We gained the inner room at last, a cheerless apartment, adorned with

sacred pictures, a sewing-machine, and an array of supplementary

tumblers and wineglasses; but, at all events, we had it so far to

ourselves. At intervals during the next half-hour Mary Kate burst in

with cups and plates, cast them on the table and disappeared, but of

food there was no sign. After a further period of starvation and of

listening to the noise in the shop, Flurry made a sortie, and, after

lengthy and unknown adventures, reappeared carrying a huge brown

teapot, and driving before him Mary Kate with the remainder of the

repast. The bread tasted of mice, the butter of turf-smoke, the tea of

brown paper, but we had got past the critical stage. I had entered

upon my third round of bread and butter when the door was flung open,

and my valued acquaintance, Slipper, slightly advanced in liquor,

presented himself to our gaze. His bandy legs sprawled

consequentially, his nose was redder than a coal of fire, his prominent

eyes rolled crookedly upon us, and his left hand swept behind him the

attempt of Mary Kate to frustrate his entrance.

"Good-evening to my vinerable friend, Mr. Flurry Knox!" he began, in

the voice of a town crier, "and to the Honourable Major Yeates, and the

English gintleman!"

This impressive opening immediately attracted an audience from the

shop, and the doorway filled with grinning faces as Slipper advanced

farther into the room.

"Why weren't ye at the races, Mr. Flurry?" he went on, his roving eye

taking a grip of us all at the same time; "sure the Miss Bennetts and

all the ladies was asking where were ye."

"It'd take some time to tell them that," said Flurry, with his mouth

full; "but what about the races, Slipper? Had you good sport?"

"Sport is it? Divil so pleasant an afternoon ever you seen," replied

Slipper. He leaned against a side table, and all the glasses on it

jingled. "Does your honour know O'Driscoll?" he went on irrelevantly.

"Sure you do. He was in your honour's stable. It's what we were all

sayin'; it was a great pity your honour was not there, for the likin'

you had to Driscoll."

"That's thrue," said a voice at the door.

"There wasn't one in the Barony but was gethered in it, through and

fro," continued Slipper, with a quelling glance at the interrupter;

"and there was tints for sellin' porther, and whisky as pliable as new

milk, and boys gain' round the tints outside, feeling for heads with

the big ends of their blackthorns, and all kinds of recreations, and

the Sons of Liberty's piffler and dhrum band from Skebawn; though

faith! there was more of thim runnin' to look at the races than what

was playin' in it; not to mintion different occasions that the

bandmasther was atin' his lunch within in the whisky tint."

"But what about Driscoll?" said Flurry.

"Sure it's about him I'm tellin' ye," replied Slipper, with the

practised orator's watchful eye on his growing audience. "'Twas within

in the same whisky tint meself was, with the bandmasther and a few of

the lads, an' we buyin' a ha'porth o' crackers, when I seen me brave

Driscoll landin' into the tint, and a pair o' thim long boots on him;

him that hadn't a shoe nor a stocking to his foot when your honour had

him picking grass out o' the stones behind in your yard. 'Well,' says

I to meself, 'we'll knock some spoort out of Driscoll!'

"'Come here to me, acushla!' says I to him; 'I suppose it's some way

wake in the legs y'are,' says I, 'an' the docthor put them on ye the

way the people wouldn't thrample ye!'

"'May the divil choke ye!' says he, pleasant enough, but I knew by the

blush he had he was vexed.

"'Then I suppose 'tis a left-tenant colonel y'are,' says I; 'yer mother

must be proud out o' ye!' says I, 'an' maybe ye'll lend her a loan o'

thim waders when she's rinsin' yer bauneen in the river!' says I.

"'There'll be work out o' this!' says he, lookin' at me both sour and

bitther.

"'Well indeed, I was thinkin' you were blue moulded for want of a

batin',' says I. He was for fightin' us then, but afther we had him

pacificated with about a quarther of a naggin o' sperrits, he told us

he was goin' ridin' in a race.

"'An' what'll ye ride?' says I.

"'Owld Bocock's mare,' says he.

