dead when you get there! You look half dead yourself!"

How sick Fanny was of signing her name at that turnstile! The pen wasmore atrocious every time. How tired her feet were! How sick she was ofthe whole thing, and how incredibly big a fool she had been! She wasalmost too tired to know what she was doing, and she had actually walkedpast stall No. 548 without noticing it, when she heard Patsey's voicecalling her. 

"Miss Fanny! Miss Fanny! I have her sold! The mare's sold, miss! Seehere! I have the money in me pocket!"

The colour flooded Fanny Fitz's face. She stared at Patsey with eyesthat more than ever suggested the Connemara trout-stream with the sunplaying in it; so bright were they, so changing, and so wet. So at leastthought a man, much addicted to fishing, who was regarding the scenefrom a little way off. 

"He was a dealer, miss, " went on Patsey; "a Dublin fella'. Sixty-threesovereigns I asked him, and he offered me fifty-five, and a man that wasthere said we should shplit the differ, and in the latther end he gaveme the sixty pounds. He wasn't very stiff at all. I'm thinking he wasn'tbuying for himself. "

The man who had noticed Fanny Fitz's eyes moved away unostentatiously. He had seen in them as much as he wanted; for that time at least. 

THE CONNEMARA MARE

PART I

The grey mare who had been one of the last, if not the very last, of thesales at the Dublin Horse Show, was not at all happy in her mind. 

Still less so was the dealer's under-strapper, to whom fell the task ofescorting her through the streets of Dublin. Her late owner's groom hadassured him that she would "folly him out of his hand, and that whatevershe'd see she wouldn't care for it nor ask to look at it!"

It cannot be denied, however, that when an electric tram swept past herlike a terrace under weigh, closely followed by a cart laden with aclanking and horrific reaping-machine, she showed that she possessedpowers of observation. The incident passed off with credit to theunder-strapper, but when an animal has to be played like a salmon downthe length of Lower Mount Street, and when it barn-dances obliquelyalong the north side of Merrion Square, the worst may be looked for inNassau Street. 

And it was indeed in Nassau Street, and, moreover, in full view of thebow window of Kildare Street Club, that the cup of the under-strapper'smisfortunes brimmed over. To be sure he could not know that the newowner of the grey mare was in that window; it was enough for him that aquiescent and unsuspected piano-organ broke with three majestic chordsinto Mascagni's "Intermezzo" at his very ear, and that, without anyapparent interval of time, he was surmounting a heap composed of anewspaper boy, a sandwich man, and a hospital nurse, while his handsheld nothing save a red-hot memory of where the rope had been. Thesmashing of glass and the clatter of hoofs on the pavement filled inwhat space was left in his mind for other impressions. 

"She's into the hat shop!" said Mr. Rupert Gunning to himself in thewindow of the club, recognising his recent purchase and the full measureof the calamity in one and the same moment. 

He also recognised in its perfection the fact, already suspected by him, that he had been a fool. 

Upheld by this soothing reflection he went out into the street, whereawaited him the privileges of proprietorship. These began with thedespatching of the mare, badly cut, and apparently lame on every leg, incharge of the remains of the under-strapper, to her destination. Theycontinued with the consolation of the hospital nurse, and embraced invarying pecuniary degrees the compensation of the sandwich man, thenewspaper boy, and the proprietor of the hat shop. During all this timehe enjoyed the unfaltering attention of a fair-sized crowd, liberal incomment, prolific of imbecile suggestion. And all these things were onlythe beginning of the trouble. 

Mr. Gunning proceeded to his room and to the packing of his portmanteaufor that evening's mail-boat to Holyhead in a mood of considerablesourness. It may be conceded to him that circumstances had been of asouring character. He had bought Miss Fanny Fitzroy's grey mare at theHorse Show for reasons of an undeniably sentimental sort. Therefore, having no good cause to show for the purchase, he had made it secretly, the sum of sixty pounds, for an animal that he had consistently crabbed, amounting in the eyes of the world in general to a rather advancedlove-token, if not a formal declaration. He had planned no future forthe grey mare, but he had cherished a trembling hope that some day hemight be in a position to restore her to her late owner withoutconsidering the expression in any eyes save those which, a couple ofhours ago, had recalled to him the play of lights in a Connemara troutstream. 

Now, it appeared, this pleasing vision must go the way of many others. 

The August sunlight illumined Mr. Gunning's folly, and his bulgingportmanteau, packed as brutally as only a man in a passion can pack;when he reached the hall, it also with equal inappropriatenessirradiated the short figure and seedy tidiness of the dealer who hadbeen his confederate in the purchase of the mare. 

"What did the vet say, Brennan?" said Mr. Gunning, with the brevity ofill humour. 

Mr. Brennan paused before replying, a pause laden with the promise ofevil tidings. His short silvery hair glistened respectably in thesunshine: he had preserved unblemished from some earlier phase of hiscareer the air of a family coachman out of place. It veiled, though itcould not conceal, the dissolute twinkle in his eye as he replied:--

"He said sir, if it wasn't that she was something out of condition, he'drecommend you to send her out to the lions at the Zoo!"

The specimen of veterinary humour had hardly the success that had beenhoped for it. Rupert Gunning's face was so remarkably void ofappreciation that Mr. Brennan abruptly relapsed into gloom. 

"He said he'd only be wasting his time with her, sir; he might as wellgo stitch a bog-hole as them wounds the window gave her; the tendon ofthe near fore is the same as in two halves with it, let alone theshoulder, that's worse again with her pitching out on the point of it. "

"Was that all he had to say?" demanded the mare's owner. 

"Well, beyond those remarks he passed about the Zoo, I should say itwas, sir, " admitted Mr. Brennan. 

There was another pause, during which Rupert asked himself what thedevil he was to do with the mare, and Mr. Brennan, thoroughly aware thathe was doing so, decorously thumbed the brim of his hat. 

"Maybe we might let her get the night, sir, " he said, after a respectfulinterval, "and you might see her yourself in the morning--"

"I don't want to see her. I know well enough what she looks like, "interrupted his client irritably. "Anyhow, I'm crossing to Englandto-night, and I don't choose to miss the boat for the fun of looking atan unfortunate brute that's cut half to pieces!"

Mr. Brennan cleared his throat. "If you were thinking to leave her in mystables, sir, " he said firmly, "I'd sooner be quit of her. I've only asmall place, and I'd lose too much time with her if I had to keep herthe way she is. She might be on my hands three months and die at the endof it. "

The clock here struck the quarter, at which Mr. Gunning ought to startfor his train at Westland Row. 

"You see, sir--" recommenced Brennan. It was precisely at this pointthat Mr. Gunning lost his temper. 

"I suppose you can find time to shoot her, " he said, with a very redface. "Kindly do so to-night!"

Mr. Brennan's arid countenance revealed no emotion. He was accustomed tounderstanding his clients a trifle better than they understoodthemselves, and inscrutable though Mr. Gunning's original motive inbuying the mare had been, he had during this interview yielded totreatment and followed a prepared path. 

That night, in the domestic circle, he went so far as to lay the matterbefore Mrs. Brennan. 

"He picked out a mare that was as poor as a raven--though she's a goodenough stamp if she was in condition--and tells me to buy her. 'Whatprice will I give, sir?' says I. 'Ye'll give what they're askin', ' sayshe, 'and that's sixty sovereigns!' I'm thirty years buying horses, andsuch a disgrace was never put on me, to be made a fool of before allDublin! Going giving the first price for a mare that wasn't value forthe half of it! Well; he sees the mare then, cut into garters below inNassau Street. Devil a hair he cares! Nor never came down to the stableto put an eye on her! 'Shoot her!' says he, leppin' up on a car. 'Westland Row!' says he to the fella'. 'Drive like blazes!' and awaywith him! Well, no matter; I earned my money easy, an' I got the marecheap!"

Mrs. Brennan added another spoonful of brown sugar to the porter thatshe was mulling in a sauce-pan on the range. 

"Didn't ye say it was a young lady that owned the mare, James?" sheasked in a colourless voice. 

"Well, you're the devil, Mary!" replied Mr. Brennan in sincereadmiration. 

The mail-boat was as crowded as is usual on the last night of the HorseShow week. Overhead flowed the smoke river from the funnels, behindflowed the foam river of wake; the Hill of Howth receded apace into thewest, and its lighthouse glowed like a planet in the twilight. Men withcigars, aggressively fit and dinner-full, strode the deck in couples, and thrashed out the Horse Show and Leopardstown to their uttermosthusks. 

Rupert Gunning was also, but with excessive reluctance, discussing theHorse Show. As he had given himself a good deal of trouble in order tocross on this particular evening, and as any one who was even slightlyacquainted with Miss Fitzroy must have been aware that she would declineto talk of anything else, sympathy for him is not altogether deserved. The boat swung softly in a trance of speed, and Miss Fitzroy, betterknown to a large circle of intimates as Fanny Fitz, tried to think themotion was pleasant. She had made a good many migrations to England, byvarious routes and classes. There had indeed been times of stress whenshe had crossed unostentatiously, third class, trusting that luck and athick veil might save her from her friends, but the day after she hadsold a horse for sixty pounds was not the day for a daughter of Irelandto study economics. The breeze brought warm and subtle wafts from themachinery; it also blew wisps of hair into Fanny Fitz's eyes and overher nose, in a manner much revered in fiction, but in real life usuallyunbecoming and always exasperating. She leaned back on the bench andwondered whether the satisfaction of crowing over Mr. Gunningcompensated her for abandoning the tranquil security of the ladies'cabin. 

Mr. Gunning, though less contradictious than his wont, was certainly oneof the most deliberately unsympathetic men she knew. None the less hewas a man, and some one to talk to, both points in his favour, and shestayed on. 

"I just missed meeting the man who bought my mare, " she said, recurringto the subject for the fourth time; "apparently _he_ didn't think her 'aleggy, long-backed brute, ' as other people did, or said they did!"

"Did many people say it?" asked Mr. Gunning, beginning to make acigarette. 

"Oh, no one whose opinion signified!" retorted Fanny Fitz, with a glancefrom her charming, changeful eyes that suggested that she did not alwaysmean quite what she said. "I believe the dealer bought her for aLeicestershire man. What she really wants is a big country where she canextend herself. "

Mr. Gunning reflected that by this time the grey mare had extendedherself once for all in Brennan's back-yard: he had done nothing to beashamed of, but he felt abjectly guilty. 

"If I go with Maudie to Connemara again next year, " continued Fanny, "Imust look out for another. You'll come too, I hope? A little oppositionis such a help in making up one's mind! I don't know what I should havedone without you at Leenane last June!"

Perhaps it was the vision of early summer that the words called up;perhaps it was the smile, half-seen in the semi-dark, that curved herprovoking lips; perhaps it was compunction for his share in the tragedyof the Connemara mare; but possibly without any of these explanationsRupert would have done as he did, which was to place his hand on FannyFitz's as it lay on the bench beside him. 

She was so amazed that for a moment she wildly thought he had mistakenit in the darkness for his tobacco pouch. Then, jumping with a shock tothe conclusion that even the unsympathetic Mr. Gunning shared most men'sviews about not wasting an opportunity, she removed her hand with ajerk. 

"Oh! I beg your pardon!" said Rupert pusillanimously. Miss Fitzroy fellback again on the tobacco pouch theory. 

At this moment the glowing end of a cigar deviated from its orbit on thedeck and approached them. 

"Is that you, Gunning? I thought it was your voice, " said the owner ofthe cigar. 

"Yes, it is, " said Mr. Gunning, in a tone singularly lacking inencouragement. "Thought I saw you at dinner, but couldn't be sure. "

As a matter of fact, no one could have been more thoroughly aware thanhe of Captain Carteret's presence in the saloon. 

"I thought so too!" said Fanny Fitz, from the darkness, "CaptainCarteret wouldn't look my way!"

Captain Carteret gave a somewhat exaggerated start of discovery, andthrew his cigar over the side. He had evidently come to stay. 

"How was it I didn't see you at the Horse Show?" he said. 

"The only people one ever sees there are the people one doesn't want tosee, " said Fanny, "I could meet no one except the auctioneer fromCraffroe, and he always said the same thing. 'Fearful sultry, MissFitzroy! Have ye a purchaser yet for your animal, Miss Fitzroy? Ye havenot! Oh, fie, fie!' It was rather funny at first, but it palled. "

"I was only there one day, " said Captain Carteret; "I wish I'd known youhad a horse up, I might have helped you to sell. "

"Thanks! I sold all right, " said Fanny Fitz magnificently. "Did ratherwell too!"

"Capital!" said Captain Carteret vaguely. His acquaintance with Fannyextended over a three-day shooting party in Kildare, and a dance givenby the detachment of his regiment at Enniscar, for which he had comedown from the depôt. It was not sufficient to enlighten him as to whatit meant to her to own and sell a horse for the first time in her life. 

"By-the-bye, Gunning, " he went on, "you seemed to be having a livelytime in Nassau Street yesterday! My wife and I were driving in from thepolo, and we saw you in the thick of what looked like a street row. Someone in the club afterwards told me it was a horse you had only justbought at the Show that had come to grief. I hope it wasn't much hurt?"

There was a moment of silence--astonished, inquisitive silence on thepart of Miss Fitzroy temporary cessation of the faculty of speech onthat of Mr. Gunning. It was the moment, as he reflected afterwards, fora clean, decisive lie, a denial of all ownership; either that, or theinstant flinging of Captain Carteret overboard. 

Unfortunately for him, he did neither; he lied partially, timorously, and with that clinging to the skirts of the truth that marks the novice. 

"Oh, she was all right, " he said, his face purpling heavily in thekindly darkness. "What was the polo like, Carteret?"

"But I had no idea that you had bought a horse!" broke in Fanny Fitz, inhigh excitement. "Why didn't you tell Maudie and me? What is it like?"

"Oh, it's--she's just a cob--a grey cob--I just picked her up at the endof the show. "

"What sort of a cob? Can she jump? Are you going to ride her withFreddy's hounds?" continued the implacably interested Fanny. 

"I bought her as--as a trapper, and to do a bit of carting, " repliedRupert, beginning suddenly to feel his powers of invention awakening;"she's quite a common brute. She doesn't jump. "

"She seems to have jumped pretty well in Nassau Street, " remarkedCaptain Carteret; "as well as I could see in the crowd, she didn'tstrike me as if she'd take kindly to carting. "

"Well, I do think you might have told us about it!" reiterated FannyFitz. "Men are so ridiculously mysterious about buying or sellinghorses. I simply named my price and got it. _I_ see nothing to make amystery about in a deal; do you, Captain Carteret?"

"Well, that depends on whether you are buying or selling, " repliedCaptain Carteret. 

But Fate, in the shape of a turning tide and a consequent roll, playedfor once into the hands of Rupert Gunning. The boat swayed slowly, butdeeply, and a waft of steam blew across Miss Fitzroy's face. It was notmere steam; it had been among hot oily things, stealing and givingodour. Fanny Fitz was not ill, but she knew that she had her limits, andthat conversation, save of the usual rudimentary kind with thestewardess, were best abandoned. 

Miss Fitzroy's movements during the next two and a half months need notbe particularly recorded. They included--

1. A week in London, during which the sixty pounds, or a great part ofit, acquired by the sale of the Connemara mare, passed imperceptiblyinto items, none of which, on a strict survey of expenditure, appearedto exceed three shillings and nine pence. 

2. A month at Southsea, with Rupert Gunning's sister, Maudie Spicer, where she again encountered Captain Carteret, and entered aimlessly upona semi-platonic and wholly unprofitable flirtation with him. During thisepoch she wore out the remnant of her summer clothes and laid insubstitutes; rather encouraged than otherwise by the fact that she hadlong since lost touch with the amount of her balance at the bank. 

3. An expiatory and age-long sojourn of three weeks with relatives at anEssex vicarage, mitigated only by persistent bicycling with her uncle'scurate. The result, as might have been predicted by any one acquaintedwith Miss Fitzroy, was that the curate's affections were diverted fromthe bourne long appointed for them, namely, the eldest daughter of thehouse, and that Fanny departed in blackest disgrace, with the singleconsolation of knowing that she would never be asked to the vicarageagain. 

Finally she returned, third-class, to her home in Ireland, with nothingto show for the expedition except a new and very smart habit, and avague assurance that Captain Carteret would give her a mount now andthen with Freddy Alexander's hounds. Captain Carteret was to be ondetachment at Enniscar. 

PART II

Mr. William Fennessy, lately returned from America, at present publicanin Enniscar and proprietor of a small farm on its outskirts, had taken agrey mare to the forge. 

It was now November, and the mare had been out at grass for nearly threemonths, somewhat to the detriment of her figure, but very much to hergeneral advantage. Even in the south-west of Ireland it is not usual tokeep horses out quite so late in the year, but Mr. Fennessy, havingbegun his varied career as a travelling tinker, was not the man to bebound by convention. He had provided the mare with the society of adonkey and two sheep, and with the shelter of a filthy and ruinouscowshed. Taking into consideration the fact that he had only paid sevenpounds ten shillings for her, he thought this accommodation was as muchas she was entitled to. 

She was now drooping and dozing in a dark corner of the forge, waitingher turn to be shod, while the broken spring of a car was being patched, as shaggy and as dirty a creature as had ever stood there. 

"Where did you get that one?" inquired the owner of the car of Mr. Fennessy, in the course of much lengthy conversation. 

"I got her from a cousin of my own that died down in the CountyLimerick, " said Mr. Fennessy in his most agreeable manner. "'Twashimself bred her, and she was near deshtroyed fallin' back on a harra'with him. It's for postin' I have her. "

"She's shlack enough yet, " said the carman. 

"Ah, wait awhile!" said Mr. Fennessy easily, "in a week's time when I'llhave her clipped out, she'll be as clean as amber. "

The conversation flowed on to other themes. 

It was nearly dark when the carman took his departure, and the smith, asilent youth with sore eyes, caught hold of one of the grey mare'sfetlocks and told her to "lift!" He examined each hoof in succession bythe light of a candle stuck in a bottle, raked his fire together, andthen, turning to Mr. Fennessy, remarked:--

"Ye'd laugh if ye were here the day I put a slipper on this one, an' sheafther comin' out o' the thrain--last June it was. 'Twas one Connollyback from Craffroe side was taking her from the station; him thatthrained her for Miss Fitzroy. She gave him the two heels in the face. "The glow from the fire illumined the smith's sardonic grin ofremembrance. "She had a sandcrack in the near fore that time, andthere's the sign of it yet. "

The Cinderella-like episode of the slipper had naturally not enteredinto Mr. Fennessy's calculations, but he took the unforeseen without achange of countenance. 

"Well, now, " he said deliberately, "I was sayin' to meself on the road awhile ago, if there was one this side o' the counthry would know herit'd be yerself. "

The smith took the compliment with a blink of his sore eyes. 

"Annyone'd be hard set to know her now, " he said. 

There was a pause, during which a leap of sparks answered each thump ofthe hammer on the white hot iron, and Mr. Fennessy arranged his courseof action. 

"Well, Larry, " he said, "I'll tell ye now what no one in this counthryknows but meself and Patsey Crimmeen. Sure I know it's as good to tell athing to the ground as to tell it to yerself!"

He lowered his voice. 

"'Twas Mr. Gunning of Streamstown bought that one from Miss Fitzroy atthe Dublin Show, and a hundhred pound he gave for her!"

The smith mentally docked this sum by seventy pounds, but said, "Bydam!" in polite convention. 

"'Twasn't a week afther that I got her for twinty-five pounds!"

The smith made a further mental deduction equally justified by thefacts; the long snore and wheeze of the bellows filled the silence, andthe dirty walls flushed and glowed with the steady crescendo anddiminuendo of the glow. 

The ex-tinker picked up the bottle with the candle. "Look at that!" hesaid, lowering the light and displaying a long transverse scar beginningat the mare's knee and ending in an enlarged fetlock. 

"I seen that, " said the smith. 

"And look at that!" continued Mr. Fennessy, putting back the shaggy hairon her shoulder. A wide and shiny patch of black skin showed where thehatter's plate glass had flayed the shoulder. "She played the divilgoin' through the streets, and made flitthers of herself this way, in ashop window. Gunning give the word to shoot her. The dealer's boy toldPatsey Crimmeen. 'Twas Patsey was caring her at the show for MissFitzroy. Shtan' will ye!"--this to the mare, whose eyes glinted white asshe flung away her head from the light of the candle. 

"Whatever fright she got she didn't forget it, " said the smith. 

[Illustration: "MR. GUNNING WAS LOOKIN' OUT FOR A COB. "]

"I was up in Dublin meself the same time, " pursued Mr. Fennessy. "AftherI seem' Patsey I took a sthroll down to Brennan's yard. The leg was intwo halves, barrin' the shkin, and the showldher swoll up as big as asack o' meal. I was three or four days goin' down to look at her thisway, and I seen she wasn't as bad as what they thought. I come in onemorning, and the boy says to me, 'The boss has three horses comin' into-day, an' I dunno where'll we put this one. ' I goes to Brennan, and hesitting down to his breakfast, and the wife with him. 'Sir, ' says I, 'for the honour of God sell me that mare!' We had hard strugglin' then. In the latther end the wife says, 'It's as good for ye to part her, James, ' says she, 'and Mr. Gunning'll never know what way she went. Thishonest man'll never say where he got her. ' 'I will not, ma'am, ' says I. 'I have a brother in the postin' line in Belfast, and it's for him I'mbuyin' her. '"

The, process of making nail-holes in the shoe seemed to engross thetaciturn young smith's attention for the next minute or two. 

"There was a man over from Craffroe in town yesterday, " he observedpresently, "that said Mr. Gunning was lookin' out for a cob, and he'dfancy one that would lep. "

He eyed his work sedulously as he spoke. 

Something, it might have been the light of the candle, woke a flicker inMr. Fennessy's eye. He passed his hand gently down the mare's quarter. 

"Supposing now that the mane was off her, and something about six inchesof a dock took off her tail, what sort of a cob d'ye think she'd make, Larry?"

The smith, with a sudden falsetto cackle of laughter, plunged the shoeinto a tub of water, in which it gurgled and spluttered as if inappreciation of the jest. 

PART III

Dotted at intervals throughout society are the people endowed with thefaculty for "getting up things". They are dauntless people, filled withthe power of driving lesser and deeper reluctant spirits before them;remorseless to the timid, carneying to the stubborn. 

Of such was Mrs. Carteret, with powers matured in hill-stations inIndia, mellowed by much voyaging in P. And O. Steamers. Not even anenvironment as unpromising as that of Enniscar in its winter torpor hadpower to dismay her. A public whose artistic tastes had hitherto beennourished upon travelling circuses, Nationalist meetings, and missionarymagic lanterns in the Wesleyan schoolhouse, was, she argued, practicallyvirgin soil, and would ecstatically respond to any form of cultivation. 

"I know there's not much talent to be had, " she said combatively to herhusband, "but we'll just black our faces, and call ourselves the GreenCoons or something, and it will be all right!"

"Dashed if I'll black my face again, " said Captain Carteret; "I call itrot trying to get up anything here. There's no one to do anything. "

"Well, there's ourselves and little Taylour" ("little Taylour, " it maybe explained, was Captain Carteret's subaltern), "that's two banjoes anda bones anyhow; and Freddy Alexander, and there's your dear friend FannyFitz--she'll be home in a few days, and these two big Hamilton girls--"

"Oh, Lord!" ejaculated Captain Carteret. 

"Oh, yes!" continued Mrs. Carteret, unheedingly, "and there's Mr. Gunning; he'll come if Fanny Fitz does. "

"He'll not be much advantage when he does come, " said Captain Carteretspitefully. 

"Oh, he sings, " said Mrs. Carteret, arranging her neat small fringe atthe glass--"rather a good voice. You needn't be afraid, my dear, I'llarrange that the fascinating Fanny shall sit next you!"

Upon this somewhat unstable basis the formation of the troupe of GreenCoons was undertaken. Mrs. Carteret took off her coat to the work, orrather, to be accurate, she put on a fur-lined one, and attended aNationalist meeting in the Town Hall to judge for herself how the voicescarried. She returned rejoicing--she had sat at the back of the hall, and had not lost a syllable of the oratory, even during sundry heatedepisodes, discreetly summarised by the local paper as "interruption". The Town Hall was chartered, superficially cleansed, and in the space ofa week the posters had gone forth. 

By what means it was accomplished that Rupert Gunning should attend thefirst rehearsal he did not exactly understand; he found himself enmeshedin a promise to meet every one else at the Town Hall with tea at theCarterets' afterwards. Up to this point the fact that he was to appearbefore the public with a blackened face had been diplomatically withheldfrom him, and an equal diplomacy was shown on his arrival in thedeputing of Miss Fitzroy to break the news to him. 

"Mrs. Carteret says it's really awfully becoming, " said Fanny, breathless and brilliant from assiduous practice of a hornpipe underCaptain Carteret's tuition, "and as for trouble! We might as well make avirtue of necessity in this incredibly dirty place; my hands are blackalready, and I've only swept the stage!"

She was standing at the edge of the platform that was to serve as thestage, looking down at him, and it may be taken as a sufficient guide tohis mental condition that his abhorrence of the prospect for himself wasswallowed up by fury at the thought of it for her. 

"Are you--do you mean to tell me you are going to dance _with a blackface_?" he demanded in bitter and incongruous wrath. 

"No, I'm going to dance with Captain Carteret!" replied Fannyfrivolously, "and so can you if you like!"

She was maddeningly pretty as she smiled down at him, with her brighthair roughened, and the afterglow of the dance alight in her eyes andcheeks. Nevertheless, for one whirling moment, the old Adam, an Adamblissfully unaware of the existence of Eve, asserted himself in Rupert. He picked up his cap and stick without a word, and turned towards thedoor. There, however, he was confronted by Mrs. Carteret, tugging at aline of chairs attached to a plank, like a very small bird with a verylarge twig. To refuse the aid that she immediately demanded wasimpossible, and even before the future back row of the sixpennies hadbeen towed to its moorings, he realised that hateful as it would be tostay and join in these distasteful revels, it would be better than goinghome and thinking about them. 

From this the intelligent observer may gather that absence had had itstraditional, but by no means invariable, effect upon the heart of Mr. Gunning, and, had any further stimulant been needed, it had beensupplied in the last few minutes by the aggressive and possessive mannerof Captain Carteret. 