"'Knipes!' says I, sayin' a great curse; 'is it that little staggeen

from the mountains; sure she's somethin' about the one age with

meself,' says I. 'Many's the time Jamesy Geoghegan and meself used to

be dhrivin' her to Macroom with pigs an' all soorts,' says I; 'an' is

it leppin' stone walls ye want her to go now?'

"'Faith, there's walls and every vari'ty of obstackle in it,' says he.

"'It'll be the best o' your play, so,' says I, 'to leg it away home out

o' this.'

"'An' who'll ride her, so?' says he.

"'Let the divil ride her,' says I."

Leigh Kelway, who had been leaning back seemingly half asleep, obeyed

the hypnotism of Slipper's gaze, and opened his eyes.

"That was now all the conversation that passed between himself and

meself," resumed Slipper, "and there was no great delay afther that

till they said there was a race startin' and the dickens a one at all

was goin' to ride only two, Driscoll, and one Clancy. With that then I

seen Mr. Kinahane, the Petty Sessions clerk, goin' round clearin' the

coorse, an' I gethered a few o' the neighbours, an' we walked the

fields hither and over till we seen the most of th' obstackles.

"'Stand aisy now by the plantation,' says I; 'if they get to come as

far as this, believe me ye'll see spoort,' says I, 'an' 'twill be a

convanient spot to encourage the mare if she's anyway wake in herself,'

says I, cuttin' somethin' about five foot of an ash sapling out o' the

plantation.

"'That's yer sort!' says owld Bocock, that was thravellin' the

racecoorse, peggin' a bit o' paper down with a thorn in front of every

lep, the way Driscoll 'd know the handiest place to face her at it.

"Well, I hadn't barely thrimmed the ash plant----"

"Have you any jam, Mary Kate?" interrupted Flurry, whose meal had been

in no way interfered with by either the story or the highly-scented

crowd who had come to listen to it.

"We have no jam, only thraycle, sir," replied the invisible Mary Kate.

"I hadn't the switch barely thrimmed," repeated Slipper firmly, "when I

heard the people screechin', an' I seen Driscoll an' Clancy comin' on,

leppin' all before them, an' owld Bocock's mare bellusin' an'

powdherin' along, an' bedad! whatever obstackle wouldn't throw _her_

down, faith, she'd throw _it_ down, an' there's the thraffic they had

in it.

"'I declare to me sowl,' says I, 'if they continue on this way there's

a great chance some one o' thim 'll win," says I.

"'Ye lie!' says the bandmasther, bein' a thrifle fulsome after his

luncheon.

"'I do not,' says I, 'in regard of seein' how soople them two boys is.

Ye might observe,' says I, 'that if they have no convanient way to sit

on the saddle, they'll ride the neck o' the horse till such time as

they gets an occasion to lave it,' says I.

"'Arrah, shut yer mouth!' says the bandmasther; 'they're puckin' out

this way now, an' may the divil admire me!' says he, 'but Clancy has

the other bet out, and the divil such leatherin' and beltin' of owld

Bocock's mare ever you seen as what's in it!' says he.

"Well, when I seen them comin' to me, and Driscoll about the length of

the plantation behind Clancy, I let a couple of bawls.

"'Skelp her, ye big brute!' says I. 'What good's in ye that ye aren't

able to skelp her?'"

The yell and the histrionic flourish of his stick with which Slipper

delivered this incident brought down the house. Leigh Kelway was

sufficiently moved to ask me in an undertone if "skelp" was a local

term.

"Well, Mr. Flurry, and gintlemen," recommenced Slipper, "I declare to

ye when owld Bocock's mare heard thim roars she sthretched out her neck

like a gandher, and when she passed me out she give a couple of grunts,

and looked at me as ugly as a Christian.

"'Hah!' says I, givin' her a couple o' dhraws o' th' ash plant across

the butt o' the tail, the way I wouldn't blind her; 'I'll make ye

grunt!' says I, 'I'll nourish ye!'