The rehearsal progressed after the manner of amateur rehearsals. Thetroupe, with the exception of Mr. Gunning, who remained wrapped insilence, talked irrepressibly, and quite inappropriately to their rôleas Green Coons. Freddy Alexander and Mr. Taylour bear-fought untiringlyfor possession of the bones and the position of Corner Man; Mrs. Carteret alone had a copy of the music that was to be practised, and inconsequence, the company hung heavily over her at the piano in adeafening and discordant swarm. The two tall Hamiltons, hithertospeechless by nature and by practice, became suddenly exhilarated atfinding themselves in the inner circle of the soldiery, and bubbled withimpotent suggestions and reverential laughter at the witticisms of Mr. Taylour. Fanny Fitz and Captain Carteret finally removed themselves to agrimy corner behind the proscenium, and there practised, _sotto voce_, the song with banjo accompaniment that was to culminate in the hornpipe. Freddy Alexander had gone forth to purchase a pack of cards, in thefutile hope that he could prevail upon Mrs. Carteret to allow him toinflict conjuring tricks upon the audience. 

"As if there were anything on earth that bored people as much as cardtricks!" said that experienced lady to Rupert Gunning. "Look here, _would_ you mind reading over these riddles, to see which you'd like tohave to answer. Now, here's a local one. I'll ask it--'Why am dis roomlike de Enniscar Demesne?'--and then _you'll_ say, 'Because dere am somany pretty little deers in it'!"

"Oh, I couldn't possibly do that!" said Rupert hastily, alarmed as wellas indignant; "I'm afraid I really must go now--"

He had to pass by Fanny Fitz on his way out of the hall. There wassomething vexed and forlorn about him, and, being sympathetic, sheperceived it, though not its cause. 

"You're deserting us!" she said, looking up at him. 

"I have an appointment, " he said stiffly, his glance evading hers, andresting on Captain Carteret's well-clipped little black head. 

Some of Fanny's worst scrapes had been brought about by her incapacityto allow any one to part from her on bad terms, and, moreover, she likedRupert Gunning. She cast about in her mind for something conciliatory tosay to him. 

"When are you going to show me the cob that you bought at the HorseShow?"

The olive branch thus confidently tendered had a somewhat witheringreception. 

"The cob I bought at the Horse Show?" Mr. Gunning repeated with anincrease of rigidity, "Oh, yes--I got rid of it. "

He paused; the twanging of Captain Carteret's banjo bridged the intervalimperturbably. 

"Why had you to get rid of it?" asked Fanny, still sympathetic. 

"She was a failure!" said Rupert vindictively; "I made a fool of myselfin buying her!"

Fanny looked at him sideways from under her lashes. 

"And I had counted on your giving me a mount on her now and then!"

Rupert forgot his wrath, forgot even the twanging banjo. 

"I've just got another cob, " he said quickly; "she jumps very well, andif you'd like to hunt her next Tuesday--"

"Oh, thanks awfully, but Captain Carteret has promised me a mount fornext Tuesday!" said the perfidious Fanny. 

Mrs. Carteret, on her knees by a refractory footlight, watched withanxiety Mr. Gunning's abrupt departure from the room. 

"Fanny!" she said severely, "what have you been doing to that man?"

"Oh, nothing!" said Fanny. 

"If you've put him off singing I'll never forgive you!" continued Mrs. Carteret, advancing on her knees to the next footlight. 

"I tell you I've done nothing to him, " said Fanny Fitz guiltily. 

"Give me the hammer!" said Mrs. Carteret. "Have I eyes, or have I not?"

"He's awfully keen about her!" Mrs. Carteret said that evening to herhusband. "Bad temper is one of the worst signs. Men in love are alwayscross. "

"Oh, he's a rotter!" said Captain Carteret conclusively. 

In the meantime the object of this condemnation was driving his tenIrish miles home, by the light of a frosty full moon. Between the shaftsof his cart a trim-looking mare of about fifteen hands trotted lazily, forging, shying, and generally comporting herself in a way only possibleto a grass-fed animal who has been in the hands of such as Mr. WilliamFennessy. The thick and dingy mane that had hung impartially on eachside of her neck, now, together with the major portion of her voluminoustail, adorned the manure heap in the rear of the Fennessy public-house. The pallid fleece in which she had been muffled had given place to apolished coat of iron-grey, that looked black in the moonlight. A weekof over-abundant oats had made her opinionated, but had not, so far, restored to her the fine lady nervousness that had landed her in thewindow of the hat shop. 

Rupert laid the whip along her fat sides with bitter disfavour. She wasa brute in harness, he said to himself, her blemished fetlock was uglierthan he had at first thought, and even though she had yesterday schooledover two miles of country like an old stager, she was too small to carryhim, and she was not, apparently, wanted to carry any one else. Here thepurchase received a very disagreeable cut on the neck that interruptedher speculations as to the nature of the shadows of telegraph-posts. Tohave bought two useless horses in four months was pretty average badluck. It was also pretty bad luck to have been born a fool. Reflectionhere became merged in the shapeless and futile fumings of a man badly inlove and preposterously jealous. 

Known only to the elect among entertainment promoters are the methodsemployed by Mrs. Carteret to float the company of The Green Coons. Thefact remains that on the appointed night the chosen troupe, approximately word-perfect, and with spirits something chastened bystage fright, were assembled in the clerk's room of the Enniscar TownHall, round a large basin filled horribly with a compound of burnt corkand water. 

"It's not as bad as it looks!" said Mrs. Carteret, plunging in her handsand heroically smearing her face with a mass of black oozy matterbelieved to be a sponge. "It's quite becoming if you do it thoroughly. Mind, all of you, get it well into your ears and the roots of yourhair!"

The Hamiltons, giggling wildly, submitted themselves to theministrations of Freddy Alexander, and Mrs. Carteret, appallinglytransformed into a little West Indian coolie woman, applied the spongeto the shrinking Fanny Fitz. 

"Will you do Mr. Gunning, Fanny?" she whispered into one of the earsthat she had conscientiously blackened. "I think he'd bear it betterfrom you!"

"I shall do nothing of the kind!" replied Fanny, with a dignity somewhatimpaired by her ebon countenance and monstrous green turban. 

"Why not?"

Mrs. Carteret's small neat features seemed unnaturally sharpened, andher eyes and teeth glittered in her excitement. 

"For goodness' sake, take your awful little black face away, Mabel!"exclaimed Fanny hysterically. "It quite frightens me! I'm _very_ angrywith Mr. Gunning! I'll tell you why some other time. "

"Well, don't forget you've got to say 'Buck up, Sambo!' to him afterhe's sung his song, and you may fight with him as much as you likeafterwards, " said Mrs. Carteret, hurrying off to paint glaringvermilion mouths upon the loudly protesting Hamiltons. 

During these vicissitudes, Rupert Gunning, arrayed in a greenswallow-tailed calico coat, short white cotton trousers, and a skimpynigger wig, presented a pitiful example of the humiliations which theallied forces of love and jealousy can bring upon the just. Fanny Fitzhas since admitted that, in spite of the wrath that burned within her, the sight of Mr. Gunning morosely dabbing his long nose with therepulsive sponge that was shared by the troupe, almost moved her tocompassion. 

A pleasing impatience was already betraying itself in cat-calls andstampings from the sixpenny places, and Mrs. Carteret, flitting like asheep dog round her flock, arranged them in couples and drove thembefore her on to the stage, singing in chorus, with a fair assumption ofhilarity, "As we go marching through Georgia". 

For Fanny Fitz the subsequent proceedings became merged in a nightmareof blinding heat and glare, made actual only by poignant anxiety as tothe length of her green skirt. The hope that she might be unrecognisablewas shattered by the yell of "More power, Miss Fanny!" that crested thethunderous encore evoked by her hornpipe with Captain Carteret, and thequestion of the skirt was decided by the fact that her aunts, in thefront row, firmly perused their programmes from the beginning of herdance to its conclusion. 

The entertainment went with varying success after the manner of itskind. The local hits and personal allusions, toilfully compiled andardently believed in, were received in damping silence, while RupertGunning's song, of the truculent order dedicated to basses, and sung byhim with a face that would have done credit to Othello, received anovation that confirmed Captain Carteret in his contempt for countryaudiences. The performance raged to its close in a "Cake Walk, " to theinspiring strains of "Razors a-flying through the air, " and the curtainfell on what the Enniscar _Independent_ described cryptically as "a_tout ensemble à la conversazione_ that was refreshingly unique". 

"Five minutes more and I should have had heat apoplexy!" said Mrs. Carteret, hurling her turban across the clerk's room, "but it all wentsplendidly! Empty that basin out of the window, somebody, and give methe vaseline. The last time I blacked my face it was covered with redspots for a week afterwards because I used soap instead of vaseline!"

Rupert Gunning approached Fanny with an open note in his hand. 

"I've had this from your aunt, " he said, handing it to her; it wasdecorated with sooty thumb marks, to which Fanny's black clawcontributed a fresh batch as she took it, but she read it without asmile. 

It was to the effect that the heat of the room had been too much for theelder Misses Fitzroy, and they had therefore gone home, but as Mr. Gunning had to pass their gate perhaps he would be kind enough to drivetheir niece home. 

"Oh--" said Fanny, in tones from which dismay was by no meanseliminated. "How stupid of Aunt Rachel!"

"I'm afraid there seems no way out of it for you, " said Rupertoffendedly. 

A glimpse of their two wrathful black faces in the glass abruptlychecked Fanny's desire to say something crushing. At this juncture shewould rather have died than laughed. 

Burnt cork is not lightly to be removed at the first essay, and when, half an hour later, Fanny Fitz, with a pale and dirty face, stood underthe dismal light of the lamp outside the Town Hall, waiting for Mr. Gunning's trap, she had the pleasure of hearing a woman among theloiterers say compassionately:--

"God help her, the crayture! She looks like a servant that'd be bate outwith work!"

Mr. Gunning's new cob stood hearkening with flickering ears to thevarious commotions of the street--she understood them all perfectlywell, but her soul being unlifted by reason of oats, she chose to resentthem as impertinences. Having tolerated with difficulty the instalmentof Miss Fitzroy in the trap, she started with a flourish, and pulledhard until clear of the town and its flaring public-houses. On the openroad, with nothing more enlivening than the dark hills, half-seen in thelight of the rising moon, she settled down. Rupert turned to his silentcompanion. He had become aware during the evening that something waswrong, and his own sense of injury was frightened into the background. 

"What do you think of my new buy?" he said pacifically, "she's a goodgoer, isn't she?"

"Very, " replied Fanny. 

Silence again reigned. One or two further attempts at conversation metwith equal discouragement. The miles passed by. At length, as the mareslackened to walk up a long hill, Rupert said with a voice that had theshake of pent-up injury:--

"I've been wondering what I've done to be put into Coventry like this!"

"I thought you probably wouldn't care to speak to me!" was Fanny'sastonishing reply, delivered in tones of ice. 

"I!" he stammered, "not care to speak to _you_! You ought to know--"

"Yes, indeed, I do know!" broke in Fanny, passing from the frigid to thetorrid zone with characteristic speed, "I know what a _failure_ yourhorse-dealing at the Dublin Show was! I've heard how you bought my mare, and had her shot the same night, because you wouldn't take the troubleeven to go and look at her after the poor little thing was hurt! Oh! Ican't bear even to _think_ of it!"

Rupert Gunning remained abjectly and dumfoundedly silent. 

"And then, " continued Fanny, whirling on to the final point of herindictment, "you pretended to Captain Carteret and me that the horse youhad bought was 'a common brute, ' _a cob for carting_, and you said theother night that you had made a fool of yourself over it! I didn't knowthen all about it, but I do now. Captain Carteret heard about it fromthe dealer in Dublin. Even the dealer said it was a pity you hadn'tgiven the mare a chance!"

"It's all perfectly true, " said Rupert, in a low voice. 

A soft answer, so far from turning away wrath, frequently inflames it. 

"Then I think there's no more to be said!" said Fanny hotly. 

There was silence. They had reached the top of the hill, and the greymare began to trot. 

"Well, there's just one thing I should like to say, " said Rupertawkwardly, his breath coming very short, "I couldn't help everythinggoing wrong about the mare. It was just my bad luck. I only bought herto please you. They told me she couldn't get right after the accident. What was the good of my going to look at her? I wanted to cross in theboat with you. Whatever I did I did for you. I would do anything in theworld for you--"

It was at this crucial moment that there arose suddenly from the dimgrey road in front of them a slightly greyer shadow, a shadow thatlimped amid the clanking of chains. The Connemara mare, now masqueradingas a County Cork cob, asked for nothing better. If it were a ghost, shewas legitimately entitled to flee from it; if, as was indeed the case, it was a donkey, she made a point of shying at donkeys. She realisedthat, by a singular stroke of good fortune, the reins were lying inloops on her back. 

A snort, a sideways bound, a couple of gleeful kicks on the dashboard, and she was away at full gallop, with one rein under her tail, and apleasant open road before her. 

"It's all right!" said Rupert, recovering his balance by ahair-breadth, and feeling in his heart that it was all wrong, "theCraffroe Hill will stop her. Hold on to the rail. "

Fanny said nothing. It was, indeed, all that she could do to keep herseat in the trap, with which the rushing road was playing cup and ball;she was, besides, not one of the people who are conversational inemergencies. When an animal, as active and artful as the Connemara mare, is going at some twenty miles an hour, with one of the reins under itstail, endeavours to detach the rein are not much avail, and when thetail is still tender from recent docking, they are a good deal worsethan useless. Having twice nearly fallen on his head, Rupert abandonedthe attempt and prayed for the long stiff ascent of the Craffroe Hill. 

It came swiftly out of the grey moonlight. At its foot another roadforked to the right; instead of facing the hill that led to home andstable, the mare swung into the side road, with one wheel up on thegrass, and the cushions slipping from the seat, and Rupert, just savingthe situation with the left rein that remained to him, said to himselfthat they were in for a bad business. 

For a mile they swung and clattered along it, with the wind striking andsplitting against their faces like a cold and tearing stream of water; alight wavered and disappeared across the pallid fields to the left, agroup of starveling trees on a hill slid up into the skyline behindthem, and at last it seemed as if some touch of self-control, somesuggestion of having had enough of the joke, was shortening the mare'sgrasping stride. The trap pitched more than ever as she came up into theshafts and back into her harness; she twisted suddenly to the left intoa narrow lane, cleared the corner by an impossible fluke, and Fanny Fitzwas hurled ignominiously on to Rupert Gunning's lap. Long briars andtwigs struck them from either side, the trap bumped in craggy ruts andslashed through wide puddles, then reeled irretrievably over a heap ofstones and tilted against the low bank to the right. 

Without any exact knowledge of how she got there, Fanny found herself onher hands and knees in a clump of bracken on top of the bank; Rupert wasalready picking himself out of rugs and other jetsam in the field belowher, and the mare was proceeding up the lane at a disorderly trot, having jerked the trap on to its legs again from its reclining position. 

Fanny was lifted down into the lane; she told him that she was not hurt, but her knees shook, her hands trembled, and the arm that was round hertightened its clasp in silence. When a man is strongly moved bytenderness and anxiety and relief, he can say little to make it known;he need not--it is known beyond all telling by the one other person whomit concerns. She felt suddenly that she was safe, that his heart wastorn for her sake, and that the tension of the last ten minutes had beengreat. It went through her with a pang, and her head swayed against hisarm. In a moment she felt his lips on her hair, on her temple, and theoldest, the most familiar of all words of endearment was spoken at herear. She recovered herself, but in a new world. She tried to walk on upthe lane, but stumbled in the deep ruts and found the supporting armagain ready at need. She did not resist it. 

A shrill neigh arose in front of them. The mare had pulled up at aclosed gate, and was apparently apostrophising some low farm buildingsbeyond it. A dog barked hysterically, the door of a cowshed burst open, and a man came out with a lantern. 

"Oh, I know now where we are!" cried Fanny wildly, "it's JohnnyConnolly's! Oh, Johnny, Johnny Connolly, we've been run away with!"

"For God's sake!" responded Johnny Connolly, standing stock still in hisamazement, "is that Miss Fanny?"

"Get hold of the mare, " shouted Rupert, "or she'll jump the gate!"

Johnny Connolly advanced, still calling upon his God, and the mareuttered a low but vehement neigh. 

"Ye're deshtroyed, Miss Fanny! And Mr. Gunning, the Lord save us! Ye'rekilled the two o' ye! What happened ye at all? Woa, gerr'l, woa, gerrlie! Ye'd say she knew me, the crayture. "

The mare was rubbing her dripping face and neck against the farmer'sshoulder, with hoarse whispering snorts of recognition and pleasure. Heheld his lantern high to look at her. 

"Musha, why wouldn't she know me!" he roared, "sure it's yer own mare, Miss Fanny! 'Tis the Connemara mare I thrained for ye! And may the divilsweep and roast thim that has it told through all the counthry that shewas killed!"

A GRAND FILLY

I am an Englishman. I say this without either truculence orvainglorying, rather with humility--a mere Englishman, who submits hisPlain Tale from the Western Hills with the conviction that the Kelt whomay read it will think him more mere than ever. 

I was in Yorkshire last season when what is trivially called "the coldsnap" came upon us. I had five horses eating themselves silly all thetime, and I am not going to speak of it. I don't consider it a subjectto be treated lightly. It was in about the thickest of it that I heardfrom a man I know in Ireland. He is a little old horse-coping sportsmanwith a red face and iron-grey whiskers, who has kept hounds all hislife; or, rather, he has always had hounds about, on much the sameconditions that other men have rats. The rats are indubitably there, andfeed themselves variously, and so do old Robert Trinder's "Rioters, "which is their _nom de guerre_ in the County Corkerry (the few who knowanything of the map of Ireland may possibly identify the two countiesburied in this cryptogram). 

I meet old Robert most years at the Dublin Horse Show, and every now andthen he has sold me a pretty good horse, so when he wrote and renewed astanding invitation, assuring me that there was open weather, and thathe had a grand four-year-old filly to sell, I took him at his word, andstarted at once. The journey lasted for twenty-eight hours, going hardall the time, and during the last three of them there were nofoot-warmers and the cushions became like stones enveloped in mustardplasters. Old Trinder had not sent to the station for me, and it waspelting rain, so I had to drive seven miles in a thing that only existssouth of the Limerick Junction, and is called a "jingle". A jingle is asquare box of painted canvas with no back to it, because, as wasluminously explained to me, you must have some way to get into it, and Ihad to sit sideways in it, with my portmanteau bucking like athree-year-old on the seat opposite to me. It fell out on the road twicegoing uphill. After the second fall my hair tonic slowly oozed forthfrom the seams, and added a fresh ingredient to the smells of the grimycushions and the damp hay that furnished the machine. My hair toniccosts eight-and-sixpence a bottle. 

There is probably not in the United Kingdom a worse-planned entrancegate than Robert Trinder's. You come at it obliquely on the side of acrooked hill, squeeze between its low pillars with an inch to spareeach side, and immediately drop down a yet steeper hill, which lasts forthe best part of a quarter of a mile. The jingle went swooping andjerking down into the unknown, till, through the portholes on eitherside of the driver's legs, I saw Lisangle House. It had looked decidedlybetter in large red letters at the top of old Robert's notepaper than itdid at the top of his lawn, being no more than a square yellow box of ahouse, that had been made a fool of by being promiscuously trimmed withbattlements. Just as my jingle tilted me in backwards against the flightof steps, I heard through the open door a loud and piercing yell;following on it came the thunder of many feet, and the next instant ahound bolted down the steps with a large plucked turkey in its mouth. Close in its wake fled a brace of puppies, and behind them, variouslyarmed, pursued what appeared to be the staff of Lisangle House. Theywent past me in full cry, leaving a general impression of dirty aprons, flying hair, and onions, and I feel sure that there were bare feetsomewhere in it. My carman leaped from his perch and joined in thechase, and the whole party swept from my astonished gaze round or into aclump of bushes. At this juncture I was not sorry to hear RobertTrinder's voice greeting me as if nothing unusual were occurring. 

[Illustration: ROBERT'S AUNT]

"Upon me honour, it's the Captain! You're welcome, sir, you're welcome!Come in, come in, don't mind the horse at all; he'll eat the grass thereas he's done many a time before! When the gerr'ls have old Amazon cotthey'll bring in your things. "

(Perhaps I ought to mention at once that Mr. Trinder belongs to theclass who are known in Ireland as "Half-sirs". You couldn't say he was agentleman, and he himself wouldn't have tried to say so. But, as amatter of fact, I have seen worse imitations. )

Robert was delighted to see me, and I had had a whisky-and-soda and beenshown two or three more hound puppies before it occurred to him tointroduce me to his aunt. I had not expected an aunt, as Robert is wellon the heavenward side of sixty; but there she was: she made me think ofa badly preserved Egyptian mummy with a brogue. I am always a littleafraid of my hostess, but there was something about Robert's aunt thatmade me know I was a worm. She came down to dinner in a bonnet and blackkid gloves--a circumstance that alone was awe-inspiring. She satentrenched at the head of the table behind an enormous dish of thicklyjacketed potatoes, and, though she scorned to speak to Robert or me, shekept up a sort of whispered wrangle with the parlour-maid all the time. The latter's red hair hung down over her shoulders--and at intervalsover mine also--in horrible luxuriance, and recalled the leading figurein the pursuit of Amazon; there was, moreover, something about the heavyboots in which she tramped round the table that suggested that Amazonhad sought sanctuary in the cow-house. I have done some roughing it inmy time, and I am not over-particular, but I admit that it was rather ashock to meet the turkey itself again, more especially as it was thesole item of the _menu_. There was no doubt of its identity, as it wasshort of a leg, and half the breast had been shaved away. The aunt musthave read my thoughts in my face. She fixed her small implacable eyes onmine for one quelling instant, then she looked at Robert. Her nephew wasobviously afraid to meet her eye; he coughed uneasily, and handed asurreptitious potato to the puppy who was sitting under his chair. 

"This place is rotten with dogs, " said the aunt; with which announcementshe retired from the conversation, and fell again to the slaughter ofthe parlour-maid. I timidly ate my portion of turkey and tried not tothink about the cow-house. 

It rained all night. I could hear the water hammering into somethingthat rang like a gong; and each time I rolled over in the musty troughof my feather-bed I fractiously asked myself why the mischief they hadleft the tap running all night. Next morning the matter was explainedwhen, on demanding a bath, I was told that "there wasn't but one in thehouse, and 'twas undher the rain-down. But sure ye can have it, " withwhich it was dragged in full of dirty water and flakes of whitewash, andwhen I got out of it I felt as if I had been through the BankruptcyCourt. 

The day was windy and misty--a combination of weather possible only inIreland--but there was no snow, and Robert Trinder, seated at breakfastin a purple-red hunting coat, dingy drab breeches, and woollen socks, assured me that it was turning out a grand morning. 

I distinctly liked the looks of my mount when Jerry the Whip pulled herout of the stable for me. She was big and brown, with hindquarters thatlooked like jumping; she was also very dirty and obviously underfed. None the less she was lively enough, and justified Jerry's predictionthat "she'd be apt to shake a couple or three bucks out of herself whenshe'd see the hounds". Old Robert was on an ugly brute of a yellowhorse, rather like a big mule, who began the day by bucking out of theyard gate as if he had been trained by Buffalo Bill. It was at thisjuncture that I first really respected Robert Trinder; his retention ofhis seat was so unstudied, and his command of appropriate epithets socomplete. 

Jerry and the hounds awaited us on the road, the latter as mixed a partyas I have ever come across. There were about fourteen couple in all, andthey ranged in style from a short-legged black-and-tan harrier, who hadundoubtedly had an uncle who was a dachshund, to a thing with a headlike a greyhound, a snow-white body, and a feathered stern that wouldhave been a credit to a setter. In between these extremes came severalbroken-haired Welshmen, some dilapidated 24-inch foxhounds, and a lot ofpale-coloured hounds, whose general effect was that of the tablecloth onwhich we had eaten our breakfast that morning, being dirty white, covered with stains that looked like either tea or egg, or both. 

"Them's the old Irish breed, " said Robert, as the yellow horsevoluntarily stopped short to avoid stepping on one of them; "there's nobetter. That Gaylass there would take a line up Patrick Street on a fairday, and you'd live and die seeing her kill rats. "

I am bound to say I thought it more likely that I should live to see herand some of her relations killing sheep, judging by their manners alongthe road; but we got to Letter cross-roads at last with no more than anold hen and a wandering cur dog on our collective consciences. The roadand its adjacent fences were thronged with foot people, mostlystrapping young men and boys, in the white flannel coats and slouchedfelt hats that strike a stranger with their unusualness andpicturesqueness. 

"Do you ever have a row with Land Leaguers?" I asked, noting theirsticks, while the warnings of a sentimental Radical friend as to thedanger of encountering an infuriated Irish peasantry suddenly assumedplausibility. 

"Land League? The dear help ye! Who'd be bothered with the Land Leaguehere?" said Robert, shoving the yellow horse into the crowd; "let thehounds through, boys, can't ye? No, Captain, but 'tis Saint November'sDay, as they call it, a great holiday, and there isn't a ruffian in thecountry but has come out with his blagyard dog to head the fox!"

A grin of guilt passed over the faces of the audience. 

"There's plinty foxes in the hill, Mr. Thrinder, " shouted one of them;"Dan Murphy says there isn't a morning but he'd see six or eight o' themhoppin' there. "

"Faith, 'tis thrue for you, " corroborated Dan Murphy. "If ye had thimgethered in a quarther of ground and dhropped a pin from th' elements, 'twould reach one o' thim!"

(As a matter of fact, I haven't a notion what Mr. Murphy meant, but thatis what he said, so I faithfully record it. )

The riders were farmers and men of Robert's own undetermined class, andthere was hardly a horse out who was more than four years old, savingtwo or three who were nineteen. Robert pushed through them and turned upa bohireen--_i. E. _, a narrow and incredibly badly made lane--and Ipresently heard him cheering the hounds into covert. As to that covert, imagine a hill that in any civilised country would be called a mountain:its nearer side a cliff, with just enough slope to give root-hold togiant furze bushes, its summit a series of rocky and boggy terraces, trending down at one end into a ravine, and at the other becoming mergedin the depths of an aboriginal wood of low scrubby oak trees. It seemedas feasible to ride a horse over it as over the roof of York Minster. Ihadn't the vaguest idea what to do or where to go, and I clave to Jerrythe Whip. 