"I knew well she was very frightful of th' ash plant since the winter

Tommeen Sullivan had her under a sidecar. But now, in place of havin'

any obligations to me, ye'd be surprised if ye heard the blaspheemious

expressions of that young boy that was ridin' her; and whether it was

over-anxious he was, turnin' around the way I'd hear him cursin', or

whether it was some slither or slide came to owld Bocock's mare, I

dunno, but she was bet up agin the last obstackle but two, and before

ye could say 'Schnipes,' she was standin' on her two ears beyond in th'

other field! I declare to ye, on the vartue of me oath, she stood that

way till she reconnoithered what side would Driscoll fall, an' she

turned about then and rolled on him as cosy as if he was meadow grass!"

Slipper stopped short; the people in the doorway groaned

appreciatively; Mary Kate murmured "The Lord save us!"

"The blood was dhruv out through his nose and ears," continued Slipper,

with a voice that indicated the cream of the narration, "and you'd hear

his bones crackin' on the ground! You'd have pitied the poor boy."

"Good heavens!" said Leigh Kelway, sitting up very straight in his

chair.

"Was he hurt, Slipper?" asked Flurry casually.

"Hurt is it?" echoed Slipper in high scorn; "killed on the spot!" He

paused to relish the effect of the _dénouement_ on Leigh Kelway. "Oh,

divil so pleasant an afthernoon ever you seen; and indeed, Mr. Flurry,

it's what we were all sayin', it was a great pity your honour was not

there for the likin' you had for Driscoll."

As he spoke the last word there was an outburst of singing and cheering

from a carload of people who had just pulled up at the door. Flurry

listened, leaned back in his chair, and began to laugh.

"It scarcely strikes one as a comic incident," said Leigh Kelway, very

coldly to me; "in fact, it seems to me that the police ought----"

"Show me Slipper!" bawled a voice in the shop; "show me that dirty

little undherlooper till I have his blood! Hadn't I the race won only

for he souring the mare on me! What's that you say? I tell ye he did!

He left seven slaps on her with the handle of a hay-rake----"

There was in the room in which we were sitting a second door, leading

to the back yard, a door consecrated to the unobtrusive visits of

so-called "Sunday travellers." Through it Slipper faded away like a

dream, and, simultaneously, a tall young man, with a face like a

red-hot potato tied up in a bandage, squeezed his way from the shop

into the room.

"Well, Driscoll," said Flurry, "since it wasn't the teeth of the rake

he left on the mare, you needn't be talking!"

Leigh Kelway looked from one to the other with a wilder expression in

his eye than I had thought it capable of. I read in it a resolve to

abandon Ireland to her fate.

At eight o'clock we were still waiting for the car that we had been

assured should be ours directly it returned from the races. At

half-past eight we had adopted the only possible course that remained,

and had accepted the offers of lifts on the laden cars that were

returning to Skebawn, and I presently was gratified by the spectacle of

my friend Leigh Kelway wedged between a roulette table and its

proprietor on one side of a car, with Driscoll and Slipper,

mysteriously reconciled and excessively drunk, seated, locked in each

other's arms, on the other. Flurry and I, somewhat similarly placed,

followed on two other cars. I was scarcely surprised when I was

informed that the melancholy white animal in the shafts of the leading

car was Owld Bocock's much-enduring steeplechaser.

The night was very dark and stormy, and it is almost superfluous to say

that no one carried lamps; the rain poured upon us, and through wind

and wet Owld Bocock's mare set the pace at a rate that showed she knew

from bitter experience what was expected from her by gentlemen who had

spent the evening in a public-house; behind her the other two tired

horses followed closely, incited to emulation by shouting, singing, and

a liberal allowance of whip. We were a good ten miles from Skebawn,

and never had the road seemed so long. For mile after mile the

half-seen low walls slid past us, with occasional plunges into caverns

of darkness under trees. Sometimes from a wayside cabin a dog would

dash out to bark at us as we rattled by; sometimes our cavalcade swung

aside to pass, with yells and counter-yells, crawling carts filled with

other belated race-goers.

I was nearly wet through, even though I received considerable shelter

from a Skebawn publican, who slept heavily and irrepressibly on my

shoulder. Driscoll, on the leading car, had struck up an approximation

to the "Wearing of the Green," when a wavering star appeared on the

road ahead of us. It grew momently larger; it came towards us apace.