The hounds were scrambling like monkeys along the side of the hill; sowere the country boys with their curs; old Trinder moved parallel withthem along its base. Jerry galloped away to the ravine, and theredismounting, struggled up by zig-zag cattle paths to the comparativelevels of the summit. I did the same, and was pretty well blown by thetime I got to the top, as the filly scorned the zigzags, and hauled meup as straight as she could go over the rocks and furze bushes. A fewother fellows had followed us, and we all pursued on along the top ofthe hill. 

Suddenly Jerry stopped short and held up his hand. A hound spoke belowus, then another, and then came a halloa from Jerry that made the fillyquiver all over. The fox had come up over the low fence that edged thecliff, and was running along the terrace in front of us. Old Robertbelow us--I could almost have chucked a stone on to him--gave ananswering screech, and one by one the hounds fought their way up overthe fence and went away on the line, throwing their tongues in a stylethat did one good to hear. Our only way ahead lay along a species oftrench between the hill, on whose steep side we were standing, and thecliff fence. Jerry kicked the spurs into his good ugly little horse, andmaking him jump down into the trench, squeezed along it after thehounds. But the delay of waiting for them had got the filly's temper up. When I faced her at the trench she reared, and whirled round, andpranced backwards in, considering the circumstances, a highlydiscomposing way. The rest of the field crowded through the furze pastme and down into the trench, and twice I thought the mare would landherself and me on top of one of them. I don't wonder she was frightened. I know I was. There was nothing between us and a hundred-foot drop butthis narrow trench and a low, rotten fence, and the fool behaved asthough she wanted to jump it all. I hope no one will ever erect anequestrian statue in my honour; now that I have experienced thesensation of ramping over nothing, I find I dislike it. I believe Imight have been there now, but just then a couple of hounds came up, andbefore I knew what she was at, the filly had jumped down after them intothe trench as if she had been doing it all her life. I was not longabout picking the others up; the filly could gallop anyhow, and wethundered on over ground where, had I been on foot, I should have likeda guide and an alpenstock. At intervals we jumped things made of sharpstones, and slates, and mud; I don't know whether they were banks orwalls. Sometimes the horses changed feet on them, sometimes they flewthe whole affair, according to their individual judgment. Sometimes wewere splashing over sedgy patches that looked and felt like butteredtoast, sometimes floundering through stuff resembling an ill-madechocolate soufflé, whether intended for a ploughed field or a partiallydrained bog-hole I could not determine, and all was fenced as carefullyas cricket-pitches. Presently the hounds took a swing to the left andover the edge of the hill again, and our leader Jerry turned sharp offafter them, down a track that seemed to have been dug out of the face ofthe hill. I should have liked to get off and lead, but they did notgive me time, and we suddenly found ourselves joined to Robert Trinderand his company of infantry, all going hard for the oak wood that Imentioned before. 

It was pretty to see the yellow horse jump. Nothing came amiss to him, and he didn't seem able to make a mistake. There was a stone stile outof a bohireen that stopped every one, and he changed feet on the flag ontop and went down by the steps on the other side. No one need believethis unless they like, but I saw him do it. The country boys were mostexhilarating. How they got there I don't know, but they seemed to springup before us wherever we went. They cheered every jump, they pulled awaythe astounding obstacles that served as gates (such as the end of aniron bedstead, a broken harrow, or a couple of cartwheels), and theirpower of seeing the fox through a stone wall or a hill could only beequalled by the Röntgen rays. We fought our way through the oak wood, and out over a boggy bounds ditch into open country at last. The Riotershad come out of the wood on a screaming scent, and big and little wererunning together in a compact body, followed, like the tail of a kite, by a string of yapping country curs. The country was all grass, enchantingly green and springy; the jumps were big, yet not too big, and there were no two alike; the filly pulled hard, but not too hard, and she was jumping like a deer; I felt that all I had heard of Irishhunting had not been overstated. 

We had been running for half an hour when we checked at a farmhouse; theyellow horse had been leading the hunt all the time, making a noise likea steam-engine, but perfectly undefeated, and our numbers were reducedto five. An old woman and a girl rushed out of the yard to meet us, screaming like sea-gulls. 

"He's gone south this five minutes! I was out spreadin' clothes, and Iseen him circling round the Kerry cow, and he as big as a man!" screamedthe girl. 

"He was, the thief!" yelled the old woman. "I seen him firsht on thehill, cringeing behind a rock, and he hardly able to thrail the tailafther him!"

"Run now, like a good girl, and show me where did he cross the fence, "said old Robert, puffing and blowing, as with a purple face he hurriedinto the yard to collect the hounds, who, like practised foragers, hadalready overrun the farmhouse, as was evidenced by an indignant andshrieking flight of fowls through the open door. 

The girl ran, snatching off her red plaid shawl as she went. 

"Here's the shpot now!" she called out, flinging the shawl down on thefence; "here's the very way just that he wint! Go south to the gap; I'llpull the pole out for ye--this is a cross place. "

The hunt gratefully accepted her good offices. She tore the monstrousshaft of a cart out of a place that with it was impossible, and withoutit was a boggy scramble, and as we began to gallop again, I began tothink there was a good deal to be said in favour of the New Woman. 

I suppose we had had another quarter of an hour, when the mist, that hadbeen hanging about all day, came down on us, and it was difficult to seemore than a field ahead. We had got down on to lower ground, and we werein a sort of marshy hollow when we were confronted by the most seriousobstacle of the day: a tall and obviously rotten bank clothed in briars, with sharp stones along its top, a wide ditch in front of it, and adisgustingly squashy take-off. Robert Trinder and the yellow horse heldtheir course undaunted: the rest of the field turned as one man, andwent for another way round--I, in my arrogance, followed the Master. Theyellow horse rose out of the soft ground with quiet, indescribable ease, got a foothold on the side of the bank for his hind legs, and was awayinto the next field without pause or mistake. 

"Go round, Captain!" shouted Trinder; "it's a bad place!"

I hardly heard him; I was already putting the filly at it for the secondtime. It took about three minutes for her to convince me that she andRobert were right, and I was wrong, and by that time everybody was outof sight, swallowed up in the mist. I tried round after the others, andfound their footmarks up a lane and across a field; a loose stone wallconfronted me, and I rode at it confidently; but the filly, soured byour recent encounter, reared and would have none of it. I tried yetanother way round, and put her at a moderate and seemingly innocuousbank, at which, with the contrariety of her sex, she rushed at athousand miles an hour. It looked somehow as if there might be a bit ofa drop, but the filly had got her beastly blood up, and I have been in abetter temper myself. 

She rose to the jump when she was a good six feet from it. I knew shewould not put an iron on it, and I sat down for the drop. It came with avengeance. I had a glimpse of a thatched roof below me, and the nextinstant we were on it or in it--I don't know which. It gave way with acrash of rafters, the mare's forelegs went in, and I was shot over herhead, rolled over the edge of the roof, and fell on my face into amanure heap. A yell and a pig burst simultaneously from the door, a calffollowed, and while I struggled up out of my oozy resting-place, I wasaware of the filly's wild face staring from the door of the shed inwhich she so unexpectedly found herself. The broken reins trailed roundher legs, she was panting and shivering, and blood was trickling downthe white blaze on her nose. I got her out through the low doorway witha little coaxing, and for a moment hardly dared to examine as to theamount of damage done. She was covered with cobwebs and dirt out of theroof, and, as I led her forward, she went lame on one foreleg; butbeyond this, and a good many scratches, there was nothing wrong. My ownappearance need not here be dilated upon. I was cleaning off what theycall in Ireland "the biggest of the filth" with a bunch of heather, when from a cottage a little bit down the lane in which I was standing asmall barelegged child emerged. It saw me, uttered one desperate howl, and fled back into the house. I abandoned my toilet and led the mare tothe cottage door. 

"Is any one in?" I said to the house at large. 

A fresh outburst of yells was the sole response; there was a patteringof bare feet, and somewhere in the smoky gloom a door slammed. It wasclearly a case of "Not at Home" in its conventional sense. I scribbledRobert Trinder's name on one of my visiting cards, laid it and half asovereign on a table by the door, and started to make my way home. 

The south of Ireland is singularly full of people. I do not believe youcan go a quarter of a mile on any given road without meeting some one, and that some one is sure to be conversationally disposed and glad ofthe chance of answering questions. By dint of asking a good many, Ieventually found myself on the high road, with five miles between me andLisangle. The mare's lameness had nearly worn off, and she walked besideme like a dog. After all, I thought, I had had the best of the day, hadcome safely out of what might have been a nasty business, and wassupplied with a story on which to dine out for the rest of my life. Myonly anxiety was as to whether I could hope for a bath when I got in--aluxury that had been hideously converted by the _locale_ of my fall intoa necessity. I led the filly in the twilight down the dark Lisangledrive, feeling all the complacency of a man who knows he has gone wellin a strange country, and was just at the turn to the yard when I cameupon an extraordinary group. All the women of the household were there, gathered in a tight circle round some absorbing central fact; all wereshrieking at the tops of their voices, and the turkey cock in the yardgobbled in response to each shriek. 

"Ma'am, ma'am!" I heard, "ye'll pull the tail off him!"

"Twisht the tink-an now, Bridgie! Twisht it!"

"Holy Biddy! the masther'll kill us!"

What the deuce were they at? and what was a "tink-an"? I dragged thefilly nearer, and discovered that a hound puppy was the central point ofthe tumult, and was being contended for, like the body of Moses, by MissTrinder and Bridgie the parlour-maid. Both were seated on the groundpulling at the puppy for all they were worth; Miss Trinder had him bythe back of his neck and his tail, while Bridgie was dragging--what_was_ she dragging at? Then I saw that the puppy's head was jammed in anarrow-necked tin milk-can, and that, as things were going, he wouldwear it, like the Man in the Iron Mask, for the rest of his life. 

The small, grim face of Robert's aunt was scarlet with exertion; herblack bonnet had slipped off her head, and the thin grey hair that wasordinarily wound round her little skull as tightly as cotton on a reel, was hanging in scanty wisps from its central knot; nevertheless, shewas, metaphorically speaking, pulling Bridgie across the line everytime. I gave the filly to one of the audience, and took Bridgie's placeat the "tink-an". Miss Trinder and I put our backs into it, and suddenlyI found myself flat on mine, with the "tink-an" grasped in both handsabove my head. 

A composite whoop of triumph rose from the spectators, and the fillyrose with it. She went straight up on her hind legs, and the nextinstant she was away across the drive and into the adjoining field, and, considering all things, I don't blame her. We all ran after her. I led, and the various female retainers strung out after me like a flight ofwild-duck, uttering cries of various encouragement and consternation. Miss Trinder followed, silent and indomitable, at the heel of the hunt, and the released puppy, who had also harked in, could be heard throwinghis tongue in the dusky shrubbery ahead of us. It was all exasperatinglyabsurd, as things seem to have a habit of being in Ireland. I never feltmore like a fool in my life, and the bitterest part of it was that itwas all I could do to keep ahead of Bridgie. As for the filly, shewaited till we got near her, and then she jumped a five-foot coped wallinto the road, fell, picked herself up, and clattered away intodarkness. At this point I heard Robert's horn, and sundry confusedshouts and sounds informed me that the filly had run into the hounds. 

She was found next day on the farm where she was bred, fifteen milesaway. The farmer brought her back to Lisangle. She had injured threehounds, upset two old women and a donkey-cart, broken a gate, andfinally, on arriving at the place of her birth, had, according to thefarmer, "fired the divil's pelt of a kick into her own mother'sstomach". Moreover, she "hadn't as much sound skin on her as would baita rat-trap"--I here quote Mr. Trinder--and she had fever in all herfeet. 

Of course I bought her. I could hardly do less. I told Robert he mightgive her to the hounds, but he sent her over to me in a couple of monthsas good as new, and I won the regimental steeplechase cup with her lastApril. 

A NINETEENTH-CENTURY MIRACLE

Captain "Pat" Naylor, of the --th Dragoons, had the influenza. For threedays he had lain prostrate, a sodden and aching victim to the universalleveller, and an intolerable nuisance to his wife. This last is perhapsan over-statement; Mrs. Naylor was in the habit of bearing otherpeople's burdens with excellent fortitude, but she felt justly annoyedthat Captain Pat should knock up before they had fairly settled down intheir new quarters, and while yet three of the horses were out of sortsafter the crossing from England. 

Pilot, however, was quite fit, a very tranquillising fact, and one thatMrs. Pat felt was due to her own good sense in summering him on herfather's broad pastures in Meath, instead of "lugging him to Aldershotwith the rest of the string, as Pat wanted to do, " as she explained toMajor Booth. Major Booth shed a friendly grin upon his fallen comrade, who lay, a deplorable object, on the horrid velvet-covered sofa peculiarto indifferent lodgings, and said vaguely that one of his brutes wasright anyhow, and he was going to ride him at Carnfother the next day. 

"You'd better come too, Mrs. Pat, " he added; "and if you'll drive meI'll send my chap on with the horses. It's too far to ride. It'sfourteen Irish miles off; and fourteen Irish miles is just about thelongest distance I know. "

Carnfother is a village in a remote part of the Co. Cork; it possesses asmall hotel--in Ireland no hostelry, however abject, would demean itselfby accepting the title of inn--a police barrack, a few minorpublic-houses, a good many dirty cottages, and an unrivalled collectionof loafers. The stretch of salmon river that gleamed away to the distantheathery hills afforded the _raison d'être_ of both hotel and loafers, but the fishing season had not begun, and the attention of both wastherefore undividedly bestowed on Mrs. Naylor and Major Booth. Theformer's cigarette and the somewhat Paradisaic dimensions of her apronskirt would indeed at any time have rivalled in interest the landing ofa 20-lb. Fish, and as she strode into the hotel the bystanders'ejaculatory piety would have done credit to a revival meeting. 

"Well, well, I'll say nothing for her but that she's quare!" said theold landlady, hurrying in from her hens to attend to these rarer birdswhom fortune had sent to her net. 

Mrs. Pat's roan cob had attacked and defeated the fourteen Irish mileswith superfluous zeal, and there were still several minutes before thehounds could be reasonably expected on the scene. The soda was bad, thewhisky was worse. The sound of a riddle came in with the sunshinethrough the open door, and our friends strolled out into the street tosee what was going on. In the centre of a ring of onlookers an old manwas playing, and was, moreover, dancing to his own music, and dancingwith serious, incongruous elegance. Round and round the circle he footedit, his long thin legs twinkling in absolute accord with the complicatedjig that his long thin fingers were ripping out of the cracked andraucous fiddle. A very plain, stout young woman, with a heavy red faceand discordantly golden hair, shuffled round after him in a clumsypretence of dancing, and as the couple faced Mrs. Pat she saw that theold man was blind. Steam was rising from his domed bald head, and hislong black hair danced on his shoulders. His face was pale and strangeand entirely self-absorbed. Had Mrs. Pat been in the habit ofinstituting romantic parallels between the past and the present shemight have thought of the priests of Baal who danced in probably justsuch measures round the cromlechs in the hills above Carnfother; as shewasn't, she remarked merely that this was all very well, but that theold maniac would have to clear out of that before they brought Pilotround, or there'd be trouble. 

There was trouble, but it did not arise from Pilot, but from theyellow-haired woman's pertinacious demands for money from Mrs. Naylor. She had the offensive fluency that comes of long practice in alternatewheedling and bullying, and although Major Booth had given her ashilling she continued to pester Mrs. Pat for a further largesse. But, as it happened, Mrs. Pat's purse was in her covert coat in the dog-cart, and Mrs. Pat's temper was ever within easy reach, and on being tooclosely pressed for the one she exhibited the other with a decision thatcontracted the ring of bystanders to hear the fun, and loosened theyellow-haired woman's language, till unfortunate Major Booth felt thatif he could get her off the field of battle for a sovereign it would becheap at the price. The old man continued to walk round and round, fingering a dumb tune on his fiddle that he did not bow, while thesunlight glistened hot and bright in his unwinking eyes; there was afaint smile on his lips, he heard as little as he saw; it was evidentthat he was away where "beyond these voices there is peace, " in thefairy country that his forefathers called the Tir na'n Oge. 

At this juncture the note of the horn sounded very sweetly from acrossthe shining ford of the river. Hounds and riders came splashing up intothe village street, the old man and his daughter were hustled to oneside, and Mrs. Pat's affability returned as she settled her extremelysmart little person on Pilot's curveting back, and was instantly awarethat there was nothing present that could touch either of them in looksor quality. Carnfother was at the extreme verge of the D---- Hounds'country; there were not more than about thirty riders out, and Mrs. Patwas not far wrong when she observed to Major Booth that there was notmuch class about them. Of the four or five women who were of the field, but one wore a habit with any pretensions to conformity with the sacredlaws of fashion, and its colour was a blue that, taken in connectionwith a red, brass-buttoned waistcoat, reminded the severe critic fromRoyal Meath of the head porter at the Shelburne Hotel. So she informedMajor Booth in one of the rare intervals permitted to her by Pilot forconversation. 

"All right, " responded that gentleman, "you wait until you and thatramping brute of yours get up among the stone walls, and you'll be jollyglad if she'll call a cab for you and see you taken safe home. I tellyou what--you won't be able to see the way she goes. "

"Rubbish!" said Mrs. Pat, and, whether from sympathy or from a petulanttouch of her heel, Pilot at this moment involved himself in so intricatea series of plunges and bucks as to preclude further discussion. 

The first covert--a small wood on the flank of a hill--was blank, andthe hounds moved on across country to the next draw. It was a land ofpasture, and in every fence was a deep muddy passage, through which thefield splashed in single file with the grave stolidity of the cows bywhom the gaps had been made. Mrs. Pat was feeling horribly bored. Herescort had joined himself to two of the ladies of the hunt, and thoughit was gratifying to observe that one wore a paste brooch in her tie andthe other had an imitation cavalry bit and bridle, with a leather tasselhanging from her pony's throat, these things lost their savour when shehad no one with whom to make merry over them. She had left hersandwiches in the dog-cart, her servant had mistaken whisky for sherrywhen he was filling her flask; the day had clouded over, and already onebrief but furious shower had scourged the curl out of her dark fringeand made the reins slippery. 

At last, however, a nice-looking gorse covert was reached, and thehounds threw themselves into it with promising alacrity. Pilot steadiedhimself, and stood with pricked ears, giving an occasional snatch at hisbit, and looking, as no one knew better than his rider, the very pictureof a hunter, while he listened for the first note that should tell of afind. He had not long to wait. There came a thin little squeal from themiddle of the covert, and a hound flung up out of the thicker gorse andbegan to run along a ridge of rock, with head down, and featheringstern. 

"They've got him, my lady, " said a young farmer on a roughthree-year-old to Mrs. Pat, as he stuffed his pipe in his pocket. "That's Patience; we'll have a hunt out o' this. "

Then came another and longer squeal as Patience plunged out of sightagain, and then, as the glowing chorus rose from the half-seen pack, awhip, posted on a hillside beyond the covert, raised his cap high in theair, and a wild screech that set Pilot dancing from leg to leg brokefrom a country boy who was driving a harrow in the next field: "Ga--aaneawa--ay!"

Mrs. Pat forgot her annoyances. Her time had come. She would show thatidiot Booth that Pilot was not to be insulted with impunity, and--Buthere retrospect and intention became alike merged in the present, and inthe single resolve to get ahead and stay there. Half a dozen of Pilot'sgreat reaching strides, and she was in the next field and over the lowbank without putting an iron on it. The horse with the harrow, desertedby his driver, was following the hunt with the best of them, and, combining business with pleasure, was, as he went, harrowing the fieldwith absurd energy. The Paste Brooch and the Shelburne Porter--so Mrs. Pat mentally distinguished them--were sailing along with a good start, and Major Booth was close at their heels. The light soil of the tilledfield flew in every direction as thirty or more horses raced across it, and the usual retinue of foot runners raised an ecstatic yell as Mrs. Pat forged ahead and sent her big horse over the fence at the end of thefield in a style that happily combined swagger with knowledge. 

The hounds were streaking along over a succession of pasture fields, andthe cattle gaps which were to be found in every fence vexed the proudsoul of Mrs. Pat. She was too good a sportswoman to school her horseover needless jumps when hounds were running, but it infuriated her tohave to hustle with these outsiders for her place at a gap. So shecomplained to Major Booth, with a vehemence of adjective that, though itmay be forgiven to her, need not be set down here. 

"Is _all_ the wretched country like this?" she inquired indignantly, asthe Shelburne Porter's pony splashed ahead of her through a muddy ford, just beyond which the hounds had momentarily checked; "you told me tobring out a big-jumped horse, and I might have gone the whole hunt on abicycle!"

Major Booth's reply was to point to the hounds. They had cast back tothe line that they had flashed over, and had begun to run again atright angles from the grassy valley down which they had come, up towardsthe heather-clad hills that lay back of Carnfother. 

"Say your prayers, Mrs. Pat!" he said, in what Mrs. Pat felt to be agratuitously offensive manner, "and I'll ask the lady in the pretty bluehabit to have an eye to you. This is a hill fox and he's going to makeyou and Pilot sit up!"

Mrs. Pat was not in a mood to be trifled with, and I again think itbetter to omit her response to this inconvenient jesting. What she didwas to give Pilot his head, and she presently found herself as near thehounds as was necessary, galloping in a line with the huntsman straightfor a three-foot wall, lightly built of round stones. That her horsecould refuse to jump it was a possibility that did not so much as enterher head; but that he did so was a fact whose stern logic could not begainsaid. She had too firm a seat to be discomposed by the swingingplunge with which he turned from it, but her mental balance sustained aserious shake. That Pilot, at the head of the hunt should refuse, was athing that struck at the root of her dearest beliefs. She stopped himand turned him at the wall again; again he refused, and at the sameinstant Major Booth and the blue habit jumped it side by side. 

"What did I tell you!" the former called back, with a laugh that gratedon Mrs. Pat's ear with a truly fiendish rasp; "do you want a lead?"

The incensed Mrs. Pat once more replied in forcible phraseology, as shedrove her horse again at the wall. The average Meath horse likes stonesjust about as much as the average Co. Cork horse enjoys water, and thetrain of running men and boys were given the exquisite gratification ofa contest between Pilot and his rider. 

"Howld on, miss, till I knock a few shtones for ye!" volunteered one, trying to interpose between Pilot and the wall. 

"Get out of the way!" was Mrs. Pat's response to this civility, as shecrammed her steed at the jump again. The volunteer, amid roars oflaughter from his friends, saved his life only by dint of undignifiedagility, as the big horse whirled round, rearing and plunging. 

"Isn't he the divil painted?" exclaimed another in highest admiration;"wait till I give him a couple of slaps of my bawneen, miss!" He draggedoff his white flannel coat and attacked Pilot in the rear with it, whileanother of the party flung clods of mud vaguely into the battle, andanother persistently implored the maddened Mrs. Pat to get off and lethim lead the horse over "before she'd lose her life:" a suggestion thathas perhaps a more thoroughly exasperating effect than any other onoccasions such as this. 

By the time that Pilot had pawed down half the wall and been induced tobuck over, or into, what remained of it, Mrs. Pat's temper wasirretrievably gone, and she was at the heel instead of the head of thehunt. Thanks to this position there was bestowed on her the abhorred, but not to be declined, advantage of availing herself of the gaps madein the next couple of jumps by the other riders; but the stones they hadkicked down were almost as agitating to Pilot's ruffled nerves as thosethat still remained in position. She found it the last straw that sheshould have to wait for the obsequious runners to tear these out of herway, while the galloping backs in front of her grew smaller and smaller, and the adulatory condolences of her assistants became more and morehard to endure. She literally hurled the shilling at them as she set offonce more to try to recover her lost ground, and by sheer force ofpassion hustled Pilot over the next broken-down wall without a refusal. For she had now got into that stony country whereof Major Booth hadspoken. Rough heathery fields, ribbed with rocks and sown with greyboulders, were all round. The broad salmon river swept sleekly throughthe valley below, among the bland green fields which were as far awayfor all practical purposes as the plains of Paradise. No one who hasnot ridden a stern chase over rough ground on a well-bred horse with histemper a bit out of hand will be able at all fitly to sympathise withthe trials of Mrs. Naylor. The hunt and all that appertained to it hadsunk out of sight over a rugged hillside, and she had nothing by whichto steer her course save the hoof-marks in the occasional black andboggy intervals between the heathery knolls. No one had ever accused herof being short of pluck, and she pressed on her difficult way with theutmost gallantry; but short of temper she certainly was, and at eachsucceeding obstacle there ensued a more bitter battle between her andher horse. Every here and there a band of crisp upland meadow would givethe latter a chance, but each such advantage would be squandered in thewar dance that he indulged in at every wall. 

At last the summit of the interminable series of hills was gained, andMrs. Pat scanned the solitudes that surrounded her with wrathful eyes. The hounds were lost, as completely swallowed up as ever were Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Not the most despised of the habits or the feeblestof the three-year-olds had been left behind to give a hint of theircourse; but the hoof-marks showed black on a marshy down-grade of grass, and with an angry clout of her crop on Pilot's unaccustomed ribs, sheset off again. A narrow road cut across the hills at the end of thefield. The latter was divided from it by a low, thin wall of sharp slatystones, and on the further side there was a wide and boggy drain. It wasnot a nice place, and Pilot thundered down towards it at a pace thatsuited his rider's temper better than her judgment. It was evident, atall events, that he did not mean to refuse. Nor did he; he rose out ofthe heavy ground at the wall like a rocketing pheasant, and cleared itby more than twice its height; but though he jumped high he did not jumpwide, and he landed half in and out of the drain, with his forefeetclawing at its greasy edge, and his hind legs deep in the black mud. 

Mrs. Pat scrambled out of the saddle with the speed of light, and aftera few momentous seconds, during which it seemed horribly likely that thehorse would relapse bodily into the drain, his and Mrs. Pat's effortsprevailed, and he was standing, trembling, and dripping, on the narrowroad. She led him on for a few steps; he went sound, and for onedelusive instant she thought he had escaped damage; then, through theblack slime on one of his hind legs the red blood began to flow. It camefrom high up inside the off hind leg, above the hock, and it welled everfaster and faster, a plaited crimson stream that made his owner's heartsink. She dipped her handkerchief in the ditch and cleaned the cut. Itwas deep in the fleshy part of the leg, a gaping wound, inflicted by oneof those razor slates that hide like sentient enemies in such boggyplaces. It was large enough for her to put her hand in; she held theedges together, and the bleeding ceased for an instant; then, as shereleased them, it began again worse than ever. Her handkerchief was asinadequate for any practical purpose as ladies' handkerchiefs generallyare, but an inspiration came to her. She tore off her gloves, and in afew seconds the long linen hunting-scarf that had been pinned and tiedwith such skilled labour in the morning was being used as a bandage forthe wound. But though Mrs. Pat could tie a tie with any man in theregiment, she failed badly as a bandager of a less ornamental character. The hateful stream continued to pump forth from the cut, incarnadiningthe muddy road, and in despair she took Pilot by the head and began tolead him down the hill towards the valley. 

Another gusty shower flung itself at her. It struck her bare white neckwith whips of ice, and though she turned up the collar of her coat, therain ran down under the neckband of her shirt and chilled her throughand through. It was evident that an artery had been cut in Pilot's leg;the flow, from the wound never ceased; the hunting-scarf drenched withblood, had slipped down to the hock. It seemed to Mrs. Pat that herhorse must bleed to death, and, tough and unemotional though she was, Pilot was very near her heart; tears gathered in her eyes as she led himslowly on through the rain and the loneliness, in the forlorn hope offinding help. She progressed in this lamentable manner for perhaps halfa mile; the rain ceased, and she stopped to try once more to readjustthe scarf, when, in the stillness that had followed the cessation of therain, she heard a faint and distant sound of music. It drew nearer, athin, shrill twittering, and as Mrs. Pat turned quickly from her task tosee what this could portend, she heard a woman's voice say harshly:--

"Ah, have done with that thrash of music; sure, it'll be dark nightitself before we're in to Lismore. "

There was something familiar in the coarse tones. The weirdness fellfrom the wail of the music as Mrs. Pat remembered the woman who hadbothered her for money that morning in Carnfother. She and the blind oldman were tramping slowly up the road, seemingly as useless a couple toany one in Mrs. Pat's plight as could well be imagined. 

"How far am I from Carnfother?" she asked, as they drew near to her. "Isthere any house near here?"

"There is not, " said the yellow-haired woman; "and ye're four miles fromCarnfother yet. "

"I'll pay you well if you will take a message there for me--" began Mrs. Pat. 

"Are ye sure have ye yer purse in yer pocket?" interrupted theyellow-haired woman with a laugh that succeeded in being as nasty as shewished; "or will I go dancin' down to Carnfother--"

"Have done, Joanna!" said the old man suddenly; "what trouble is on thelady? What lamed the horse?"

He turned his bright blind eyes full on Mrs. Pat. They were of thecurious green blue that is sometimes seen in the eyes of a grey collie, and with all Mrs. Pat's dislike and suspicion of the couple, she knewthat he was blind. 

"He was cut in a ditch, " she said shortly. 

The old man had placed his fiddle in his daughter's hands; his own handswere twitching and trembling. 

"I feel the blood flowing, " he said in a very low voice, and he walkedup to Pilot. 

His hands went unguided to the wound, from which the steady flow ofblood had never ceased. With one he closed the lips of the cut, whilewith the other he crossed himself three times. His daughter watched himstolidly; Mrs. Pat, with a certain alarm, having, after the manner ofher kind, explained to herself the incomprehensible with theall-embracing formula of madness. Yes, she thought, he was undoubtedlymad, and as soon as the paroxysm was past she would have another try atbribing the woman. 

The old man was muttering to himself, still holding the wound in onehand. Mrs. Pat could distinguish no words, but it seemed to her that herepeated three times what he was saying. Then he straightened himselfand stroked Pilot's quarter with a light, pitying hand. Mrs. Pat stared. The bleeding had ceased. The hunting-scarf lay on the road at thehorse's empurpled hoof. There was nothing to explain the mystery, butthe fact remained. 

"He'll do now, " said the blind man. "Take him on to Carnfother; butye'll want to get five stitches in that to make a good job of it. "

"But--I don't understand--" stammered Mrs. Pat, shaken for once out ofher self-possession by this sudden extension of her spiritual horizon. "What have you done? Won't it begin again?" She turned to the woman inher bewilderment: "Is--is he mad?"

"For as mad as he is, it's him you may thank for yer horse, " answeredthe yellow-haired woman. "Why, Holy Mother! did ye never hear of Kanethe Blood-Healer?"

[Illustration: THE BLOOD-HEALER. ]

The road round them was suddenly thronged with hounds, snuffing atPilot, and pushing between Mrs. Pat and the fence. The cheerfulfamiliar sound of the huntsman's voice rating them made her feel herfeet on solid ground again. In a moment Major Booth was there, theMaster had dismounted, the habits, loud with sympathy and excitement, had gathered round; a Whip was examining the cut, while he spoke to theyellow-haired woman. 

Mrs. Pat tie-less, her face splashed with mud, her bare hands stainedwith blood, told her story. It is, I think, a point in her favour thatfor a moment she forgot what her appearance must be. 

"The horse would have bled to death before the lady got to Carnfother, sir, " said the Whip to the Master; "it isn't the first time I seen lifesaved by that one. Sure, didn't I see him heal a man that got his leg ina mowing machine, and he half-dead, with the blood spouting out of himlike two rainbows!"

This is not a fairy story. Neither need it be set lightly down as acurious coincidence. I know the charm that the old man said. I cannotgive it here. It will only work successfully if taught by man to womanor by woman to man; nor do I pretend to say that it will work for everyone. I believe it to be a personal and wholly incomprehensible gift, butthat such a gift has been bestowed, and in more parts of Ireland thanone, is a bewildering and indisputable fact. 

HIGH TEA AT McKEOWN'S

"Papa!" said the youngest Miss Purcell, aged eleven, entering thedrawing-room at Mount Purcell in a high state of indignation and aflannel dressing-gown that had descended to her in unbroken line ofsuccession from her eldest sister, "isn't it my turn for the foxy mareto-morrow? Nora had her at Kilmacabee, and it's a rotten shame--"

The youngest Miss Purcell here showed signs of the imminence of tears, and rooted in the torn pocket of the dressing-gown for the hereditarypocket-handkerchief that went with it. 

Sir Thomas paused in the act of cutting the end off a long cigar, andsaid briefly:--

"Neither of you'll get her. She's going ploughing the Craughmore. "

The youngest Miss Purcell knew as well as her sister Nora that thelatter had already commandeered the foxy mare, and, with the connivanceof the cowboy, had concealed her in the cow-house; but her sense oftribal honour, stimulated by her sister's threatening eye, withheld herfrom opening this branch of the subject. 

"Well, but Johnny Mulcahy won't plough to-morrow because he's going tothe Donovan child's funeral. Tommy Brien's just told me so, and he'll bedrunk when he comes back, and to-morrow'll be the first day that Carnageand Trumpeter are going out--"

The youngest Miss Purcell paused, and uttered a loud sob. 

"My darling baby, " remonstrated Lady Purcell from behind a reading-lamp, "you really ought not to run about the stable-yard at this hour of thenight, or, indeed, at any other time!"

"Baby's always bothering to come out hunting, " remarked an elder sister, "and you know yourself, mamma, that the last time she came was when shestole the postman's pony, and he had to run all the way to Drinagh, andyou said yourself she was to be kept in the next day for a punishment. "

"How ready you are with your punishments! What is it to you if she goesout or no?" demanded Sir Thomas, whose temper was always within easyreach. 

"She can have the cob, Tom, " interposed stout and sympathetic LadyPurcell, on whom the tears of her youngest born were having their wontedeffect, "I'll take the donkey chaise if I go out. "

"The cob is it?" responded Sir Thomas, in the stalwart brogue in whichhe usually expressed himself. "The cob has a leg on him as big as yourown since the last day one of them had him out!" The master of thehouse looked round with exceeding disfavour on his eight good-lookingdaughters. "However, I suppose it's as good to be hanged for a sheep asa lamb, and if you don't want him--"

The youngest Miss Purcell swiftly returned her handkerchief to herpocket, and left the room before any change of opinion was possible. 

Mount Purcell was one of those households that deserve to be subsidisedby any country neighbourhood in consideration of their unfailing supplyof topics of conversation. Sir Thomas was a man of old family, of goodincome and of sufficient education, who, while reserving the power ofcomporting himself like a gentleman, preferred as a rule to assimilatehis demeanour to that of one of his own tenants (with whom, it may bementioned, he was extremely popular). Many young men habitually dinedout on Sir Thomas's brogue and his unwearying efforts to dispose of hiseight daughters. 

His wife was a handsome, amiable, and by no means unintelligent ladyupon whose back the eight daughters had ploughed and had left longfurrows. She was not infrequently spoken of as "that un_for_tunate LadyPurcell!" with a greater or less broadening of the accent on the secondsyllable according to the social standard of the speaker. Her tasteswere comprehended and sympathised with by her gardener, and by theclerk at Mudie's who refilled her box. The view taken of her by herhusband and family was mainly a negative one, and was tinged throughoutby the facts that she was afraid to drive anything more ambitious thanthe donkey, and had been known to mistake the kennel terrier for a houndpuppy. She had succeeded in transmitting to her daughters her verysuccessful complexion and blue eyes, but her responsibility for them hadapparently gone no further. The Misses Purcell faced the world and itssomewhat excessive interest in them with the intrepid _esprit de corps_of a square of British infantry, but among themselves they fought, asthe coachman was wont to say--and no one knew better than thecoachman--"both bitther an regular, like man and wife!" They ranged inage from about five and twenty downwards, sportswomen, warriors, andbuccaneers, all of them, and it would be difficult to determine whetherresentment or a certain secret pride bulked the larger in their maleparent's mind in connection with them. 

"Are you going to draw Clashnacrona to-morrow?" asked Muriel, the secondof the gang (Lady Purcell, it should have been mentioned, had also beenresponsible for her daughters' names), rising from her chair and pouringwhat was left of her after dinner coffee into her saucer, a proceedingwhich caused four pairs of lambent eyes to discover themselves in thecoiled mat of red setters that occupied the drawing-room hearthrug. 

"No, I am not, " said Sir Thomas, "and, what's more, I'm coming in early. I'm a fool to go hunting at all at this time o' year, with half thepotatoes not out of the ground. " He rose, and using the toe of his bootas the coulter of a plough, made a way for himself among the dogs to thecentre of the hearthrug. "Be hanged to these dogs! I declare I don'tknow am I more plagued with dogs or daughters! Lucy!"

Lady Purcell dutifully disinterred her attention from a catalogue ofDutch bulbs. 

"When I get in to-morrow I'll go call on that Local Government BoardInspector who's staying in Drinagh. They tell me he's a very nice fellowand he's rolling in money. I daresay I'll ask him to dinner. He was inthe army one time, I believe. They often give these jobs to soldiers. Ifany of you girls come across him, " he continued, bending his fierceeyebrows upon his family, "I'll trouble you to be civil to him and showhim none of your infernal airs because he happens to be an Englishman! Ihear he's bicycling all over the country and he might come out to seethe hounds. "

Rosamund, the eldest, delivered herself of an almost imperceptible winkin the direction of Violet, the third of the party. Sir Thomas'sdiplomacies were thoroughly appreciated by his offspring. "It's timesome of you were cleared out from under my feet!" he told them. Nevertheless when, some four or five years before, a subaltern ofEngineers engaged on the Government survey of Ireland had laid hiscareer, plus fifty pounds per annum and some impalpable expectations, atthe feet of Muriel, the clearance effected by Sir Thomas had been thatof Lieutenant Aubrey Hamilton. "Is it marry one of my daughters to thatpenniless pup!" he had said to Lady Purcell, whose sympathies had, asusual, been on the side of the detrimental. "Upon my honour, Lucy, you're a bigger fool than I thought you--and that's saying a good deal!"

It was near the beginning of September, and but a sleepy half dozen orso of riders had turned out to meet the hounds the following morning, atLiss Cranny Wood. There had been rain during the night and, though ithad ceased, a wild wet wind was blowing hard from the north-west. Theyellowing beech trees twisted and swung their grey arms in the gale. Hats flew down the wind like driven grouse; Sir Thomas's voice, in themiddle of the covert, came to the riders assembled at the cross roads onthe outskirts of the wood in gusts, fitful indeed, but not so fitfulthat Nora, on the distrained foxy mare, was not able to gauge to anicety the state of his temper. From the fact of her unostentatiousposition in the rear it might safely be concluded that it, like thewind, was still rising. The riders huddled together in the lee of thetrees, their various elements fused in the crucible of Sir Thomas'swrath into a compact and anxious mass. There had been an unusually largeentry of puppies that season, and Sir Thomas's temper, never at its beston a morning of cubbing, was making exhaustive demands on his stock ofexpletives. Rabbits were flying about in every direction, each with ashrieking puppy or two in its wake. Jerry, the Whip, was galloping_ventre à terre_ along the road in the vain endeavour to overtake acouple in headlong flight to the farm where they had spent their happierearlier days. At the other side of the wood the Master was blowinghimself into apoplexy in the attempt to recall half a dozen who wereaway in full cry after a cur-dog, and a zealous member of the huntlooked as if he were playing polo with another puppy that doubled anddodged to evade the lash and the duty of getting to covert. Hither andthither among the beech trees went that selection from the Master'sfamily circle, exclusive of the furtive Nora, that had on this occasiontaken the field. It was a tradition in the country that there were neverfewer than four Miss Purcells out, and that no individual Miss Purcellhad more than three days' hunting in the season. Whatever may have beenthe truth of this, the companion legend that each Miss Purcell sleptwith two hound puppies in her bed was plausibly upheld by the devotionwith which the latter clung to the heels of their nurses. 

In the midst of these scenes of disorder an old fox rightly judging thatthis was no place for him, slid out of the covert, and crossed the roadjust in front of where Nora, in a blue serge skirt and a redTam-o'-Shanter cap, lurked on the foxy mare. Close after him came fouror five couple of old hounds, and, prominent among her elders, yelpedthe puppy that had been Nora's special charge. This was not cubbing, andno one knew it better than Nora; but the sight of Carnage among theprophets--Carnage, whose noblest quarry hitherto had been the MountPurcell turkey-cock--overthrew her scruples. The foxy mare, a ponderouscreature, with a mane like a Nubian lion and a mouth like steel, required nearly as much room to turn in as a man-of-war, and while Nora, by vigorous use of her heel and a reliable ash plant, was getting herhead round, her sister Muriel, on a raw-boned well-bred colt--SirThomas, as he said, made the best of a bad job, and utilised hisdaughters as roughriders--shot past her down the leafy road, closelyfollowed by a stranger on a weedy bay horse, which Nora instantlyrecognised as the solitary hireling of the; neighbourhood. 

Through the belt of wood and out into the open country went the fivecouple, and after them went Muriel, Nora and the strange man. There hadbeen an instant when the colt had thought that it seemed a pity to leavethe road, but, none the less, he had the next instant found himself inthe air, a considerable distance above a low stone wall, with a tinglingstreak across his ribs, and a bewildering sensation of having beenhustled. The field in which he alighted was a sloping one and he rampeddown it very enjoyably to himself, with all the weight of his sixteenhands and a half concentrated in his head, when suddenly a tall grassybank confronted him, with, as he perceived with horror, a ditch in frontof it. He tried to swerve, but there seemed something irrevocable aboutthe way in which the bank faced him, and if his method of "changingfeet" was not strictly conventional, he achieved the main point andfound all four safely under him when he landed, which was as much--ifnot more than as much--as either he or Muriel expected. The MissPurcells were a practical people, and were thankful for minor mercies. 

It was at about this point that the stranger on the hireling drew level;he had not been at the meet, and Muriel turned her head to see who itwas that was kicking old McConnell's screw along so well. He lifted hiscap, but he was certainly a stranger. She saw a discreetly clipped andpointed brown beard, with a rather long and curling moustache. 

"Fed on furze!" thought Muriel, with a remembrance of the foxy mare'supper lip when she came in "off the hill". 

Then she met the strange man's eyes--was he quite a stranger? What wasit about the greeny-grey gleam of them that made her heart give acurious lift, and then sent the colour running from it to her face andback again to her heart?

"I thought you were going to cut me--Muriel!" said the strange man. 

In the meantime the five couple and Carnage were screaming down theheathery side of Liss Cranny Hill, on a scent that was a real comfort tothem after nearly five miserable months of kennels and road-work, and aglorious wind under their sterns. Jerry, the Whip, was riding like amadman to stop them; they knew that well, and went the faster for it. Sir Thomas was blowing his horn inside out. But Jerry was four fieldsbehind, and Sir Thomas was on the wrong side of the wood, and MissMuriel and the strange gentleman were coming on for all they were worth, and were as obviously bent on having a good time as they were. Carnageflung up her handsome head and squealed with pure joy, as she pitchedherself over the big bounds fence at the foot of the hill, and floppedacross the squashy ditch on the far side. There was grass under her now, beautiful firm dairy grass, and that entrancing perfume was lying on itas thick as butter--Oh! it was well to be hunting! thought Carnage, withanother most childish shriek, legging it after her father and mother andseveral other blood relations in a way that did Muriel's heart good tosee. 

The fox, as good luck would have it, had chosen the very pick of SirThomas's country, and Muriel and the stranger had it all to themselves. She looked over her shoulder. Away back in a half-dug potato field Noraand a knot of labourers were engaged in bitter conflict with the foxymare on the subject of a bank with a rivulet in front of it. To refuseto jump running water had been from girlhood the resolve of the foxymare; it was plain that neither Nora's ash plant, nor the stalks ofrag-wort, torn from the potato ridges, with which the countrymenflagellated her from behind, were likely to make her change her mind. Farther back still were a few specks, motionless apparently, butrepresenting, as Muriel was well aware, the speeding indignant forms ofthose Miss Purcells who had got left. As for Sir Thomas--well, it was nogood going to meet the devil half-way! was the filial reflection; ofSir Thomas's second daughter, as, with a clatter of stones, she and thecolt dropped into a road, and charged on over the bank on the otherside, the colt leaving a hind leg behind him in it, and sending therebya clod of earth flying into the stranger's face. The stranger onlylaughed, and catching hold of the much enduring hireling he drove himlevel with the colt, and lifted him over the ensuing bank and gripe in away subsequently described by Jerry as having "covered acres". 

But the old fox's hitherto straight neck was getting a twist in it. Possibly he had summered himself rather too well, and found himself alittle short of training for the point that he had first fixed on. Atall events, he swung steadily round, and headed for the lower end of thelong belt of Liss Cranny Wood; and, as he and his pursuers so headed, Retributive Justice, mounted on a large brown horse, very red in theface, and followed by a string of hounds and daughters, gallopedsteadily toward the returning sinners. 

It is probably superfluous to reproduce for sporting readers the exactterms in which an infuriated master of hounds reproves an erring flock. Sir Thomas, even under ordinary circumstances, had a stirring gift ofinvective. It was currently reported that after each day's hunting LadyPurcell made a house-to-house visitation of conciliation to allsubscribers of five pounds and upwards. On this occasion the Master, having ordered his two daughters home without an instant's delay, proceeded to a satiric appreciation of the situation at large and indetail, with general reflections as to the advantage to tailors ofsticking to their own trade, and direct references of so pointed acharacter to the mental abilities of the third delinquent, that thatgentleman's self-control became unequal to further strain, and he alsoretired abruptly from the scene. 

Nora and Muriel meanwhile pursued their humbled, but unrepentant, wayhome. It was blowing as hard as ever. Muriel's hair had only been savedfrom complete overthrow by two hair-pins yielded, with pelican-likedevotion, by a sister. Nora had lost the Tam-o'-Shanter, and had tornher blue serge skirt. The foxy mare had cast a shoe, and the colt wasunaffectedly done. 

"He's mad for a drink!" said Muriel, as he strained towards the side ofthe bog road, against which the waters of a small lake, swollen by therecent rains, were washing in little waves under the lash of thewind--"I think I'll let him just wet his mouth. "

She slackened the reins, and the thirsty colt eagerly thrust his muzzleinto the water. As he did so he took another forward step, andinstantly, with a terrific splash, he and his rider were floundering inbrown water up to his withers in the ditch below the submerged edge ofthe road. To Muriel's credit it, must be said that she bore thisunlooked-for immersion with the nerve of a Baptist convert. In a secondshe had pulled the colt round parallel with the bank, and in another shehad hurled herself from the saddle and was dragging herself, like awounded otter, up on to the level of the road. 

"Well you've done it now, Muriel!" said Nora dispassionately. "Howpleased Sir Thomas will be when the colt begins to cough to-morrowmorning! He's bound to catch cold out of this. Look out! Here's that manthat went the run with us. I'd try and wipe some of the mud off my faceif I were you!"

A younger sister of fifteen is not apt to err on the side of oversympathy, but the deficiencies of Nora were more than made up for by thesolicitude of the stranger with the pointed beard. He hauled the coltfrom his watery nest, he dried him down with handfuls of rushes, hewiped the saddle with his own beautiful silk pocket-handkerchief. For astranger he displayed--so it struck Nora--a surprising knowledge of thelocality. He pointed out that Mount Purcell was seven miles away, andthat the village of Drinagh, where he was putting up--("Oho! so he's theinspector Sir Thomas was going to be so civil to!" thought the youngerMiss Purcell with an inward grin)--was only two or three miles away. 

"You know, Nora, " said Muriel with an unusually conciliatory manner, "itisn't at all out of our way, and the colt _ought_ to get a proper rubdown and a hot drink. "

"I should have thought he'd had about as much to drink as he wanted, hotor cold!" said Nora. 

But Nora had not been a younger sister for fifteen years for nothing, and it was for Drinagh that the party steered their course. 

Their arrival stirred McKeown's Hotel (so-called) to its depths. Destinyhad decreed that Mrs. McKeown, being, as she expressed it, "an epicureabout boots, " should choose this day of all others to go to "town" tobuy herself a pair, leaving the direction of the hotel in the hands ofher husband, a person of minor importance, and of Mary Ann Whooly, agrey-haired kitchen-maid, who milked the cows and made the beds, and ata distance in the back-yard was scarcely distinguishable from thesurrounding heaps of manure. 

[Illustration: "THE GREY-HAIRED KITCHEN-MAID. "]

The Inspector's hospitality knew no limits, and failed to recognise thatthose of McKeown's Hotel were somewhat circumscribed. He ordered hotwhisky and water, mutton chops, dry clothes for Miss Purcell, fires, tea, buttered toast, poached eggs and other delicacies simultaneouslyand immediately, and the voice of Mary Ann Whooly imploring Heaven'shelp for herself and its vengeance upon her inadequate assistants washeard far in the streets of Drinagh. 

"Sure herself" (herself was Mrs. McKeown) "has her box locked agin me, and I've no clothes but what's on me!" she protested, producing after along interval a large brown shawl and a sallow-complexioned blanket, "but the Captain's after sending these. Faith, they'll do ye grand!Arrah, why not, asthore! Sure he'll never look at ye!"

These consisted of a long covert coat, a still longer pair of yellowknitted stockings, and a pair of pumps. 

"Sure they're the only best we have, " continued Mary Ann Whooly, pooling, as it were, her wardrobe with that of the lodger. "God's willmust be, Miss Muriel, my darlin' gerr'l!"

It says a good deal for the skill of Nora as a tire-woman that hersister's appearance ten minutes afterwards was open to no reproach, savepossibly that of eccentricity, and the Inspector's gaze--which struckthe tire-woman as being of a singularly enamoured character for so briefan acquaintance--was so firmly fixed upon her sister's countenance thatnothing else seemed to signify. It was by this time past two o'clock, and the repast, which arrived in successive relays, had, at all events, the merit of || combining the leading features of breakfast, lunch andafternoon tea in one remarkable procession, Julia Connolly, havinginaugurated the entertainment with tumblers of dark brown steamingwhisky and water, was impelled from strength to strength by her growingsense of the greatness of the occasion, and it would be hard to saywhether the younger Miss Purcell was more gratified by the mound offeather-light pancakes which followed on the tea and buttered toast, orby the almost cringing politeness of her elder sister. 

"How civil she is!" thought Nora scornfully; "for all she's so civilshe'll have to lend me her saddle next week, or I'll tell them the wholestory!" (Them meant the sisterhood. ) "I bet he was holding her hand justbefore the pancakes came in!"

At about this time Lady Purcell, pursuing her peaceful way home in herdonkey chaise, was startled by the sound of neighing and by the rattleof galloping hoofs behind her, and her consternation may be imaginedwhen the foxy mare and the colt, saddled but riderless, suddenly rangedup one on either side of her chaise. Having stopped themselves with oneor two prodigious bounds that sent the mud flying in every direction, they proceeded to lively demonstrations of friendship towards thedonkey, which that respectable animal received very symptom ofannoyance. Lady Purcell had never in her life succeeded in knowing onehorse from another, and what horses these were she had not the faintestidea; but the side saddles were suggestive of her Amazon brood; sheperceived that one of the horses had been under water, and by the timeshe had arrived at her own hall door, with the couple still in closeattendance upon her, anxiety as to the fate of her daughters andexhaustion from much scourging of the donkey, upon whom the heavycoquetries of the foxy mare had had a most souring effect, rendered thepoor lady but just capable of asking if Sir Thomas had returned. 

"He is, my Lady, but he's just after going down to the farm, and he'sgoing on to call on the English gentleman that's at Mrs. McKeown's. "

"And the young ladies?" gasped Lady Purcell. 

The answer suited with her fears. Lady Purcell was not wont to take theinitiative, still less one of her husband's horses, without hisapproval; but the thought of the saturated side-saddle lent herdecision, and as soon as a horse and trap could be got ready she setforth for Drinagh. 