Flurry, on the car behind me, shouted suddenly--

"That's the mail car, with one of the lamps out! Tell those fellows

ahead to look out!"

But the warning fell on deaf ears.

"When laws can change the blades of grass

From growing as they grow----"

howled five discordant voices, oblivious of the towering proximity of

the star.

A Bianconi mail car is nearly three times the size of an ordinary

outside car, and when on a dark night it advances, Cyclops-like, with

but one eye, it is difficult for even a sober driver to calculate its

bulk. Above the sounds of melody there arose the thunder of heavy

wheels, the splashing trample of three big horses, then a crash and a

turmoil of shouts. Our cars pulled up just in time, and I tore myself

from the embrace of my publican to go to Leigh Kelway's assistance.

The wing of the Bianconi had caught the wing of the smaller car,

flinging Owld Bocock's mare on her side and throwing her freight

headlong on top of her, the heap being surmounted by the roulette

table. The driver of the mail car unshipped his solitary lamp and

turned it on the disaster. I saw that Flurry had already got hold of

Leigh Kelway by the heels, and was dragging him from under the others.

He struggled up hatless, muddy, and gasping, with Driscoll hanging on

by his neck, still singing the "Wearing of the Green."

A voice from the mail car said incredulously, "_Leigh Kelway!_" A

spectacled face glared down upon him from under the dripping spikes of

an umbrella.

It was the Right Honourable the Earl of Waterbury, Leigh Kelway's

chief, returning from his fishing excursion.

Meanwhile Slipper, in the ditch, did not cease to announce that "Divil

so pleasant an afthernoon ever ye seen as what was in it!"

VI

PHILIPPA'S FOX-HUNT

No one can accuse Philippa and me of having married in haste. As a

matter of fact, it was but little under five years from that autumn

evening on the river when I had said what is called in Ireland "the

hard word," to the day in August when I was led to the altar by my best

man, and was subsequently led away from it by Mrs. Sinclair Yeates.

About two years out of the five had been spent by me at Shreelane in

ceaseless warfare with drains, eaveshoots, chimneys, pumps; all those

fundamentals, in short, that the ingenuous and improving tenant expects

to find established as a basis from which to rise to higher things. As

far as rising to higher things went, frequent ascents to the roof to

search for leaks summed up my achievements; in fact, I suffered so

general a shrinkage of my ideals that the triumph of making the

hall-door bell ring blinded me to the fact that the rat-holes in the

hall floor were nailed up with pieces of tin biscuit boxes, and that

the casual visitor could, instead of leaving a card, have easily

written his name in the damp on the walls.

Philippa, however, proved adorably callous to these and similar

shortcomings. She regarded Shreelane and its floundering, foundering

ménage of incapables in the light of a gigantic picnic in a foreign

land; she held long conversations daily with Mrs. Cadogan, in order, as

she informed me, to acquire the language; without any ulterior domestic

intention she engaged kitchen-maids because of the beauty of their

eyes, and housemaids because they had such delightfully picturesque old

mothers, and she declined to correct the phraseology of the

parlour-maid, whose painful habit it was to whisper "Do ye choose

cherry or clarry?" when proffering the wine. Fast-days, perhaps,

afforded my wife her first insight into the sterner realities of Irish

housekeeping. Philippa had what are known as High Church proclivities,

and took the matter seriously.

"I don't know how we are to manage for the servants' dinner to-morrow,

Sinclair," she said, coming in to my office one Thursday morning;

"Julia says she 'promised God this long time that she wouldn't eat an

egg on a fast-day,' and the kitchen-maid says she won't eat herrings

'without they're fried with onions,' and Mrs. Cadogan says she will

'not go to them extremes for servants.'"

"I should let Mrs. Cadogan settle the menu herself," I suggested.

"I asked her to do that," replied Philippa, "and she only said she

'thanked God she had no appetite!'"

The lady of the house here fell away into unseasonable laughter.

I made the demoralising suggestion that, as we were going away for a

couple of nights, we might safely leave them to fight it out, and the

problem was abandoned.