It need not for a moment be feared that such experienced campaigners asthe Misses Muriel and Nora Purcell had forgotten that their father hadsettled to call upon their temporary host, what time the business of themorning should be ended, or that they had not arranged a sound schemeof retirement, but when the news was brought to them that during theabsence of the stable-boy--"to borrow a half score of eggs and a lemonfor pancakes, " it was explained--their horses had broken forth from thecowshed and disappeared, it may be admitted that even their stout heartsquailed. 

"Oh, it will be all right!" the Inspector assured them, with the easyoptimism of the looker-on in domestic tragedy; "your father will seethere was nothing else for you to do. "

"That's all jolly fine, " returned Nora, "but _I'm_ going out to borrowCasey's car" (Casey was the butcher), "and I'll just tell old Mary Annto keep a sharp look out for Sir Thomas, and give us warning in time. "

It is superfluous to this simple tale to narrate the conversation thatbefel on the departure of Nora. It was chiefly of a retrospectivecharacter, with disquisitions on such abstractions as the consolationsthat sometimes follow on the loss of a wealthy great-aunt, thedifficulties of shaving with a "tennis elbow, " the unchanging quality ofcertain emotions. This later topic was still under discussion when Noraburst into the room. 

"Here's Sir Thomas!" she panted. "Muriel, fly! There's no time to getdownstairs, but Mary Ann Whooly said we could go into the room off thissitting-room till he's gone. "

Flight is hardly the term to be applied to the second Miss Purcell'sretreat, and it says a good deal for the Inspector's mental collapsethat he saw nothing ludicrous in her retreating back, clad as it was inhis own covert coat, with a blanket like the garment of an Indian bravetrailing beneath it. Nora tore open a door near the fireplace, andrevealed a tiny room containing a table, a broken chair, and a heap offeathers near an old feather bed on the floor. 

"Get in, Muriel!" she cried. 

They got in, and as the door closed on them Sir Thomas entered the room. 

During the morning the identity of the stranger on whom he had pouredthe vials of his wrath, with the Local Government Board Inspector whomhe was prepared to be delighted to honour, had been brought home to SirThomas, and nothing could have been more handsome and complete than theapology that he now tendered. He generously admitted the temptationendured in seeing hounds get away with a good fox on a day devoted tocubbing, and even went so far as to suggest that possibly CaptainClarke--

"Hamilton-Clarke, " said the Inspector. 

"Had ridden so hard in order to stop them. "

"Er--quite so, " said the Inspector. 

Something caused the dressing-room door to rattle, and CaptainHamilton-Clarke grew rather red. 

"My wife and I hope, " continued Sir Thomas, urbanely, "that you willcome over to dine with us to-morrow evening, or possibly to-night. "

He stopped. A trap drove rapidly up to the door, and Lady Purcell'svoice was heard agitatedly inquiring "if Miss Muriel and Miss Nora werethere? Casey had just told her--"

The rest of the sentence was lost. 

"Why, that _is_ my wife!" said Sir Thomas. "What the deuce does she wanthere?"

A strange sound came from behind the door of the dressing-room:something between a stifled cry and a laugh. The Inspector's ears becameas red as blood. Then from within there was heard a sort of rush, andsomething fell against the door. There followed a wholly uncontrolledyell and a crash, and the door was burst open. 

It has, I think, been mentioned that in the corner of the dressing-roomin which the Misses Purcell had taken refuge there was on the floor theremains of a feather bed. The feathers had come out through a raggedhole in one corner of it; Nora, in the shock of hearing of LadyPurcell's arrival, trod on the corner of the bed and squeezed more ofthe feathers out of it. A gush of fluff was the result, followed by acurious and unaccountable movement in the bed, and then from the holethere came forth a corpulent and very mangy old rat. Its face was greyand scaly, and horrid pink patches adorned its fat person. It gave onebeady glance at Nora, and proceeded with hideous composure to lopeheavily across the floor towards the hole in the wall by which it had atsome bygone time entered the room. But the hole had been nailed up, andas the rat turned to seek another way of escape the chair upon whichMuriel had incontinently sprung broke down, depositing her and hervoluminous draperies on top of the rat. 

I cannot feel that Miss Purcell is to be blamed that at this moment allpower of self-control, of reason almost, forsook her. Regardless ofevery other consideration, she snatched the blankets and the covert-coatskirts into one massive handful, and with, as has been indicated, a yellof housemaid stridency, flung herself against the door and dashed intothe sitting-room, closely followed by Nora, and rather less closely bythe rat. The latter alone retained its presence of mind, and without aninstant's delay hurried across the room and retired by the half-opendoor. Immediately from the narrow staircase there arose a series ofthose acclaims that usually attend the progress of royalty, and, ineven an intenser degree, of rats. There came a masculine shout, a shrilland ladylike scream, a howl from Mary Ann Whooly, accompanied by theclang and rattle of a falling coal box, and then Lady Purcell, pale andbreathless, appeared at the doorway of the sitting-room. 

"Sure the young ladies isn't in the house at all, your ladyship!" criedthe pursuing voice of Mary Ann Whooly, faithful, even at this supremecrisis, to a lost cause. 

Lady Purcell heard her not. She was aware only of her daughter Muriel, attired like a scarecrow in a cold climate, and of the attendant factthat the arm of the Local Government Board Inspector was encirclingMuriel's waist, as far as circumstances and a brown woollen shawl wouldpermit. Nora, leaning half-way out of the window, was calling at the topof her voice for Sir Thomas's terrier; Sir Thomas was very loudly sayingnothing in particular, much as an angry elderly dog barks into thenight. Lady Purcell wildly concluded that the party was rehearsing acharade--the last scene of a very vulgar charade. 

"Muriel!" she exclaimed, "_what_ have you got on you? And who--" Shepaused and stared at the Inspector. "Good gracious!" she cried, "why, it's Aubrey Hamilton!"

THE BAGMAN'S PONY

When the regiment was at Delhi, a T. G. Was sent to us from the 105thLancers, a bagman, as they call that sort of globe-trotting fellow thatknocks about from one place to another, and takes all the fun he can outof it at other people's expense. Scott in the 105th gave this bagman aletter of introduction to me, told me that he was bringing down a horseto run at the Delhi races; so, as a matter of course, I asked him tostop with me for the week. It was a regular understood thing in Indiathen, this passing on the T. G. From one place to another; sometimes hewas all right, and sometimes he was a good deal the reverse--in anycase, you were bound to be hospitable, and afterwards you could, if youliked, tell the man that sent him that you didn't want any more fromhim. 

The bagman arrived in due course, with a rum-looking roan horse, calledthe "Doctor"; a very good horse, too, but not quite so good as thebagman gave out that he was. He brought along his own grass-cutter withhim, as one generally does in India, and the grass-cutter's pony, a sortof animal people get because he can carry two or three more of thesebeastly clods of grass they dig up for horses than a man can, andwithout much regard to other qualities. The bagman seemed a decentishsort of chap in his way, but, my word! he did put his foot in it thefirst night at mess; by George, he did! There was somehow an idea thathe belonged to a wine merchant business in England, and the Colonelthought we'd better open our best cellar for the occasion, and so wedid; even got out the old Madeira, and told the usual story about thenumber of times it had been round the Cape. The bagman took everythingthat came his way, and held his tongue about it, which was ratherdamping. At last, when it came to dessert and the Madeira, Carew, one ofour fellows, couldn't stand it any longer--after all, it _is_aggravating if a man won't praise your best wine, no matter how littleyou care about his opinion, and the bagman was supposed to be a_connoisseur_. 

"Not a bad glass of wine that, " says Carew to him; "what do you think ofit?"

"Not bad, " says the bagman, sipping it, "Think I'll show you somethingbetter in this line if you'll come and dine with me in London whenyou're home next. "

"Thanks, " says Carew, getting as red as his own jacket, and beginning tosplutter--he always did when he got angry--"this is good enough for me, and for most people here--"

"Oh, but nobody up here has got a palate left, " says the bagman, laughing in a very superior sort of way. 

"What do you mean, sir?" shouted Carew, jumping up. "I'll not have anyd----d bagmen coming here to insult me!"

By George, if you'll believe me, Carew had a false palate, with a littlebit of sponge in the middle, and we all knew it, _except the bagman_. There was a frightful shindy, Carew wanting to have his blood, and allthe rest of us trying to prevent a row. We succeeded somehow in the end, I don't quite know how we managed it, as the bagman was very warliketoo; but, anyhow, when I was going to bed that night I saw them both inthe billiard room, very tight, leaning up against opposite ends of thebilliard table, and making shoves at the balls--with the wrong ends oftheir cues, fortunately. 

"He called me a d----d bagman, " says one, nearly tumbling down withlaughing. 

"Told me I'd no palate, " says the other, putting his head down on thetable and giggling away there "best thing I ever heard in my life. "

Every one was as good friends as possible next day at the races, and forthe whole week as well. Unfortunately for the bagman his horse didn'tpull off things in the way he expected, in fact he hadn't a look in--wejust killed him from first to last. As things went on the bagman beganto look queer and by the end of the week he stood to lose a prettyconsiderable lot of money, nearly all of it to me. The way we arrangedthese matters then was a general settling-up day after the races wereover; every one squared up his books and planked ready money down on thenail, or if he hadn't got it he went and borrowed from some one else todo it with. The bagman paid up what he owed the others, and I began tofeel a bit sorry for the fellow when he came to me that night to finishup. He hummed and hawed a bit, and then asked if I should mind taking anI. O. U. From him, as he was run out of the ready. 

Of course I said, "All right, old man, certainly, just the same to me, "though it's usual in such cases to put down the hard cash, butstill--fellow staying in my house, you know--sent on by this pal of minein the 11th--absolutely nothing else to be done. 

Next morning I was up and out on parade as usual, and in the naturalcourse of events began to look about for my bagman. By George, not asign of him in his room, not a sign of him anywhere. I thought tomyself, this is peculiar, and I went over to the stable to try whetherthere was anything to be heard of him. 

The first thing I saw was that the "Doctor's" stall was empty. 

"How's this?" I said to the groom; "where's Mr. Leggett's horse?"

"The sahib has taken him away this morning. "

I began to have some notion then of what my I. O. U. Was worth. 

"The sahib has left his grass-cutter and his pony, " said the _sais_, whoprobably had as good a notion of what was up as I had. 

"All right, send for the grass-cutter, " I said. 

The fellow came up, in a blue funk evidently, and I couldn't makeanything of him. Sahib this, and sahib that, and salaaming and generalidiotcy--or shamming--I couldn't tell which. I didn't know a nigger thenas well as I do now. 

"This is a very fishy business, " I thought to myself, "and I think it'swell on the cards the grass-cutter will be out of this to-night on hispony. No, by Jove, I'll see what the pony's good for before he doesthat. Is the grass-cutter's pony there?" I said to the _sais_. 

"He is there, sahib, but he is only a _kattiawa tattoo_, " which is thename for a common kind of mountain pony. 

I had him out, and he certainly was a wretched-looking little brute, dunwith a black stripe down his back, like all that breed, and all bony andragged and starved. 

"Indeed, he is a _gareeb kuch kam ki nahin_, " said the _sais_, meaningthereby a miserable beast, in the most intensified form, "and not fit tostand in the sahib's stable. "

All the same, just for the fun of the thing, I put the grass-cutter upon him, and told him to trot him up and down. By George! the pony wentlike a flash of lightning! I had him galloped next; same thing--fellowcould hardly hold him. I opened my eyes, I can tell you, but no matterwhat way I looked at him I couldn't see where on earth he got his pacefrom. It was there anyhow, there wasn't a doubt about that. "That'lldo, " I said, "put him up. And you just stay here, " I said to thegrass-cutter; "till I hear from Mr. Leggett where you're to go to. Don'tleave Delhi till you get orders from me. "

It got about during the day that the bagman had disappeared, and had hada soft thing of it as far as I was concerned. The 112th were dining withus that night, and they all set to work to draw me after dinner aboutthe business--thought themselves vastly witty over it. 

"Hullo Paddy, so you're the girl he left behind him!" "Hear he went offwith two suits of your clothes, one over the other. " "Cheer up, old man;he's left you the grass-cutter and the pony, and what _he_ leaves mustbe worth having, I'll bet!" and so on. 

I suppose I'd had a good deal more than my share of the champagne, butall of a sudden I began to feel pretty warm. 

"You're all d----d funny, " I said, "but I daresay you'll find he's leftme something that _is_ worth having. "

"Oh, yes!" "Go on!" "Paddy's a great man when he's drunk, " and a lotmore of the same sort. 

"I tell you what it is, " said I, "I'll back the pony he's left here totrot his twelve miles an hour on the road. "

"Bosh!" says Barclay of the 112th. "I've seen him, and I'll lay you athousand rupees even he doesn't. "

"Done!" said I, whacking my hand down on the table. 

"And I'll lay another thousand, " says another fellow. 

"Done with you too, " said I. 

Every one began to stare a bit then. 

"Go to bed, Paddy, " says the Colonel, "you're making an exhibition ofyourself. "

"Thank you, sir; I know pretty well what I'm talking about, " said I;but, by George, I began privately to think I'd better pull myselftogether a bit, and I got out my book and began to hedge--laid three toone on the pony to do eleven miles in the hour, and four to one on himto do ten--all the fellows delighted to get their money on. I was tochoose my own ground, and to have a fortnight to train the pony, and bythe time I went to bed I stood to lose about £1, 000. 

Somehow in the morning I didn't feel quite so cheery about things--onedoesn't after a big night--one gets nasty qualms, both mental and theother kind. I went out to look after the pony, and the first thing I sawby way of an appetiser was Biddy, with a face as long as my arm. Biddy, I should explain, was a chap called Biddulph, in the Artillery; theycalled him Biddy for short, and partly, too, because he kept a racingstable with me in those days, I being called Paddy by every one, becauseI was Irish--English idea of wit--Paddy and Biddy, you see. 

"Well, " said he, "I hear you've about gone and done it this time. The112th are going about with trumpets and shawms, and looking round forways to spend that thousand when they get it. There are to be new poloponies, a big luncheon, and a piece of plate bought for the mess, inmemory of that benefactor of the regiment, the departed bagman. Well, now, let's see the pony. That's what I've come down for. "

I'm hanged if the brute didn't look more vulgar and wretched than everwhen he was brought out, and I began to feel that perhaps I was moreparts of a fool than I thought I was. Biddy stood looking at him therewith his under-lip stuck out. 

"I think you've lost your money, " he said. That was all, but the way hesaid it made me feel conscious of the shortcomings of every hair in thebrute's ugly hide. 

"Wait a bit, " I said, "you haven't seen him going yet. I think he hasthe heels of any pony in the place. "

I got a boy on to him without any more ado, thinking to myself I wasgoing to astonish Biddy. "You just get out of his way, that's all, " saysI, standing back to let him start. 

If you'll believe it, he wouldn't budge a foot!--not an inch--no amountof licking had any effect on him. He just humped his back, and tossedhis head and grunted--he must have had a skin as thick as three donkeys!I got on to him myself and put the spurs in, and he went up on his hindlegs and nearly came back with me--that was all the good I got of that. 

"Where's the grass-cutter, " I shouted, jumping off him in about as greata fury as I ever was in. "I suppose _he_ knows how to make this devilgo!"

"Grass-cutter went away last night, sahib. Me see him try to open stabledoor and go away. Me see him no more. "

I used pretty well all the bad language I knew in one blast. Biddybegan to walk away, laughin till I felt as if I could kick him. 

"I'm going to have a front seat for this trotting match, " he said, stopping to get his wind. "Spectators along the route requested toprovide themselves with pitchforks and fireworks, I suppose, in case thechampion pony should show any of his engaging little temper. Never mind, old man, I'll see you through this, there's no use in getting into a waxabout it. I'm going shares with you, the way we always do. "

I can't say I responded graciously, I rather think I cursed him andeverything else in heaps. When he was gone I began to think of whatcould be done. 

"Get out the dog-cart, " I said, as a last chance. "Perhaps he'll go inharness. "

We wheeled the cart up to him, got him harnessed to it, and in twominutes that pony was walking, trotting, anything I wanted--can'texplain why--one of the mysteries of horseflesh. I drove him out throughthe Cashmere Gate, passing Biddy on the way, and feeling a good deal thebetter for it, and as soon as I got on to the flat stretch of roadoutside the gate I tried what the pony could do. He went even betterthan I thought he could, very rough and uneven, of course, but stillpromising. I brought him home, and had him put into training at once, ascarefully as if he was going for the Derby. I chose the course, tookthe six-mile stretch of road from the Cashmere gate to Sufter Jung'stomb, and drove him over it every day. It was a splendid course--levelas a table, and dead straight for the most part--and after a few days hecould do it in about forty minutes out and thirty-five back. Peoplebegan to talk then, especially as the pony's look and shape wereimproving each day, and after a little time every one was planking hismoney on one way or another--Biddy putting on a thousand on his ownaccount--still, I'm bound to say the odds were against the pony. Thewhole of Delhi got into a state of excitement about it, natives and all, and every day I got letters warning me to take care, as there might befoul play. The stable the pony was in was a big one, and I had a wallbuilt across it, and put a man with a gun in the outer compartment. Ibought all his corn myself, in feeds at a time, going here, there, andeverywhere for it, never to the same place for two days together--Ithought it was better to be sure than sorry, and there's no trusting anigger. 

The day of the match every soul in the place turned out, such crowdsthat I could scarcely get the dog-cart through when I drove to theCashmere gate. I got down there, and was looking over the cart to seethat everything was right, when a little half-caste _keranie_, a sortof low-class clerk, came up behind me and began talking to me in amysterious kind of way, in that vile _chi-chi_ accent one gets to hateso awfully. 

"Look here, Sar, " he said, "you take my car, Sar; it built for racing. Ido much trot-racing myself"--mentioning his name--"and you go muchfaster my car, Sar. "

I trusted nobody in those days, and thought a good deal of myselfaccordingly. I hadn't found out that it takes a much smarter man to knowhow to trust a few. 

"Thank you, " I said, "I think I'll keep my own, the pony's accustomed toit. "

I think he understood quite well what I felt, but he didn't show anyresentment. 

"Well, Sar, you no trust my car, you let me see your wheels?"

"Certainly, " I said "you may look at them, " determined in my own mind Ishould keep my eye on him while he did. 

He got out a machine for propping the axle, and lifted the wheel off theground. 

"Make the wheel go round, " he said. 

I didn't like it much, but I gave the wheel a turn. He looked at it tillit stopped. 

"You lose match if you take that car, " he said, "you take my car, Sar. "

"What do you mean?" said I, pretty sharply. 

"Look here, " he said, setting the wheel going again. "You see here, Sar, it die, all in a minute, it jerk, doesn't die smooth. You see _my_wheel, Sar. "

He put the lift under his own, and started the wheel revolving. It tookabout three times as long to die as mine, going steady and silent andstopping imperceptibly, not so much as a tremor in it. 

"Now, Sar!" he said, "you see I speak true, Sar. I back you two hundredrupee, if I lose I'm ruin, and I beg you, Sar, take my car! can no winwith yours, mine match car. "

"All right!" said I with a sort of impulse, "I'll take it. " And so Idid. 

I had to start just under the arch of the Cashmere gate, by a pistolshot, fired from overhead. I didn't quite care for the look of thepony's ears while I was waiting for it--the crowd had frightened him abit I think. By Jove, when the bang came he reared straight up, droppeddown again and stuck his forelegs out, reared again when I gave him thewhip, every second of course telling against me. 

"Here, let me help you, " shouted Biddy, jumping into the trap. Hisweight settled the business, down came the pony, and we went away likeblazes. 

The three umpires rode with us, one each side and one behind, at leastthat was the way at first, but I found the clattering of their hoofsmade it next to impossible to hold the pony. I got them to keep back, and after that he went fairly steadily, but it was anxious work. Thenoise and excitement had told on him a lot, he had a tendency to breakduring all that six miles out, and he was in a lather before we got toSufter Jung's tomb. There were a lot of people waiting for me out there, some ladies on horseback, too, and there was a coffee-shop going, withdrinks of all kinds. As I got near they began to call out, "You're done, Paddy, thirty-four minutes gone already, you haven't the ghost of achance. Come and have a drink and look pleasant over it. "

I turned the pony, and Biddy and I jumped out. I went up to the table, snatched up a glass of brandy and filled my mouth with it, then wentback to the pony, took him by the head, and sent a squirt of brandy upeach nostril; I squirted the rest down his throat, went back to thetable, swallowed half a tumbler of curaçoa or something, and was intothe trap and off again, the whole thing not taking more than twentyseconds. 

The business began to be pretty exciting after that. You can see fourmiles straight ahead of you on that road; and that day the police hadspecial orders to keep it clear, so that it was a perfectly blank, white stretch as far as I could see. You know how one never seems to getany nearer to things on a road like that, and there was the clockhanging opposite to me on the splash board; I couldn't look at it, but Icould hear its beastly click-click through the trotting of the pony, andthat was nearly as bad as seeing the minute hand going from pip to pip. But, by George, I pretty soon heard a worse kind of noise than that. Itwas a case of preserve me from my friends. The people who had gone outto Sufter Jung's tomb on horseback to meet me, thought it would be acapital plan to come along after me and see the fun, and encourage me abit--so they told me afterwards. The way they encouraged me was bygalloping till they picked me up, and then hammering along behind melike a troop of cavalry till it was all I could do to keep the pony frombreaking. 

"You've got to win, Paddy, " calls out Mrs. Harry Le Bretton, gallopingup alongside, "you promised you would!"

Mrs. Harry and I were great friends in those days--very sporting littlewoman, nearly as keen about the match as I was--but at that moment Icouldn't pick my words. 

"Keep back!" I shouted to her; "keep back, for pity's sake!"

It was too late--the next instant the pony was galloping. The penalty isthat you have to pull up, and make the wheels turn in the oppositedirection, and I just threw the pony on his haunches. He nearly cameback into the cart, but the tremendous jerk gave the backward turn tothe wheels and I was off again. Not even that kept the people back. Mrs. Le Bretton came alongside again to say something else to me, and Isuddenly felt half mad from the clatter and the frightful strain of thepony on my arms. 

"D----n it all! Le Bretton!" I yelled, as the pony broke for the secondtime, "can't you keep your wife away!"

They did let me alone after that--turned off the road and took a scoopacross the plain, so as to come up with me at the finish--and I pulledmyself together to do the last couple of miles. I could see thatCashmere gate and the Delhi walls ahead of me; 'pon my soul I felt as ifthey were defying me and despising me, just standing waiting there underthe blazing sky, and they never seemed to get any nearer. It was likethe first night of a fever, the whizzing of the wheels, the ding-dong ofthe pony's hoofs, the silence all round, the feeling of stress andinsane hurrying on, the throbbing of my head, and the scorching heat. I'll swear no fever I've ever had was worse than that last two miles. 

As I reached the Delhi walls I took one look at the clock. There wasbarely a minute left. 

"By Jove!" I gasped, "I'm done!"

I shouted and yelled to the pony like a madman, to keep up what heartwas left in the wretched little brute, holding on to him for bare life, with my arms and legs straight out in front of me. The gray wall and theblinding road rushed by me like a river--I scarcely knew whathappened--I couldn't think of anything but the ticking of the clock thatI was somehow trying to count, till there came the bang of a pistol overmy head. 

It was the Cashmere gate, and I had thirteen seconds in hand. 

 * * * * *

There was never anything more heard of the bagman. He can, if he likes, soothe his conscience with the reflection that he was worth a thousandpounds to me. 

But Mrs. Le Bretton never quite forgave me. 

AN IRISH PROBLEM

Conversation raged on the long flanks of the mail-car. 

An elderly priest, with a warm complexion and a controversial under-lip, was expounding his native country to a fellow-traveller, with slight butirrepressible pulpit gestures of the hand. The fellow traveller, albeitlavender-hued from an autumn east wind, was obediently observing theanæmic patches of oats and barley, pale and thin, like the hair of astarving baby, and the huge slants of brown heather and turf bog, andwas interjecting "Just so!" at decent intervals. Now and then, as thetwo tall brown mares slackened for a bout of collar-work at a hill, orsqueezed slowly past a cart stacked high with sods of turf, we, sittingin silence, Irish wolves in the clothing of English tourists, could hearacross the intervening pile of luggage and bicycles such a storm ofconversation as bursts forth at a dinner-party after the champagne hastwice gone round. 

The brunt of the talk was borne by the old lady in the centre. Her broadback, chequered with red plaid, remained monumental in height andstillness, but there was that in the tremor of the steel spray in herbonnet that told of a high pressure of narrative. The bearded Dublintourist on her left was but little behind her in the ardour of givinginformation. His wife, a beautifully dressed lady with cotton-wool inher ears, remained abstracted, whether from toothache, or exclusiveness, or mere wifely boredom, we cannot say. Among the swift shuttles of Irishspeech the ponderous questions and pronouncements of an Englishfisherman drove their way. The talk was, we gathered, of sport and gamelaws and their administration. 

"Is it hares?" cried the Dublin tourist, perorating after a flight ortwo into the subject of poachers; "what d'ye think would happen a harein Donegal?"

His handsome brown eye swept his audience, even, through the spokes of abicycle, gathering in our sympathies. It left no doubts as to thetragedy that awaited the hare. 

The east wind hunted us along the shore of the wide, bleak bay, rimmedwith yellow sea-weed, and black and ruffled like the innumerablelakelets that lay along our route. The tall mountain over it was hoodedin cloud. It seemed as threatening and mysterious as Sinai; ready toutter some awful voice of law to the brown solitudes and windy silences. 

Far ahead of us a few houses rose suddenly above the low coast line, anugly family party of squat gables and whitewashed walls, with nothingnearer them to westward than the homesteads of America. 

Far and near there was not a tree visible, nor a touch of colour to tellof the saving grace of flowers. The brown mares swung the car along withsomething resembling enthusiasm; Letterbeg was the end of their stage;it was the end of ours also. Numb with long sitting we droppedcumbrously to earth from the high footboard, and found ourselves face toface with the problem of how to spend the next three hours. It waseleven o'clock in the morning, too early for lunch, though, apparently, quite the fashionable hour in Letterbeg for bottled porter, judging bythe squeak of the corkscrew and the clash of glasses that issued fromthe dark interior of the house in front of which we had been shed by themail-car. This was a long cottage with a prosperous slate roof, and aboard over its narrow door announcing that one Jas. Heraty was licensedfor the retail of spirits and porter. 

The mail-car rolled away; as it crawled over the top of a hill and sankout of sight a last wave of the priestly hand seemed to include us. Doubtless we were being expounded as English tourists, and our greateconomic value to the country was being expatiated upon. The _rôle_ isan important one, and has its privileges; yet, to the wolf, there issomething stifling in sheep's clothing; certainly, on the occasionswhen it was discarded by us, a sympathy and understanding with thehotels was quickly established. Possibly they also are wolves. Undoubtedly the English tourist, with his circular ticket and hiscoupons, does not invariably get the best of everything. We writesurrounded by him and his sufferings. An earlier visit than usual to thehotel sitting-room has revealed him, lying miserably on the sofa, shrouded in a filthy _duvet_, having been flung there at some two in themorning on his arrival, wet through, from heaven knows what tremendouswalk. Subsequently we hear him being haled from his lair by thechambermaid, who treats him as the dirt under her feet (or, indeed, ifwe may judge by our bedroom carpet, with far less consideration). 

"Here!" she says, "go in there and wash yerself!"

We hear her slamming him into a room from which two others of his kindhave been recently bolted like rabbits, by the boots, to catch the 6A. M. Train. We can just faintly realise its atmosphere. 

This, however, is a digression, but remotely connected with Letterbegand Mr. Heraty's window, to which in our forlorn state we turned fordistraction. 

It was very small, about two feet square, but it made its appeal to allthe needs of humanity from the cradle to the grave. A feeding-bottle, arosary, a photograph of Mr. Kruger, a peg-top, a case of salmon flies, an artistic letter-weight, consisting of a pigeon's egg carved inConnemara marble, two seductively small bottles of castor-oil--these, mounted on an embankment of packets of corn-flour and rat poison, crowded the four little panes. Inside the shop the assortment rangedfrom bundles of reaping-hooks on the earthen floor to bottles ofchampagne in the murk of the top shelf. A few men leaned against thetin-covered counter, gravely drinking porter. As we stood dubiously atthe door there was a padding of bare feet in the roadway, and a verysmall boy with a red head, dressed in a long flannel frock of a richmadder shade fluttered past us into the shop. 

"Me dada says let yees be hurrying!" he gasped, between spasms of whatwas obviously whooping-cough. "Sweeny's case is comin' on!"

Had the message been delivered by the Sergeant-at-Arms it could not havebeen received with more respectful attention or been more immediatelyobeyed. The porter was gulped down, one unfinished glass being bestowedupon the Sergeant-at-Arms, possibly as a palliative for thewhooping-cough, and the party trooped up the road towards a thatched andwhitewashed cottage that stood askew at the top of a lane leading to theseashore. Two tall constables of the R. I. C. Stood at the door of thecottage. It came to us, with a lifting of the heart, that we hadchanced upon Petty Sessions day in Letterbeg, and this was thecourt-house. 

It was uncommonly hot in what is called in newspapers "the body of thecourt". Something of the nature of a rood-screen, boarded solidly up toa height of about four feet, divided the long single room of thecottage; we, with the rest of the public, were penned in the divisionnearest the door. The cobwebbed boards of the loft overhead almostrested on our hats; the public, not being provided with seats by theGovernment, shuffled on the earthen floor and unaffectedly rested on usand each other. Within the rood-screen two magistrates sat at a table, with their suite, consisting of a clerk, an interpreter, and a districtinspector of police, disposed round them. 

"The young fella with the foxy mustash is Docthor Lyden, " whispered aninformant in response to a question, "and the owld lad that's lookin' atye now is Heraty, that owns the shop above--"

At this juncture an emissary from the Bench very kindly offered us seatswithin the rood-screen. We took them, on a high wooden settle, besidethe magisterial table, and the business of the court proceeded. 

Close to us stood the defendant, Sweeny, a tall elderly man, with along, composed, shaven face, and an all-observant grey eye: Irish intype, Irish in expression, intensely Irish in the self-possession inwhich he stood, playing to perfection the part of calm rectitude andunassailable integrity. 

Facing him, the plaintiff lounged against the partition; a man strangelyimprobable in appearance, with close-cropped grey hair, a young, fresh-coloured face, a bristling orange moustache, and a big, bluntnose. One could have believed him a soldier, a German, anything but whathe was, a peasant from the furthest shores of Western Ireland, cut offfrom what we call civilisation by his ignorance of any language save hisown ancient speech, wherein the ideas of to-day stand out in Englishwords like telegraph posts in a Connemara moorland. 

Between the two stood the interpreter--small, old, froglike in profile, full of the dignity of the Government official. 

"Well, we should be getting on now, " remarked the Chairman, Heraty, J. P. , after some explanatory politeness to his unexpected visitors. "William, swear the plaintiff!"

The oath was administered in Irish, and the orange moustache brushed thegreasy Testament. The space above the dado of the partition becamesuddenly a tapestry of attentive faces, clear-eyed, all-comprehending. 

[Illustration: SWEENY. ]

"This case, " announced Mr. Heraty judicially yet not without a glance atthe visitors, "is a demand for compensation in the matter of a sheepthat was drowned. William"--this to the interpreter--"ask Darcy what hehas to say for himself?"

Darcy hitched himself round, still with a shoulder propped against thepartition, and uttered, without any enthusiasm, a few nasal and gutturalsentences. 

"He says, yer worship, " said William, with unctuous propriety, "thatSweeny's gorsoons were ever and always hunting his sheep, and settin' ontheir dog to hunt her, and that last week they dhrove her into the lakeand dhrownded her altogether. "

"Now, " said Mr. Heraty, in a conversational tone, "William, when yeemploy the word 'gorsoon, ' do ye mean children of the male or femalesex?"

"Well, yer worship, " replied William, who, it may incidentally bementioned, was himself in need of either an interpreter or of a new andcomplete set of teeth, "I should considher he meant ayther the one orthe other. "

"They're usually one or the other, " said Doctor Lyden solemnly, and in astupendous brogue. It was the first time he had spoken; he leaned back, with his hands in his pockets, and surveyed with quiet but very brighteyes the instant grin that illumined the faces of the tapestry. 

"Sure William himself is no bad judge of gorsoons, " said Mr. Heraty. "Hadn't he a christening in his own house three weeks ago?"

At this excursion into the family affairs of the interpreter the grinbroke into a roar. 

"See now, we'll ask Mr. Byrne, the schoolmaster, " went on Mr. Heratywith owl-like gravity. "Isn't that Mr. Byrne that I see back there inthe coort? Come forward, Mr. Byrne!"

Thus adjured, a tall, spectacled man emerged from the crowd, and, beaming with a pleasing elderly bashfulness through his spectacles, gaveit as his opinion that though gorsoon was a term usually applied to themale child, it was equally applicable to the female. "But, indeed, " heconcluded, "the Bench has as good Irish as I have myself, and better. "

"The law requires that the thransactions of this coort shall take placein English, " the Chairman responded, "and we have also the public toconsider. "

As it was pretty certain that we were the only persons in the court whodid not understand Irish, it was borne in upon us that we were thepublic, and we appreciated the consideration. 

"We may assume, then, that the children that set on the dog wor' of bothsexes, " proceeded Mr. Heraty. "Well, now, as to the dog-- William, askDarcy what sort of dog was it. "

The monotonous and quiet Irish sentences followed one another again. 

"That'll do. Now, William--"

"He says, yer worship, that he was a big lump of a yalla dog, an' verycross, by reason of he r'arin' a pup. "

"And 'twas to make mutton-broth for the pup she dhrove Darcy's sheep inthe lake, I suppose?"

A contemptuous smile passed over Darcy's face as the Chairman's sallywas duly translated to him, and he made a rapid reply. 

"He says there isn't one of the neighbours but got great annoyance bythe same dog, yer worship, and that when the dog'd be out by nighthunting, there wouldn't be a yard o' wather in the lakes but he'd haveit barked over. "

"It appears, " observed Dr. Lyden serenely, "that the dog, like thegorsoons, was of both sexes. "

"Well, well, no matther now; we'll hear what the defendant has to say. Swear Sweeny!" said Mr. Heraty, smoothing his long grey beard, withsuddenly remembered judicial severity and looking menacingly over hisspectacles at Sweeny. "Here, now! you don't want an interpreter! Youthat has a sisther married to a stationmaster and a brother in theConnaught Rangers!"

"I have as good English as anny man in this coort, " said Sweenymorosely. 

"Well, show it off man! What defence have ye?"

"I say that the sheep wasn't Darcy's at all, " said Sweeny firmly, standing as straight as a ramrod, with his hands behind his back, apicture of surly, wronged integrity. "And there's no man livin' canprove she was. Ask him now what way did he know her?"

The question evidently touched Darcy on a tender point. He squared hisbig shoulders in his white flannel jacket, and turning his face for thefirst time towards the magistrates delivered a flood of Irish, in whichwe heard a word that sounded like _ullán_ often repeated. 

"He says, yer worships, " translated William, "why wouldn't he know her!Hadn't she the _ullán_ on her! He says a poor man like him would knowone of the few sheep he has as well as yer worship'd know one o' yer owngowns if it had sthrayed from ye. "

It is probable that we looked some of the stupefaction that we felt atthis remarkable reference to Mr. Heraty's wardrobe. 

"For the benefit of the general public, " said Dr. Lyden, in his languid, subtle brogue, with a side-glance at that body, "it may be no harm tomention that the plaintiff is alluding to the Chairman's yearling calvesand not to his costume. "

"Order now!" said Mr. Heraty severely. 

"An' he says, " continued William, warily purging his frog-countenance ofany hint of appreciation, "that Sweeny knew the _ullán_ that was on heras well as himself did. "

"_Ullán!_ What sort of English is that for an interpreter to be using!Do ye suppose the general public knows what is an _ullán_?" interruptedMr. Heraty with lightning rapidity. "Explain that now!"

"Why, yer worship, sure anny one in the world'd know what the _ullán_ ona sheep's back is!" said William, staggered by this sudden onslaught, "though there's some might call it the _rebugh_. "

"God help the Government that's payin' you wages!" said Mr. Heraty withsudden and bitter ferocity (but did we intercept a wink at hiscolleague?). "If it wasn't for the young family you're r'arin' in yerold age, I'd commit ye for contempt of coort!"

A frank shout of laughter, from every one in court but the victim, greeted this sally, the chorus being, as it were, barbed by a shrillcrow of whooping-cough. 

"Mr. Byrne!" continued Mr. Heraty without a smile, "we must call uponyou again!"

Mr. Byrne's meek scholastic face once more appeared at the rood-screen. 

"Well, I should say, " he ventured decorously, "that the expression islocally applied to what I may call a plume or a feather that is worn onvarious parts of the sheep's back, for a mark, as I might say, ofdistinction. "

"Thank you, Mr. Byrne, thank you, " said Mr. Heraty, to whose imaginationa vision of a plumed or feathered sheep seemed to offer nothing unusual, "remember that now, William!"

Dr. Lyden looked at his watch. 

"Don't you think Sweeny might go on with his defence?" he remarked. "About the children, Sweeny--how many have ye?"

"I have four. "

"And how old are they?"

"There's one o' thim is six years an another o' thim is seven--"

"Yes, and the other two eight and nine, I suppose?" commented Dr. Lyden. 

The defendant remained silent. 

"Do ye see now how well he began with the youngest--the way we'd think'twas the eldest!" resumed Dr. Lyden. "I think we may assume that agorsoon--male or female--of eight or nine years is capable of setting adog on the sheep. "

Here Darcy spoke again. 

"He says, " interpreted William, "there isn't pig nor ass, sheep norduck, belongin' to him that isn't heart-scalded with the same childhrenan' their dog. "

"Well, I say now, an' I swear it, " said Sweeny, his eye kindling like acoal, and his voice rising as the core of what was probably an oldneighbourly grudge was neared, "my land is bare from his bastesthrespassing on it, and my childhren are in dread to pass his houseitself with the kicks an' the sthrokes himself an' his mother dhraws onthem! The Lord Almighty knows--"

"Stop now!" said Mr. Heraty, holding up his hand. "Stop! The Lord's notintherferin' in this case at all! It's me an' Doctor Lyden has it tosettle. "

No one seemed to find anything surprising in this pronouncement; it wasaccepted as seriously as any similar statement of the Prophet Samuel tothe Children of Israel, and was evidently meant to imply that abstractjustice might be expected. 

"We may assume, then, " said Dr. Lyden amiably, "that the sheep walkedout into Sweeny's end of the lake and drowned herself there on accountof the spite there was between the two families. "

The court tittered. A dingy red showed itself among the grizzled hairsand wrinkles on Sweeny's cheek. In Ireland a point can often be bettercarried by sarcasm than by logic. 

"She was blind enough to dhrown herself, or two like her!" he saidangrily; "she was that owld and blind it was ayqual to her where she'dgo!"

"How d'ye know she was blind?" said Mr. Heraty quickly. 

"I thought the defence opened with the statement that it wasn't Darcy'ssheep at all, " put in Dr. Lyden, leaning back in his chair with his eyesfixed on the rafters. 

Sweeny firmly regarded Mr. Heraty. 

"How would I know she was blind?" he repeated. "Many's the time whenshe'd be takin' a sthroll in on my land I'd see her fallin' down in therocks, she was that blind! An' didn't I see Darcy's mother one time, an'she puttin' something on her eyes. "

"Was it glasses she was putting on the sheep's eyes?" suggested theChairman, with a glance that admitted the court to the joke. 

"No, but an ointment, " said Sweeny stubbornly. "I seen her rubbing it tothe eyes, an' she no more than thirty yards from me. "

"Will ye swear that?" thundered Mr. Heraty; "will you swear that at adistance of thirty yards you could tell what was between Darcy'smother's fingers and the sheep's eyes? No you will not! Nor no mancould! William, is Darcy's mother in the coort? We'll have to takeevidence from her as to the condition of the sheep's eyes!"

"Darcy says, yer worship, that his mother would lose her life if she wasto be brought into coort, " explained William, after an interlude inIrish, to which both magistrates listened with evident interest; "thatere last night a frog jumped into the bed to her in the night, and shegot out of the bed to light the Blessed Candle, and when she got back tothe bed again she was in it always between herself and the wall, an' shegot a wakeness out of it, and great cold--"

"Are ye sure it wasn't the frog got the wakeness?" asked Dr. Lyden. 

A gale of laughter swept round the court. 

"Come, come!" said Mr. Heraty; "have done with this baldherdash!William, tell Darcy some one must go fetch his mother, for as wake asshe is she could walk half a mile!" Mr. Heraty here drew forth anenormous white pocket-handkerchief and trumpeted angrily in its depths. 

Darcy raised his small blue eyes with their thick lashes, and took alook at his judge. There was a gabbled interchange of Irish between himand the interpreter. 

"He says she could not, yer worship, nor as much as one perch. "

"Ah, what nonsense is this!" said Mr. Heraty testily; "didn't I see thewoman meself at Mass last Sunday?"

Darcy's reply was garnished with a good deal more gesticulation thanusual, and throughout his speech the ironic smile on Sweeny's face was amasterpiece of quiet expression. 

"He says, " said William, "that surely she was at Mass last Sunday, thesame as your worship says, but 'twas on the way home that she was takinga wall, and a stone fell on her and hurted her finger and the bootpreyed on it, and it has her desthroyed. "

At this culmination of the misadventures of Mrs. Darcy the countenancesof the general public must; again have expressed some of thebewilderment that they felt. 

"Perhaps William will be good enough to explain, " said Dr. Lyden, permitting a faint smile to twitch the foxy moustache, "how Mrs. Darcy'sboot affected her finger?"

William's skinny hand covered his frog mouth with all a deservingschoolboy's embarrassment at being caught out in a bad translation. 

"I beg yer worships' pardon, " he said, in deep confusion, "but sure yourworships know as well as meself that in Irish we have the one word foryour finger or your toe. "

"There's one thing I know very well anyhow, " said Dr. Lyden, turning tohis colleague, "I've no more time to waste sitting here talking aboutold Kit Darcy's fingers and toes! Let the two o' them get arbitratorsand settle it out of court. There's nothing between them now only thevalue of the sheep. "

"Sure I was satisfied to leave it to arbithration, but Darcy wasn'twillin'. " This statement was Sweeny's. 

"So you were willin' to have arbithration before you came into coort atall?" said Mr. Heraty, eyeing the tall defendant with ominous mildness. "William, ask Darcy is this the case. "

Darcy's reply, delivered with a slow, sarcastic smile, provoked a laughfrom the audience. 

"Oh, ho! So that was the way, was it!" cried Mr. Heraty, forgetting towait for the translation. "Ye had your wife's cousin to arbithrate!Small blame to Darcy he wasn't willin'! It's a pity ye didn't say yourwife herself should arbithrate when ye went about it! You would hardlybelieve the high opinion Sweeny here has of his wife, " continued theChairman in illuminative excursus to Dr. Lyden; "sure he had all thewomen wild below at my shop th' other night sayin' his wife was thefinest woman in Ireland! Upon my soul he had!"

"If I said that, " growled the unfortunate Sweeny, "it was a lie for me. "

"Don't ye think it might be a good thing now, " suggested theindefatigable doctor, in his mournful tuneful voice, "to call a fewwitnesses to give evidence as to whether Mrs. Michael Sweeny is thefinest woman in Ireland or no?"

"God knows, gentlemen, it's a pity ye haven't more to do this day, " saidSweeny, turning at length upon his tormentors, "I'd sooner pay the priceof the sheep than be losin' me time here this way. "

"See, now, how we're getting to the rights of it in the latter end, "commented Dr. Lyden imperturbably. "Sweeny began here by saying"--hechecked off each successive point on his fingers--"that the sheep wasn'tDarcy's at all. Then he said that his children of eight and nine yearsof age were too young to set the dog on the sheep. Then, that if the doghunted her it was no more than she deserved for constant trespass. Thenhe said that the sheep was so old and blind that she committed suicidein his end of the lake in order to please herself and to spite him; and, last of all, he tells us that he offered to compensate Darcy for herbefore he came into court at all!"

"And on top of that, " Mr. Heraty actually rose in his seat in hisexquisite appreciation of the position, "on top of that, mind you, afterhe has the whole machinery of the law and the entire population ofLetterbeg attending on him for a matter o' two hours, he informs us thatwe're wasting his valuable time!"

Mr. Heraty fixed his eyes in admirable passion--whether genuine or notwe are quite incapable of pronouncing--upon Sweeny, who returned thegaze with all the gloom of an unfortunate but invincibly respectableman. 

Dr. Lyden once more pulled out his watch. 

"It might be as well for us, " he said languidly, "to enter upon theinquiry as to the value of the sheep. That should take about anotherthree-quarters of an hour. William, ask Darcy the price he puts on thesheep. "

Every emotion has its limits. We received with scarce a stirring ofsurprise the variations of sworn testimony as to the value of the sheep. Her price ranged from one pound, claimed by Darcy and his adherents, tosixpence, at which sum her skin was unhesitatingly valued by Sweeny. Herage swung like a pendulum between two years and fourteen, and, finally, in crowning proof of her worth and general attractiveness, it was statedthat her own twin had been sold for fifteen shillings to the police atDhulish, "ere last week". At this re-entrance into the case of thepersonal element Mr. Heraty's spirits obviously rose. 

"I think we ought to have evidence about this, " he said, fixing thepolice officer with a dangerous eye. "Mr. Cox, have ye anny of theDhulish police here?"

Mr. Cox, whose only official act up to the present had been the highlybeneficial one of opening the window, admitted with a grin that two ofthe Dhulish men were in the court. 

"Well, then!" continued the Chairman, "Mr. Cox, maybe ye'd kindly desirethem to step forward in order that the court may be able to estimatefrom their appearance the nutritive qualities of the twin sisther ofDarcy's sheep. "

At this juncture we perceived, down near the crowded doorway, two talland deeply embarrassed members of the R. I. C. Hastily escaping into thestreet. 

"Well, well; how easy it is to frighten the police!" remarked theChairman, following them with a regretful eye. "I suppose, afther all, we'd betther put a price on the sheep and have done with it. In myopinion, when there's a difficulty like this--what I might call anaccident--between decent men like these (for they're both decent men, and I've known them these years), I'd say both parties should share whathardship is in it. Now, doctor, what shall we give Darcy? I suppose ifwe gave him 8s. Compensation and 2s. Costs we'd not be far out?"

Dr. Lyden, already in the act of charging his pipe, nodded his head. 

Sweeny began to fumble in his pockets, and drawing out a brownish rag, possibly a handkerchief, knotted in several places, proceeded to untieone of the knots. The doctor watched him without speaking. Ultimately, from some fastness in the rag a half-sovereign was extracted, and waslaid upon the table by Sweeny. The clerk, a well-dressed younggentleman, whose attitude had throughout been one of the extremestaloofness, made an entry in his book with an aggressively business-likeair. 

"Well, that's all right, " remarked Dr. Lyden, getting lazily on his legsand looking round for his hat; "it's a funny thing, but I notice thatthe defendant brought the exact sum required into court with him. "

"I did! And I'm able to bring more than it, thanks be to God!" saidSweeny fiercely, with all the offended pride of his race. "I have twopounds here this minute--"

"If that's the way with ye, may be ye'd like us to put a bigger fine onye!" broke in Mr. Heraty hotly, in instant response to Sweeny's show oftemper. 

Dr. Lyden laughed for the first time. 

"Mr. Heraty's getting cross now, in the latter end, " he murmuredexplanatorily to the general public, while he put on an overcoat, fromthe pocket of which protruded the Medusa coils of a stethoscope. 

 * * * * *

Long before the arrival of the mail-car that was to take us away, theloafers and the litigants had alike been swallowed up, apparently by thebrown, hungry hillsides; possibly also, some of them, by Mr. Heraty'stap-room. Again we clambered to our places among the inevitable touristsand their inevitable bicycles, again the laden car lumbered heavily yetswiftly along the bog roads that quivered under its weight, while thewater in the black ditches on either side quivered in sympathy. Thetourists spoke of the vast loneliness, unconscious of the intricatenetwork of social life that lay all around them, beyond their ken, farbeyond their understanding. They spoke authoritatively of Irish affairs;mentioned that the Irish were "a bit 'ot tempered, " but added that "allthey wanted was fair play". 

They had probably been in Ireland for a week or fortnight. They had comeout of business centres in England, equipped with circular tickets, withfeeling hearts, and with the belief that two and two inevitably makefour; whereas in Ireland two and two are just as likely to make five, orthree, and are still more likely to make nothing at all. 

Never will it be given to them to understand the man of whom our friendSweeny was no more than a type. How can they be expected to realise thata man who is decorous in family and village life, indisputablyGod-fearing, kind to the poor, and reasonably honest, will enmeshhimself in a tissue of sworn lies before his fellows for the sake ofhalf a sovereign and a family feud, and that his fellows will think nonethe worse of him for it. 

These things lie somewhere near the heart of the Irish problem. 

THE DANE'S BREECHIN'

PART I

The story begins at the moment when my brother Robert and I had made ourfinal arrangements for the expedition. These were considerable. Robertis a fisherman who takes himself seriously (which perhaps is fortunate, as he rarely seems to take anything else), and his paraphernalia doescredit to his enthusiasm, if not to his judgment. For my part, being anamateur artist, I had strapped together a collection of paintingmaterials that would enable me to record my inspiration in oil, watercolour, or pastel, as the spirit might move me. We had ordered acar from Coolahan's public-house in the village; an early lunch wasimminent. 

The latter depended upon Julia; in fact it would be difficult to mentionanything at Wavecrest Cottage that did not depend on Julia. We, who werebut strangers and sojourners (the cottage with the beautiful name havingbeen lent to us, with Julia, by an Aunt), felt that our very existencehung upon her clemency. How much more then luncheon, at therevolutionary hour of a quarter to one? Even courageous people areafraid of other people's servants, and Robert and I were far from beingcourageous. Possibly this is why Julia treated us with compassion, evenwith kindness, especially Robert. 

"Ah, poor Masther Robert!" I have heard her say to a friend in thekitchen, who was fortunately hard of hearing, "ye wouldn't feel him inthe house no more than a feather! An' indeed, as for the two o' thim, sich gallopers never ye seen! It's hardly they'd come in the house tothrow the wet boots off thim! Thim'd gallop the woods all night like thedeer!"

At half-past twelve, all, as I have said, being in train, I went to thewindow to observe the weather, and saw a covered car with a black horseplodding along the road that separated Wavecrest Cottage from theseashore. At our modest entrance gates it drew up, and the coachmanclimbed from his perch with a dignity befitting his flowing grey beardand the silver band on his hat. 

A covered car is a vehicle peculiar to the south of Ireland; itresembles a two-wheeled waggonette with a windowless black box on top ofit. Its mouth is at the back, and it has the sinister quality of totallyconcealing its occupants until the irrevocable moment when it is turnedand backed against your front door steps. For this moment my brotherRobert and I did not wait. A short passage and a flight of stepsseparated us from the kitchen; beyond the steps, and facing the kitchendoor, a door opened into the garden. Robert slipped up heavily in thepassage as we fled, but gained the garden door undamaged. The hall doorbell pealed at my ear; I caught a glimpse of Julia, pounding chops withthe rolling pin. 

"Say we're out, " I hissed to her--"gone out for the day! We are goinginto the garden!"

"Sure ye needn't give yerself that much trouble, " replied Julia affably, as she snatched a grimy cap off a nail. 

Nevertheless, in spite of the elasticity of Julia's conscience, thegarden seemed safer. 

In the garden, a plot of dense and various vegetation, decorated withJulia's lingerie, we awaited the sound of the departing wheels. Butnothing departed. The breathless minutes passed, and then, through theopen drawing-room window, we were aware of strange voices. Thedrawing-room window overlooked the garden thoroughly and commandingly. There was not a moment to lose. We plunged into the raspberry canes, andcrouched beneath their embowered arches, and the fulness of thesituation began to sink into our souls. 

Through the window we caught a glimpse of a white beard and a portlyblack suit, of a black bonnet and a dolman that glittered with jet, ofyet another black bonnet. 

With Aunt Dora's house we had taken on, as it were, her practice, andthe goodwill of her acquaintance. The Dean of Glengad and Mrs. Dohertywere the very apex and flower of the latter, and in the party nowinstalled in Aunt Dora's drawing-room I unhesitatingly recognised them, and Mrs. Doherty's sister, Miss McEvoy. Miss McEvoy was an elderly ladyof the class usually described as being "not all there". The expression, I imagine, implies a regret that there should not be more. As, however, what there was of Miss McEvoy was chiefly remarkable for a monstrousappetite and a marked penchant for young men, it seems to me mainly tobe regretted that there should be as much of her as there is. 

A drive of nine miles in the heat of a June morning is not undertakenwithout a sustaining expectation of luncheon at the end of it. Therewere in the house three mutton chops to meet that expectation. Icommunicated all these facts to my brother. The consternation of hisface, framed in raspberry boughs, was a picture not to be lightlyforgotten. At such a moment, with everything depending on sheer nerveand resourcefulness, to consign Julia to perdition was mereself-indulgence on his part, but I suppose it was inevitable. Here thedoor into the garden opened and Julia came forth, with a spotless apronand a face of elaborate unconcern. She picked a handful of parsley, herblack eyes questing for us among the bushes; they met mine, and a glancemore alive with conspiracy it has not been my lot to receive. She moveddesultorily towards us, gathering green gooseberries in her apron. 

"I told them the two o' ye were out, " she murmured to the gooseberrybushes. "They axed when would ye be back. I said ye went to town on theearly thrain and wouldn't be back till night. "

Decidedly Julia's conscience could stand alone. 

"With that then, " she continued, "Miss McEvoy lands into the hall, an''O Letitia, ' says she, 'those must be the gentleman's fishing rods!' andthen 'Julia!' says she, 'could ye give us a bit o' lunch?' That one'sthe imp!"

"Look here!" said Robert hoarsely, and with the swiftness of panic, "I'moff! I'll get out over the back wall. "

At this moment Miss McEvoy put her head out of the drawing-room windowand scanned the garden searchingly. Without another word we glidedthrough the raspberry arches like departing fairies in a pantomine. Thekindly lilac and laurestina bushes grew tall and thick at the end ofthe garden; the wall was high, but, as is usual with fruit-garden walls, it had a well-worn feasible corner that gave on to the lane leading tothe village. We flung ourselves over it, and landed breathless anddishevelled, but safe, in the heart of the bed of nettles that plumedthe common village ash-heap. Now that we were able, temporarily at allevents, to call our souls our own, we (or rather I) took further stockof the situation. Its horrors continued to sink in. Driven from homewithout so much as a hat to lay our heads in, separated from those weloved most (the mutton chops, the painting materials, the fishingtackle), a promising expedition of unusual charm cut off, so to speak, in the flower of its youth--these were the more immediately obvious ofthe calamities which we now confronted. I preached upon them, withCassandra eloquence, while we stood, indeterminate, among the nettles. 

"And what, I ask you, " I said perorating, "what on the face of the earthare we to do now?"

"Oh, it'll be all right, my dear girl, " said Robert easily. Gratitudefor his escape from the addresses of Miss McEvoy had apparently blindedhim to the difficulties of the future. "There's Coolahan's pub. We'llget something to eat there--you'll see it'll be all right. "

"But, " I said, picking my way after him among the rusty tins and thebroken crockery, "the Coolahans will think we're mad! We've no hats, andwe can't tell them about the Dohertys. "

"I don't care what they think, " said Robert. 

What Mrs. Coolahan may have thought, as we dived from the sunlight intoher dark and porter-sodden shop, did not appear; what she looked wasconsternation. 

"Luncheon!" she repeated with stupefaction, "luncheon! The dear help us, I have no luncheon for the like o' ye!"

"Oh, anything will do, " said Robert cheerfully. His experiences at theLondon bar had not instructed him in the commissariat of his country. 

"A bit of cold beef, or just some bread and cheese. "

Mrs. Coolahan's bleared eyes rolled wildly to mine, as seeking sympathyand sanity. 

"With the will o' Pether!" she exclaimed, "how would I have cold beef?And as for cheese--!" She paused, and then, curiosity over-powering allother emotions. "What ails Julia Cronelly at all that your honour'sladyship is comin' to the like o' this dirty place for your dinner?"

"Oh, Julia's run away with a soldier!" struck in Robert brilliantly. 

"Small blame to her if she did itself!" said Mrs. Coolahan, gallantlyaccepting the jest without a change of her enormous countenance, she's along time waiting for the chance! Maybe ourselves'd go if we were axed!I have a nice bit of salt pork in the house, " she continued, "would Igive your honours a rasher of it?"

Mrs. Coolahan had probably assumed that either Julia was incapablydrunk, or had been dismissed without benefit of clergy; at all eventsshe had recognised that diplomatically it was correct to change theconversation. 

We adventured ourselves into the unknown recesses of the house, and satgingerly on greasy horsehair-seated chairs, in the parlour, while thebubbling cry of the rasher and eggs arose to heaven from the frying-pan, and the reek filled the house as with a grey fog. Potent as it was, itbut faintly foreshadowed the flavour of the massive slices thatpresently swam in briny oil on our plates. But we had breakfasted ateight; we tackled them with determination, and without too niceinspection of the three-pronged forks. We drank porter, we achieved acertain sense of satiety, that on very slight provocation would havebroadened into nausea or worse. All the while the question remained inthe balance as to what we were to do for our hats, and for the myriadbaggage involved in the expedition. 

We finally decided to write a minute inventory of what wasindispensable, and to send it to Julia by the faithful hand of Mrs. Coolahan's car-driver, one Croppy, with whom previous expeditions hadplaced us upon intimate terms. It would be necessary to confide theposition to Croppy, but this we felt, could be done without a moment'suneasiness. 

By the malignity that governed all things on that troublous day, neitherof us had a pencil, and Mrs. Coolahan had to be appealed to. That shehad by this time properly grasped the position was apparent in thehoarse whisper in which she said, carefully closing the door afterher:--

"The Dane's coachman is inside!"

Simultaneously Robert and I removed ourselves from the purview of thedoor. 

"Don't be afraid, " said our hostess reassuringly, "he'll never seeye--sure I have him safe back in the snug! Is it a writing pin ye want, Miss?" she continued, moving to the door. "Katty Ann! Bring me in thepin out o' the office!"

The Post Office was, it may be mentioned, a department of the Coolahanpublic-house, and was managed by a committee of the younger members ofthe Coolahan family. These things are all, I believe, illegal, but theyhappen in Ireland. The committee was at present, apparently, in fullsession, judging by the flood of conversation that flowed in to usthrough the open door. The request for the pen caused an instant hush, followed at an interval by the slamming of drawers and other sounds ofsearch. 

"Ah, what's on ye delaying this way?" said Mrs. Coolahan irritably, advancing into the shop. "Sure I seen the pin with Helayna thismorning. "

At the moment all that we could see of the junior postmistress was herlong bare shins, framed by the low-browed doorway, as she stood on thecounter to further her researches on a top shelf. 

"The Lord look down in pity on me this day!" said Mrs. Coolahan, inexalted and bitter indignation, "or on any poor creature that's strivingto earn her living and has the likes o' ye to be thrusting to!"

We here attached ourselves to the outskirts of the search, which had bythis time drawn into its vortex a couple of countrywomen with shawlsover their heads, who had hitherto sat in decorous but observantstillness in the background. Katty Ann was rapidly examining tallbottles of sugar-stick, accustomed receptacles apparently for the pen. Helayna's raven fringe showed traces of a dive into the flour-bin. Mrs. Coolahan remained motionless in the midst, her eyes fixed on theceiling, an exposition of suffering and of eternal remoteness from theungodly. 

We were now aware for the first time of the presence of Mr. Coolahan, ataciturn person, with a blue-black chin and a gloomy demeanour. 

"Where had ye it last?" he demanded. 

"I seen Katty Ann with it in the cow-house, sir, " volunteered a smallfemale Coolahan from beneath the flap of the counter. 

Katty Ann, with a vindictive eye at the tell-tale, vanished. 

"That the Lord Almighty might take me to Himself!" chanted Mrs. Coolahan. "Such a mee-aw! Such a thing to happen to me--the pure, decentwoman! G'wout!" This, the imperative of the verb to retire, was hurtledat the tell-tale, who, presuming on her services, had incautiously leftthe covert of the counter, and had laid a sticky hand on her mother'sskirts. 

"Only that some was praying for me, " pursued Mrs. Coolahan, "it might aswell be the Inspector that came in the office, asking for the pin, an'if that was the way we might all go under the sod! Sich a mee-aw!"

"Musha! Musha!" breathed, prayerfully, one of the shawled women. 

At this juncture I mounted on an up-ended barrel to investigate apromising lair above my head, and from this altitude was unexpectedlypresented with a bird's-eye view of a hat with a silver band inside therailed and curtained "snug". I descended swiftly, not without animpression of black bottles on the snug table, and Katty Ann here slidin from the search in the cow-house. 

[Illustration: "MUSHA! MUSHA!"]

"'Twasn't in it, " she whined, "nor I didn't put it in it. "

"For a pinny I'd give ye a slap in the jaw!" said Mr. Coolahan withsudden and startling ferocity. 

"That the Lord Almighty might take me to Himself!" reiterated Mrs. Coolahan, while the search spread upwards through the house. 

"Look here!" said Robert abruptly, "this business is going on for aweek. I'm going for the things myself. "

Neither I nor my remonstrances overtook him till he was well out intothe street. There, outside the Coolahan door, was the Dean's inside car, resting on its shafts; while the black horse, like his driver, restoredhimself elsewhere beneath the Coolahan roof. Robert paid no heed to itssilent warning. 

"I must go myself. If I had forty pencils I couldn't explain to Juliathe flies that I want!"

There comes, with the most biddable of men, a moment when argumentfails, the moment of dead pull, when the creature perceives his ownstrength, and the astute will give in, early and imperceptibly, in orderthat he may not learn it beyond forgetting. 

The only thing left to be done now was to accompany Robert, to avertwhat might be irretrievable disaster. It was now half-past one, and thethree mutton chops and the stewed gooseberries must have long sinceyielded their uttermost to our guests. The latter would therefore havereturned to the drawing-room, where it was possible that one or more ofthem might go to sleep. Remembering that the chops were loin-chops, wemight at all events hope for some slight amount of lethargy. Again wewaded through the nettles, we scaled the garden-wall, and worked our waybetween it and the laurestinas towards the door opposite the kitchen. 'There remained between us and the house an open space of about fifteenyards, fully commanded by the drawing-room window, veiling which, however, the lace curtains met in reassuring stillness. We rushed theinterval, and entered the house softly. Here we were instantly met byJulia, with her mouth full, and a cup of tea in her hand. She drew usinto the kitchen. 

"Where are they, Julia?" I whispered. "Have they had lunch?"

"Is it lunch?" replied Julia, through bread and butter; "there isn't abit in the house but they have it ate! And the eggs I had for thefast-day for myself, didn't That One"--I knew this to indicate MissMcEvoy--"ax an omelette from me when she seen she had no more to get!"

"Are they out of the dining-room?" broke in Robert. 

"Faith, they are. 'Twas no good for them to stay in it! That One's lyingup on the sofa in the dhrawing-room like any owld dog, and the Dane andMrs. Doherty's dhrinking hot water--they have bad shtomachs, thecraytures. "

Robert opened the kitchen door and crept towards the dining-room, wherein, not long before the alarm, had been gathered all theessentials of the expedition. I followed him. I have never committed aburglary, but since the moment when I creaked past the drawing-roomdoor, foretasting the instant when it would open, my sympathies arededicated to burglars. 

In two palpitating journeys we removed from the dining-room ourbelongings, and placed them in the kitchen; silence, fraught with direpossibilities, still brooded over the drawing-room. Could they all beasleep, or was Miss McEvoy watching us through the keyhole? Thereremained only my hat, which was upstairs, and at this, the last moment, Robert remembered his fly-book, left under the clock in the dining-room. I again passed the drawing-room in safety, and got upstairs, Roberteffecting at the same moment his third entry into the dining-room. I wasin the act of thrusting in the second hat pin when I heard thedrawing-room door open. I admit that, obeying the primary instinct ofself-preservation, my first impulse was to lock myself in; it passed, aided by the recollection that there was no key. I made for the landing, and from thence viewed, in a species of trance, Miss McEvoy crossing thehall and entering the dining-room. A long and deathly pause followed. She was a small woman; had Robert strangled her? After two or threehorrible minutes a sound reached me, the well-known rattle of theside-board drawer. All then was well--Miss McEvoy was probably lookingfor the biscuits, and Robert must have escaped in time through thewindow. I took my courage in both hands and glided downstairs. As Iplaced my foot on the oilcloth of the hall, I was confronted by thenightmare spectacle of my brother creeping towards me on all-foursthrough the open door of the dining-room, and then, crowning thisalready over-loaded moment, there arose a series of yells from MissMcEvoy as blood-curdling as they were excusable, yet, as even in mymaniac flight to the kitchen I recognised, something muffled by Mariebiscuit. 

It seems to me that the next incident was the composite and shatteringcollision of Robert, Julia and myself in the scullery doorway, followedby the swift closing of the scullery-door upon us by Julia; then thevoice of the Dean of Glengad, demanding from the house at large anexplanation, in a voice of cathedral severity. Miss McEvoy's reply wasto us about as coherent as the shrieks of a parrot, but we plainly heardJulia murmur in the kitchen:--

"May the devil choke ye!"

Then again the Dean, this time near the kitchen door. "Julia! Where isthe man who was secreted under the dinner-table?"

I gripped Robert's arm. The issues of life and death were now in Julia'shands. 

"Is it who was in the dining-room, your Reverence?" asked Julia, intones of respectful honey; "sure that was the carpenter's boy, that cameto quinch a rat-hole. Sure we're destroyed with rats. "

"But, " pursued the Dean, raising his voice to overcome Miss McEvoy'scontinuous screams of explanation to Mrs. Doherty, "I understand that heleft the room on his hands and knees. He must have been drunk!"

"Ah, not at all, your Reverence, " replied Julia, with almostcompassionate superiority, "sure that poor boy is the gentlest craytureever came into a house. I suppose 'tis what it was he was ashamed likewhen Miss McEvoy comminced to screech, and faith he never stopped norstayed till he ran out of the house like a wild goose!"

We heard the Dean reascend the kitchen steps, and make a statement ofwhich the words "drink" and "Dora" alone reached us. The drawing-roomdoor closed, and in the release from tension I sank heavily down upon aheap of potatoes. The wolf of laughter that had been gnawing at myvitals broke loose. 

"Why did you go out of the room on your hands and knees?" I moaned, rolling in anguish on the potatoes. 

"I got under the table when I heard the brute coming, " said Robert, with the crossness of reaction from terror, "then she settled down toeat biscuits, and I thought I could crawl out without her seeing me"

"_Ye can come out_!" said Julia's mouth, appearing at a crack of thescullery door, "I have as many lies told for ye--God forgive me!--as'dbog a noddy!"

This mysterious contingency might have impressed us more had the artistbeen able to conceal her legitimate pride in her handiwork. We emergedfrom the chill and varied smells of the scullery, retaining justsufficient social self-control to keep us from flinging ourselves withgrateful tears upon Julia's neck. Shaken as we were, the expeditionstill lay open before us; the game was in our hands. We were winning bytricks, and Julia held all the honours. 

PART II

Perhaps it was the clinging memory of the fried pork, perhaps it wasbecause all my favourite brushes were standing in a mug of soft soap onmy washing stand, or because Robert had in his flight forgotten toreplenish his cigarette case, but there was no doubt but that theexpedition languished. 

There was no fault to be found with the setting. The pool in which theriver coiled itself under the pine-trees was black and brimming, thefish were rising at the flies that wrought above it, like a spotted netveil in hysterics, the distant hills lay in sleepy undulations of everyshade of blue, the grass was warm, and not unduly peopled with ants. Butsome impalpable blight was upon us. I ranged like a lost soul along thebanks of the river--a lost soul that is condemned to bear a burden ofsome two stone of sketching materials, and a sketching umbrella with adefective joint--in search of a point of view that for ever eluded me. Robert cast his choicest flies, with delicate quiverings, withcoquettish withdrawals; had they been cannon-balls they could hardlyhave had a more intimidating effect upon the trout. Where Robert fisheda Sabbath stillness reigned, beyond that charmed area they rose likenotes of exclamation in a French novel. I was on the whole inclined totrace these things back to the influence of the pork, working on systemsweakened by shock; but Robert was not in the mood to trace them toanything. Unsuccessful fishermen are not fond of introspectivesuggestions. The member of the expedition who enjoyed himself beyond anyquestion was Mrs. Coolahan's car-horse. Having been taken out of theshafts on the road above the river, he had with his harness on hisback, like Horatius, unhesitatingly lumbered over a respectable bank andditch in the wake of Croppy, who had preceded him with the reins. He wasnow grazing luxuriously along the river's edge, while his driver smoked, no less luxuriously, in the background. 

"Will I carry the box for ye, Miss?" Croppy inquired compassionately, stuffing his lighted pipe into his pocket, as I drifted desolately pasthim. "Sure you're killed with the load you have! This is a rough owldplace for a lady to be walkin'. Sit down, Miss. God knows you have aright to be tired. "

It seemed that with Croppy also the day was dragging, doubtless he toohad lunched on Mrs. Coolahan's pork. He planted my camp-stool and I sankupon it. 

"Well, now, for all it's so throublesome, " he resumed, "I'd say paintingwas a nice thrade. There was a gintleman here one time that was apainther--I used to be dhrivin' him. Faith! there wasn't a place in thecounthry but he had it pathrolled. He seen me mother one day--cleaningfish, I b'lieve she was, below on the quay--an' nothing would howld himbut he should dhraw out her picture!" Croppy laughed unfilially. "Well, me mother was mad. 'To the divil I pitch him!' says she; 'if I wants mephotograph drew out I'm liable to pay for it, ' says she, 'an' not to bestuck up before the ginthry to be ped for the like o' that!' 'Tis for;you bein' so handsome!' says I to her. She was black mad altogetherthen. 'If that's the way, ' says she, 'it's a wondher he wouldn't axyerself, ye rotten little rat, ' says she, 'in place of thrying could hemake a show of yer poor little ugly little cock-nosed mother!' 'Faith!'says I to her, 'I wouldn't care if the divil himself axed it, if he giveme a half-crown and nothing to do but to be sittin' down!'"

The tale may or may not have been intended to have a personalapplication, but Croppy's fat scarlet face and yellow moustache, bristling beneath a nose which he must have inherited from his mother, did not lend themselves to a landscape background, and I fell tofugitive pencil sketches of the old white car-horse as he grazed roundus. It was thus that I first came to notice a fact whose bearing uponour fortunes I was far from suspecting. The old horse's harness was ofdingy brown leather, with dingier brass mountings; it had beenfrequently mended, in varying shades of brown, and, in remarkablecontrast to the rest of the outfit, the breeching was of solid andwell-polished black leather, with silver buckles. It was not so much thediscrepancy of the breeching as its respectability that jarred upon me;finally I commented upon it to Croppy. 

[Illustration: "CROPPY. "]

His cap was tilted over the maternal nose, he glanced at me sidewaysfrom under its peak. 

"Sure the other breechin' was broke, and if that owld shkin was to gothe lin'th of himself without a breechin' on him he'd break all beforehim! There was some fellas took him to a funeral one time without abreechin' on him, an' when he seen the hearse what did he do but to riseup in the sky. "

Wherein lay the moral support of a breeching in such a contingency it ishard to say. I accepted the fact without comment, and expressed a regretthat we had not been indulged with the entire set of black harness. 

Croppy measured me with his eye, grinned bashfully, and said:--

"Sure it's the Dane's breechin' we have, Miss! I daresay he'd hardly gethome at all if we took any more from him!"

The Dean's breeching! For an instant a wild confusion of ideas deprivedme of the power of speech. I could only hope that Croppy had left himhis gaiters! Then I pulled myself together. 

"Croppy, " I said in consternation, "how did you get it? Did you borrowit from the coachman?"

"Is it the coachman!" said Croppy tranquilly. "I did not, Miss. Sure hewas asleep in the snug. "

"But can they get home without it?"

A sudden alarm chilled me to the marrow. 

"Arrah, why not, Miss? That black horse of the Dane's wouldn't care ifthere was nothing at all on him!"

I heard Robert reeling in his line--had he a fish? Or, better still, hadhe made up his mind to go home?

As a matter of fact, neither was the case; Robert was merely fractious, and in that particular mood when he wished to have his mindimperceptibly made up for him, while prepared to combat any directsuggestion. From what quarter the ignoble proposition that we should gohome arose is immaterial. It is enough to say that Robert believed it tobe his own, and that, before he had time to reconsider the question, thetactful Croppy had crammed the old white horse into the shafts of thecar. 

It was by this time past five o'clock, and a threatening range of cloudswas rising from seaward across the west. Things had been against us fromthe first, and if the last stone in the sling of Fate was that we wereto be wet through before we got home, it would be no more than Iexpected. The old horse, however, addressed himself to the eight Irishmiles that lay between him and home with unexpected vivacity. We swungin the ruts, we shook like jellies on the merciless patches of brokenstones, and Croppy stimulated the pace with weird whistlings throughhis teeth, and heavy prods with the butt of his whip in the region ofthe borrowed breeching. 

Now that the expedition had been shaken off and cast behind us, thehumbler possibilities of the day began to stretch out alluring hands. There was the new box from the library; there was the afternoon post;there was a belated tea, with a peaceful fatigue to endear all. Wereached at last the welcome turn that brought us into the coast road. Wewere but three miles now from that happy home from which we had beendriven forth, years ago as it seemed, at such desperate hazard. We drovepleasantly along the road at the top of the cliffs. The wind was behindus; a rising tide plunged and splashed far below. It was already raininga little, enough to justify our sagacity in leaving the river, enough tolend a touch of passion to the thought of home and Julia. 

The grey horse began to lean back against the borrowed breeching, thechains of the traces clanked loosely. We had begun the long zig-zagslant down to the village. We swung gallantly round the sharp turnhalf-way down the hill. 

And there, not fifty yards away, was the Dean's inside car, labouringslowly, inevitably, up to meet us. Even in that stupefying moment I wasaware that the silver-banded hat was at a most uncanonical angle. Behind me on the car was stowed my sketching umbrella; I tore it fromthe retaining embrace of the camp-stool, and unfurled its unwieldy tentwith a speed that I have never since achieved. Robert, on the far sideof the car, was reasonably safe. The inestimable Croppy quickened up. Cowering beneath the umbrella, I awaited the crucial moment at which toshift its protection from the side to the back. The sound of theapproaching wheels told me that it had almost arrived, and then, suddenly, without a note of warning, there came a scurry of hoofs, agrinding of wheels, and a confused outcry of voices. A violent jerknearly pitched me off the car, as Croppy dragged the white horse intothe opposite bank; the umbrella flew from my hand and revealed to me theDean's bearded coachman sitting on the road scarcely a yard from myfeet, uttering large and drunken shouts, while the covered car hurriedback towards the village with the unforgettable yell of Miss McEvoybursting from its curtained rear. The black horse was not absolutelyrunning away, but he was obviously alarmed, and with the long hillbefore him anything might happen. 

"They're dead! They're dead!" said Croppy, with philosophic calm; "'twasthe parasol started him. "

As he spoke, the black horse stumbled, the laden car ran on top of himlike a landslip, and, with an abortive flounder, he collapsed beneathit. Once down, he lay, after the manner of his kind, like a dead thing, and the covered car, propped on its shafts, presented its open mouth tothe heavens. Even as I sped headlong to the rescue in the wake of Robertand Croppy, I fore-knew that Fate had after all been too many for us, and when, an instant later, I seated myself in the orthodox manner uponthe black horse's winker, and perceived that one of the shafts wasbroken, I was already, in spirit, making up beds with Julia for thereception of the party. 

To this mental picture the howls of Miss McEvoy during the process ofextraction from the covered car lent a pleasing reality. 

Only those who have been in a covered car under similar circumstancescan at all appreciate the difficulty of getting out of it. It has once, in the streets of Cork, happened to me, and I can best compare it toescaping from the cabin of a yacht without the aid of a companionladder. From Robert I can only collect the facts that the door jammed, and that, at a critical juncture, Miss McEvoy had put her arms round hisneck. 

 * * * * *

The programme that Fate had ordained was carried out to its ultimateitem. The party from the Deanery of Glengad spent the night at WavecrestCottage, attired by subscription, like the converts of a Mission; Ispent it in the attic, among trunks of Aunt Dora's old clothes, andrats; Robert, who throughout had played an unworthy part, in the nightmail to Dublin, called away for twenty-four hours on a pretext thatwould not have deceived an infant a week old. 

Croppy was firm and circumstantial in laying the blame on me and thesketching umbrella. 

"Sure, I seen the horse wondhering at it an' he comin' up the hill tous. 'Twas that turned him. "

The dissertation in which the Dean's venerable coachman made the entiredisaster hinge upon the theft of the breeching was able, but cannotconveniently be here set down. 

For my part, I hold with Julia. 

"'Twas Helayna gave the dhrink to the Dane's coachman! The low cursédthing! There isn't another one in the place that'd do it! I'm told thepriest was near breaking his umbrella on her over it. "

"MATCHBOX"

It was the event of Mr. John Denny's life that he valued highest. It istwenty years now since it took place, and many other things havehappened to him, such as going to England to give evidence in theParnell Commission, and matrimony, and taking the second prize in theLightweight Hunter Class at the Dublin Horse Show. But none of them, noteven the trip to London, possesses quite the same fortunate blend of thesublime and the ridiculous that gives this incident such a perennialsuccess at the Hunt and Agricultural Show dinners which are the dazzlingbreaks in the monotony of Mr. Denny's life, and he prized itaccordingly. 

Mr. Johnny Denny--or Dinny Johnny as he was known to his wittierfriends--was a young man of the straightest sect of the Cork buckeens, abody whose importance justifies perhaps a particular description of oneof their number. His profession was something imperceptibly connectedwith the County Grand Jury Office, and was quite over-shadowed in winterby the gravities of hunting, and in summer by the gallantries of theMilitia training; for, like many of his class, he was a captain in theMilitia. He was always neatly dressed; his large moustache looked as ifit shared with his boots the attention of the blacking brush. No cavalrysergeant in Ballincollig had a more delicately bowed leg, nor anycreature, except, perhaps, a fox-terrier interviewing a rival, a moreconsummate swagger. He knew every horse and groom in all the leadinglivery stables, and, in moments of expansion, would volunteer to namethe price at which any given animal could be safeguarded from any givenveterinary criticism. With all these not specially attractive qualities, however, Dinny Johnny was, and is, a good fellow in his way. His temperwas excellent, his courage indisputable; he has never been known to giveany horse--not even a hireling--less than fair play, and a tendency toride too close to hounds has waned since time, like an Irish elector, has taken to emphasising himself by throwing stones, and Dinny Johnny, once ten stone, now admits to riding 13. 7. 

In those days, before the inertia that creeps like mildew over countryhouseholders had begun to form, Mr. Denny was in the habit of makingoccasional excursions into remote parts of the County Cork in search ofthose flowers of pony perfection that are supposed to blush unseen inany sufficiently mountainous and unknown country, and the belief inwhich is the touch of wild poetry that keeps alive the soul of theamateur horse coper. He had never met the pony of his dreams, but he hadnot lost faith in it, and though he would range through the Bantry fairwith a sour eye, behind the sourness there was ever a kindling spark ofhope. 

Towards the end of October, in the year '83, Mr. Denny received aninvitation from an old friend to go down to "the West"--thus are thoseregions east of the moon, and west of the sun, and south-west ofDrimoleague Junction, designated in the tongue of Cork civilisation--to"look at a colt, " and with a saddle and bridle in the netting and atooth-brush in his pocket he set his face for the wilderness. I have notime to linger over the circumstances of the deal. Suffice it to saythat, after an arduous haggle, Mr. Denny bought the colt, and set forththe same day to ride him by easy stages to his future home. 

It was a wet day, wet with the solid determination of a western day, andthe loaded clouds were flinging their burden down on the furze, and therocks, and the steep, narrow road, with vindictive ecstacy. They alsoflung it upon Mr. Denny, and both he and his new purchase were glad tofind a temporary shelter in one of the many public-houses of a villageon the line of march. He was sitting warming himself at an indifferentturf fire, and drinking a tumbler of hot punch, when the sound of loudvoices outside drew him to the window. In front of a semi-circle of bluefrieze coats, brown frieze trousers and slouched black felt hats, stooda dejected grey pony, with a woman at its head and a lanky young man onits back; and it was obvious to Mr. Denny that a transaction, of an evenmore fervid sort than that in which he had recently engaged, was toward. 

"Fifteen pound!" screamed the woman, darting a black head on the end ofa skinny neck out of the projecting hood of her cloak with the swiftnessof a lizard; "fifteen pound, James Hallahane, and the divil burn theha'penny less that I'll take for her!"

The elderly man to whom this was addressed continued to gaze steadily atthe ground, and turning his head slightly away, spat unostentatiously. The other men moved a little, vaguely, and one said in a tone of remotesoliloquy:--

"She wouldn't go tin pound in Banthry fair. "

"Tin pound!" echoed the pony's owner shrilly. "Ah, God help ye, poorman! Here, Patsey, away home wid ye out o' this. It'll be night, anddark night itself before--"

"I'll give ye eleven pounds, " said James Hallahane, addressing the toesof his boots. The young man on the pony turned a questioning eye towardshis mother, but her sole response was a drag at the pony's head to setit going; swinging her cloak about her, she paddled through the slushtowards the gate, supremely disregarding the fact that a gander, havingnerved himself and his harem to the charge, had caught the ragged skirtof her dress in his beak, and being too angry to let go, was beingwhirled out of the yard in her train. 

Dinny Johnny ran to the door, moved by an impulse for which I think thehot whisky and water must have been responsible. 

"I'll give you twelve pounds for the pony, ma'am!" he called out. 

A quarter of an hour later, when he and the publican were tying atow-rope round the pony's lean neck, Mr. Denny was aware of a sinking ofthe heart as he surveyed his bargain. It looked, and was, an utterlydegraded little object, as it stood with its tail tucked in between itsdrooping hindquarters, and the rain running in brown streams down itslegs. Its lips were decorated with the absurd, the almost incrediblemoustache that is the consequence among Irish horses of a furze diet (Iwould hesitatingly direct the attention of the male youth of Britain tothis singular but undoubted fact), and although the hot whisky andwater had not exaggerated the excellence of its shoulder and the ironsoundness of its legs, it had certainly reversed the curve of its neckand levelled the corrugations of its ribs. 

"You could strike a bally match on her, this minute, if it wasn't sowet!" thought Mr. Denny, and with the simple humour that endeared him tohis friends he christened the pony "Matchbox" on the spot. 

"And it's to make a hunther of her ye'd do?" said the publican, pullinghard at the knot of the tow-rope. "Begor', I know that one. If there wasforty men and their wives, and they after her wid sticks, she wouldn'tlep a sod o' turf. Well, safe home, sir, safe home, and mind out shewouldn't kick ye. She's a cross thief, " and with this valediction DinnyJohnny went on his way. 

There was no disputing the fact of the pony's crossness. 

"She's sourish-like in her timper, " Jimmy, Mr. Denny's head man, observed to his subordinate not long after the arrival, and thesubordinate, tenderly stroking a bruised knee, replied:--

"Sour! I niver see the like of her! Be gannies, the divil's always busywith her!"

On one point, however, the grey pony proved better than had beenanticipated. Without the intervention of the forty married couples shetook to jumping at once. 

"It comes as aisy to her as lies to a tinker, " said Jimmy to acriticising friend; "the first day ever I had her out on a string shewint up to the big bounds fence between us and Barrett's as indipindantas if she was going to her bed; and she jumped it as flippant and ascrabbéd--By dam, she's as crabbéd as a monkey!"

In those days Mr. Standish O'Grady, popularly known as "Owld Sta', " hadthe hounds, and it need scarcely be said that Mr. Denny was one of hismost faithful followers. This season he had not done as well as usual. The colt was only turning out moderately, and though the pony wasundoubtedly both crabbéd and flippant, she could not be expected to domuch with nearly twelve stone on her back. It happened, therefore, thatMr. Denny took his pleasure a little sadly, with his loins girded inmomentary expectation of trouble, and of a sudden refusal from the coltto jump until the crowd of skirters and gap-hunters drew round, andescape was impossible until Mrs. Tom Graves's splinty old carriage horsehad ploughed its way through the bank, and all those whom he mostcontemned had flaunted through the breach in front of him. He rode thepony now and then, but he more often lent her to little Mary O'Grady, "Owld Sta's" untidy, red-cheeked, blue-eyed, and quite uneducatedlittle girl. It was probable that Mary could only just write her name, and it was obvious that she could not do her hair; but she was afraid ofnothing that went on four legs--in Ireland, at least--and she had thedivine gift of "hands". From the time when she was five, up till now, when she was fifteen, Mr. Denny had been her particular adherent, andnow he found a chastened pleasure in having his eye wiped by Mary, onthe grey pony; moreover, experience showed him that if anything wouldpersuade the colt to jump freely, it was getting a lead from the littlemare. 

"Upon my soul, she wasn't such a bad bargain after all, " he thought onepleasant December day as he jogged to the Meet, leading "Matchbox, " whowas fidgeting along beside him with an expression of such shrewishnessas can only be assumed by a pony mare; "if it wasn't that Mary likesriding her I'd make her up a bit and she'd bring thirty-five anywhere. "

There had been, that autumn, a good deal of what was euphemisticallydescribed as "trouble" in that district of the County Cork which Mr. Denny and the Kilcronan hounds graced with their society, and when Mr. O'Grady and his field assembled at the Curragh-coolaghy cross-roads, itwas darkly hinted that if the hounds ran over a certain farm not farfrom the covert, there might be more trouble. 

Dinny Johnny, occupied with pulling up Mary O'Grady's saddle girths, andevading the snaps with which "Matchbox" acknowledged the attention, thought little of these rumours. 

"Nonsense!" he said; "whatever they do they'll let the hounds alone. Come on, Mary, you and me'll sneak down to the north side of the wood. He's bound to break there, and we've got to take every chance we canget. "

Curragh-coolaghy covert was a large, ill-kept plantation that straggledover a long hillside fighting with furze-bushes and rocks for the rightof possession; a place wherein the young hounds could catch and eatrabbits to their heart's content comfortably aware that the net ofbrambles that stretched from tree to tree would effectually screen themfrom punishment. From its north-east side a fairly smooth countrytrended down to a river, and if the fox did not fulfil Mr. Denny'sexpectations by breaking to the north, the purplish patch that showedwhere, on the further side of the river, Madore Wood lay, looked a pointfor which he would be likely to make. Conscious of an act which he wouldhave loudly condemned in any one else, Mr. Denny, followed by Mary, likehis shadow, rode quietly round the long flank of the covert to thenorth-east corner. They sat in perfect stillness for a few minutes, andthen there came a rustling on the inside of the high, bracken-fringedfence which divided them from the covert. Then a countryman's voice saidin a cautious whisper:--

"Did he put in the hounds yit?"

"He did, " said another voice, "he put them in the soud-aisht side;they'll be apt to get it soon. "

"Get what?" thought Dinny Johnny, all his bristles rising in wrath asthe idea of a drag came to him. 

"There! they're noising now!" said the first voice, while a whimper ortwo came from far back in the wood. "Maybe there'll not be so much chatout o' thim afther once they'll git to Madore!"

"'Twas a pity Scanlan wouldn't put the mate in here and have done withit, " said the second voice. "Owld Sta'll niver let them run a dhrag. "

"Yirrah, what dhrag man! 'Twas the fox himself they had, and he cut opento make a good thrail, and the way Scanlan laid it the devil himselfwouldn't know 'twas a dhrag, and they have little Danny Casey below toscreech he seen the fox--"

At the same instant the whimpers swelled into a far-away chorus, thatgrew each moment fainter and more faint. Much as Mr. Denny desired toundertake the capture of the imparters of these interesting facts, heknew that he had now no time to attempt it, and, with a shout to Mary, he started the colt at full gallop up the rough hillside, round thecovert, while the grey pony scuttled after him as nimbly as a rabbit. The colt seemed to realise the stress of the occasion, and jumpedsteadily enough; but the last fence on to the road was too much for hisnerves, and, having swerved from it with discomposing abruptness, hefell to his wonted tactics of rearing and backing. 

Mr. Denny permitted himself one minute in which to establish thefruitlessness of spurs, whip and blasphemy in this emergency, and then, descending to his own legs, he climbed over the fence into the road andran as fast as boots and tops would let him towards the point whence thecry of the hounds was coming, ever more and more faintly. In a moment ortwo he returned, out of breath, to where the faithful Mary awaited him. 

"It's no good, Mary, " he said, wiping the perspiration from hisforehead; "they're running like blazes to the south along through thefurze. I suppose the devils took it that way to humbug your father, andthen they'll turn for the bridge and run into Madore; and there's theend of the hounds. "

Mary, who regarded the hounds as the chief, if not the only, object ofexistence, looked at him with scared eyes, while the colour died out ofher round cheeks. 

"Will they be poisoned, Mr. Denny?" she gasped. 

"Every man jack of them, if your father doesn't twig it's a drag, andwhip 'em off, " replied Mr. Denny, with grim brevity. 

"Couldn't we catch them up?" cried Mary, almost incoherent fromexcitement and horror. 

"They've gone half-a-mile by this, and that brute, " this with an eye ofconcentrated hatred at the colt, "won't jump a broom-stick. "

"But let me try, " urged Mary, maddened by the assumption of masculinecalm which Mr. Denny's despair had taken on; "or--oh, Mr. Denny, if yourode 'Matchbox' yourself straight to Madore across the river, you'd bein time to whip them off!"

"By Jove!" said Dinny Johnny, and was silent. I believe that was themoment at which the identity of the future Mrs. Denny was made clear tohim. 

"And you'll have to ride her in my saddle!" went on Mary at lightningspeed, taking control of the situation in a manner prophetic of herfuture successful career as a matron. "There isn't time to change--"

"The devil I shall!" said Dinny Johnny, and an unworthy thought of whathis friends would say flitted across his mind. 

"And you'll have to sit sideways, because the lowest crutch is so farback there's not room for your leg if you sit saddleways, " continued hispreceptor breathlessly. "I know it--Jimmy said so when he rode her tothe meet for me last week. Oh hurry--hurry! How slow you are!"

Mr. Denny never quite knew how he got into the horrors of the saddle, still less how he and "Matchbox" got into the road. At one acute moment, indeed, he had believed he was going to precede her thither, but theyalighted more or less together, and turning her, by a handy gap, intothe field on the other side of the road, he set off at a precariousgallop, followed by the encouraging shrieks of Mary. 

"Thank the Lord there's no one looking, and it's a decent old saddlewith a pommel on the offside, " he said to himself piously, while hegrasped the curving snout of the pommel in question, "I'd be a dead manthis minute only for that. "

He felt as though he were wedged in among the claws of a giant crab, butwithout the sense of retention that might be hoped for under suchcircumstances. The lowest crutch held one leg in aching durance; therewas but just room for the other between the two upper horns, and thesaddle was so short and hollow in the seat that its high-ridged cantlewas the only portion from which he derived any support--a support thatwas suddenly and painfully experienced after each jump. He could see, very far off, the pink coat of "Owld Sta'" following a line which seemedeach moment to be turning more directly for Madore, and in his agony hegave the pony an imprudent dig of the spur that sent her on and off aboggy fence in two goat-like bounds, and gave the sunlight opportunityto play intermittently upon the hollow seat of the saddle. She had nevercarried him so well, and as she put her little head down and raced atthe fences, the unfortunate Dinny Johnny felt that though he wasprobably going to break his neck, no one would ever be able to mentionhis early demise without a grin. 

Field after field fled by him in painful succession till he foundhimself safe on the farther side of a big stone-faced "double, " the lastfence before the river. 

"Please God I'll never be a woman again!" ejaculated Mr. Denny as hewedged his left leg more tightly in behind the torturing leaping horn, "that was a hairy old place! I wish Mary saw the pair of us coming up onto it like new-born stags!"

Had Mary seen him and "Matchbox" a moment later, emerging separatelyfrom a hole in mid stream, her respect might not have prevented herfrom laughing, but the fact remains that the pair got across somehow. At the top of the hill beyond the river Dinny Johnny saw the hounds forthe first time. They had checked on the road by the bridge, but now heheard them throwing their tongues as they hit the line again, the fatalline that was leading them to the covert. Even at this moment, Mr. Dennycould not restrain an admiration that would appear to most peopleill-timed. 

"Aren't they going the hell of a docket!" he exclaimed fondly, "and goodold Chantress leading the lot of them, the darling! It'll be a queerthing now, if I don't get there in time!"

Blown though the pony was, he knew instinctively that he had not yetcome to the end of her, and he drove her along at a canter until hereached a lane that encircled the covert, along which he would have togo to intercept the hounds. As he jumped into it he was suddenly awareof a yelling crowd of men and boys, who seemed, with nightmareunexpectedness, to fill all the lane behind him. He knew what they werethere for, and oblivious of the lamentable absurdity of his appearance, he turned and roared out a defiance as he clattered at full speed downthe stony lane. It seemed like another and almost expected episode inthe nightmare when he became aware of a barricade of stones, builtacross the road to a height of about four feet, with along the top ofit--raising it to what, on a fourteen hand pony, looked likeimpossibility--the branch of a fir-tree, with all its bristling twigsleft on it. 

He heard the cry of the hounds clearly now; they were within a couple offields of the covert. Dinny Johnny drove his left spur into the littlemare's panting side, let go the crutch, took hold of her head in the waythat is unmistakable, and faced her at the barricade. As he did so acountryman sprang up at his right hand and struck furiously at him witha heavy potato spade. The blow was aimed at Dinny Johnny, but the momentwas miscalculated, and it fell on "Matchbox" instead. The sharp bladegashed her hind quarter, but with a spring like a frightened deer sherose to the jump. For one supreme moment Dinny Johnny thought she hadcleared it, but at the next her hind legs had caught in the branch, andwith a jerk that sent her rider flying over her head, she fell in a heapon the road. Fortunately for Mr. Denny, he was a proficient in the artof falling, and though his hands were cut, and blood was streaming downhis face, he was able to struggle up, and run on towards the cry of thehounds. There was still time; panting and dizzy, and half-blinded withhis own blood, he knew that there was still time, and he laboured on, heedless of everything but the hounds. A high wall divided the covertfrom the lane, and he could see the gate that was the sole entrance tothe wood on this side standing open. It was an iron gate, very high, with close upright iron bars and Chantress was racing him to get therefirst, Chantress, with all the pack at her heels. 

 * * * * *

Dinny Johnny won. It was a very close thing between him and Chantress, and that good hound's valuable nose came near being caught as the gatesclanged together, but Dinny Johnny was in first. Then he flung himselfat the pack, whipping, slashing, and swearing like a madman, as indeedhe was for the moment. He had often whipped for Mr. O'Grady, and thehounds knew him, but without the solid abetting of the wall and thegate, he would have had but a poor chance. As it was, he whipped themback into the field up which they had run, and as he did so, "Owld Sta'"came puffing up the hill, with about a dozen of the field hard at hisheels. 

"Poison!" gasped Dinny Johnny, falling down at full length on the grass, "the wood's poisoned!"

When they went back to look for "Matchbox" she was still lying in thebohireen. Her bridle had vanished, and so had the pursuing countrymen. Mary O'Grady's saddle was broken, and could never be used again, and nomore could "Matchbox, " because she had broken her neck. 

And so the hounds, whom she had saved, subsequently ate her; but one ofher little hoofs commemorates her name, and as Mr. Denny, with itsassistance, lights his after-dinner pipe, he often heaves an appropriatesigh, and remarks: "Well, Mary, we'll never get the like of that ponyagain". 

"AS I WAS GOING TO BANDON FAIR"

The first glimpse was worthy the best traditions of an Irish horse-fair. The train moved slowly across a bridge; beneath it lay the principalstreet of Bandon, seething with horses, loud with voices, and as theengine-driver, with the stern humour of his kind, let loose the usualassortment of sounds, it seemed as though the roadway below boiled over. Horses reared, plunged and stampeded, while high above the head of along-tailed chestnut a countryman floated forth into space, a vision, inits brief perfectness, delightfully photographed on the retina. 

From the moment of leaving the railway station the fair was allpervading. It appeared that the whole district had turned horse dealer. The cramped side pavements of the town failed to accommodate theceaseless promenade of those whose sole business lay in criticising thecompanion promenade of horses in the narrow street. They haled horsesbefore them with the aplomb of a colonel of cavalry buying remounts. 

"Hi! bay horse! Pull in here! Foxy mare! Hi, boy, bring up that foxymare!"

The ensuing comments, though mainly of a damaging nature, wereunderstood on both sides to be no more than conventional dismissals. Thebay horse and the foxy mare were re-absorbed in the stream; theircritics directed their attentions elsewhere with unquenched assiduity. 

It is the truest, most changeless trait of Irish character, the desireto stand well with the horse, to be his confidant, his physician, hisexponent. It is comparable to the inborn persuasion in the heart ofevery man that he is a judge of wine. 

The procession of horses in the long, narrow street makes the brainswim. Hardly has the eye taken in the elderly and astute hunter with thefired hocks, whose forelegs look best in action, when it is dazzled bythe career of a cart-horse, scourged to a mighty canter by a boy with arope's end, or it is horrified by the hair-breadth escape of a group ofhooded countrywomen from before the neighing charge of a two-year-old ina halter and string. Yet these things are the mere preliminary to thefair. At the end of the town a gap broken in a fence admits to a longfield on a hillside. The entrance is perilous, and before it is achievedmay involve more than one headlong flight to the safe summit of afriendly wall, as the young horses protest, and whirl, and buck with theusual fatuity of their kind. Once within the fair field there befal theenticements of the green apple, of the dark-complexioned sweetmeattemptingly denominated "Peggy's leg, " of the "crackers"--that is, aconfection resembling dog biscuit sown with caraway seeds--and, aboveall, of the "crubeens, " which, being interpreted, means "pigs' feet, "slightly salted, boiled, cold, wholly abominable. Here also is thethree-card trick, demonstrated by a man with the incongruous accent ofWhitechapel and a defiant eye, that even through the glaze of the secondstage of drunkenness held the audience and yet was 'ware of thedisposition of the nine of hearts. Here is the drinking booth, and heresundry itinerant vendors of old clothes, and--of all improbablecommodities to be found at a horse-fair--wall-paper. Neither has muchsuccess. The old-clothes woman casts down a heap of singularly repellantrags before a disparaging customer; she beats them with her fists, presumably to show their soundness in wind and limb: a cloud ofgerm-laden dust arises. 

"Arrah!" she says; "the divil himself wouldn't plaze ye in clothes. "

The wall-paper man is not more fortunate. "Look at that for a natepatthern!" he says ecstatically, "that'd paper a bed! Come now, ma'am, wan an' thrippence!"

The would-be purchaser silently tests it with a wrinkled finger andthumb, and shakes her head. 

"Well, I declare to ye now, that's a grand paper. If ye papered a roomwith that and put a hen in it she'd lay four eggs!" But not even theconsideration of its value as an æsthetic stimulant can compass thesale of the one-and-threepenny wall-paper. 

Down at this end of the fair field congregate the three-year-olds andtwo-year-olds; they pierce the air with their infant squeals and neighs, they stamp, and glare, and strike attitudes with absurd statuesqueness, while their owners sit on a bank above them, playing them like fish onthe end of a long rope, and fabling forth their perfections withtireless fancy. The perils of the way increase at every moment. In andout among the restless heels the onlooker must steer his course, up intothe ampler space on the hill-top, where the horses stand in more openorder and a general view is possible. 

Much may be learned at Bandon Fair of how the County Cork hunter isarrived at, of the Lord Hastings colt out of a high-bred Victor mare; ofNew Laund, of Speculation, of Whalebone, of the ancient and well-nighmythical Druid, whose name adds a lustre to any pedigree. These thingsare matters far more real and serious than English history to every manand boy in the fair field, whether he is concerned in practicalhorse-dealing or not. Even the mere visitor is fired with theacquisition of knowledge, and, in the intervals of saving his life, casts a withering eye on hocks and forelegs, and cultivates the gloomysilence that distinguishes the buyer. 

It can hardly fail to attract the attention of the inquirer that, in thehighest walks of horsiness, the desire to appear horsey has been leftbehind. These shining ones have passed beyond symbols of canes, ofgaiters, of straws in the mouth; it is as though they craved thatincognito which for them is for ever impossible. Bandon Fair wasprivileged to have drawn two such into its shouting vortex. One wears asimple suit of black serge, with trousers of a godly fulness; in it hemight fitly hand round the plate in church. His manner is almoststartlingly candid, his speech, what there is of it, is ungarnished withstable slang, his face might belong to an imperfectly shaved archbishop. Yesterday he bought twenty young horses; next week he will buy fortymore; next year he will place them in the English shires at prices neverheard of in Bandon, and, be it added, they will as a rule be worth themoney. Here is another noted judge of horseflesh, in knickerbockerbreeches that seem to have been made at home for some one else, inleather gaiters of unostentatious roominess and rusticity. Though theAugust day is innocent of all suggestion of rain, he carries instead ofa riding cane a matronly umbrella. When he rides a horse, and he ridesseveral with a singularly intimate and finished method, he hands theumbrella to a reverential bystander; when the trial is over the umbrellais reassumed. If anything were needed to accent its artless domesticity, it would be the group of boys, horse copers in ambition, possibly inachievement, who sit in a row under a fence, with their teeth grimlyclenched upon clay pipes, their eyes screwed up in perpetual andungenial observation. Their conversation is telegraphic, smileless, esoteric, and punctuated with expectoration. If Phaeton and the horsesof the sun were to take a turn round the fair field these critics wouldfind little in them to commend. They are in the primary phase of alife-long art; perhaps with time and exceptional favours of fortune itmay be given to them to learn the disarming mildness, the simplicity, that, like a water-lily, is the perfected outcome of the deep. 

[Illustration: A HIERARCH OF HORSE-DEALING. ]

Before two o'clock the magnates of the fair had left it, taking withthem the cream of its contents, and in humbler people such a hungerbegan to assert itself as came near bringing even crubeens and Peggy'sleg within the sphere of practical politics. While slowly strugglingthrough the swarming street the perfume of mutton chops stoleexquisitely forth from the door of one of the hotels, accompanied by thesound of a subdued fusillade of soda-water corks; over the heads ofthe filthy press of people round the entrance and the thirsty throng atthe bar might be seen a procession of gaitered legs going upstairs toluncheon. It seemed an excellent idea. The air within was blue withtobacco smoke, flushed henchwomen staggered to and fro with arms spreadwide across trays of whiskies and sodas, opening doors revealed roomsfull of men, mutton chops and mastication. There was wildness in the eyeof the attendant as she took the order for yet another luncheon. Shefled, with the assurance that it would be ready immediately, yetsubsequent events suggested that even while she spoke the sheep that wasto respond to that thirty-fifth order for mutton chops was browsing inthe pastures of Bandon. 

For eyes that had last looked on food at 7 A. M. , neither the view of thestreet obtainable from the first floor parlour window, nor even thecontemplation of the remarkable sacred pictures that adorned its walls, had the interest they might have held earlier in the day, and the dirtycruet-stand on the dirtier tablecloth was endued with an almost hypnoticfascination in its suggestion of coming sustenance. At the end of thefirst hour a stupor verging on indifference had set in; it was far on inthe second when the dish of fried mutton chops, the hard potatoes, andthe tepid whiskies and sodas were flung upon the board. No preliminaryto a week's indigestion had been neglected, and a deserved success wasthe result. 

The business of the fair was still transacted at large throughout thehotel. From behind the mound of mutton chops a buyer shoved a roll ofdirty one-pound notes round the potato dish, and after due hagglingreceived back one, according to the mystic Irish custom of "luck-penny". On the sofa two farmers carried on a transaction in which the swap of acolt, boot money, and luck-penny were blended into one trackless maze ofastuteness and arithmetic. On the wall above them a print in whichAnanias and Sapphira were the central figures gave a simple and suitablefinish to the scene. 

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