Philippa had been much called on by the neighbourhood in all its shades

and grades, and daily she and her trousseau frocks presented themselves

at hall-doors of varying dimensions in due acknowledgment of

civilities. In Ireland, it may be noted, the process known in England

as "summering and wintering" a newcomer does not obtain; sociability

and curiosity alike forbid delay. The visit to which we owed our

escape from the intricacies of the fast-day was to the Knoxes of Castle

Knox, relations in some remote and tribal way of my landlord, Mr.

Flurry of that ilk. It involved a short journey by train, and my

wife's longest basket-trunk; it also, which was more serious, involved

my being lent a horse to go out cubbing the following morning.

At Castle Knox we sank into an almost forgotten environment of

draught-proof windows and doors, of deep carpets, of silent servants

instead of clattering belligerents. Philippa told me afterwards that

it had only been by an effort that she had restrained herself from

snatching up the train of her wedding-gown as she paced across the wide

hall on little Sir Valentine's arm. After three weeks at Shreelane she

found it difficult to remember that the floor was neither damp nor

dusty.

I had the good fortune to be of the limited number of those who got on

with Lady Knox, chiefly, I imagine, because I was as a worm before her,

and thankfully permitted her to do all the talking.

"Your wife is extremely pretty," she pronounced autocratically,

surveying Philippa between the candle-shades; "does she ride?"

Lady Knox was a short square lady, with a weather-beaten face, and an

eye decisive from long habit of taking her own line across country and

elsewhere. She would have made a very imposing little coachman, and

would have caused her stable helpers to rue the day they had the

presumption to be born; it struck me that Sir Valentine sometimes did

so.

"I'm glad you like her looks," I replied, "as I fear you will find her

thoroughly despicable otherwise; for one thing, she not only can't

ride, but she believes that I can!"

"Oh come, you're not as bad as all that!" my hostess was good enough to

say; "I'm going to put you up on Sorcerer to-morrow, and we'll see you

at the top of the hunt--if there is one. That young Knox hasn't a

notion how to draw these woods."

"Well, the best run we had last year out of this place was with

Flurry's hounds," struck in Miss Sally, sole daughter of Sir

Valentine's house and home, from her place half-way down the table. It

was not difficult to see that she and her mother held different views

on the subject of Mr. Flurry Knox.

"I call it a criminal thing in any one's great-great-grandfather to

rear up a preposterous troop of sons and plant them all out in his own

country," Lady Knox said to me with apparent irrelevance. "I detest

collaterals. Blood may be thicker than water, but it is also a great

deal nastier. In this country I find that fifteenth cousins consider

themselves near relations if they live within twenty miles of one!"

Having before now taken in the position with regard to Flurry Knox, I

took care to accept these remarks as generalities, and turned the

conversation to other themes.

"I see Mrs. Yeates is doing wonders with Mr. Hamilton," said Lady Knox

presently, following the direction of my eyes, which had strayed away

to where Philippa was beaming upon her left-hand neighbour, a

mildewed-looking old clergyman, who was delivering a long dissertation,

the purport of which we were happily unable to catch.

"She has always had a gift for the Church," I said.

"Not curates?" said Lady Knox, in her deep voice.

I made haste to reply that it was the elders of the Church who were

venerated by my wife.

"Well, she has her fancy in old Eustace Hamilton; he's elderly enough!"

said Lady Knox. "I wonder if she'd venerate him as much if she knew

that he had fought with his sister-in-law, and they haven't spoken for

thirty years! though for the matter of that," she added, "I think it

shows his good sense!"

"Mrs. Knox is rather a friend of mine," I ventured.

"Is she? H'm! Well, she's not one of mine!" replied my hostess, with

her usual definiteness. "I'll say one thing for her, I believe she's

always been a sportswoman. She's very rich, you know, and they say she

only married old Badger Knox to save his hounds from being sold to pay

his debts, and then she took the horn from him and hunted them herself.

Has she been rude to your wife yet? No? Oh, well, she will. It's a

mere question of time. She hates all English people. You know the

story they tell of her? She was coming home from London, and when she

was getting her ticket the man asked if she had said a ticket for York.

'No, thank God, Cork!' says Mrs. Knox."

"Well, I rather agree with her!" said I; "but why did she fight with

Mr. Hamilton?"

"Oh, nobody knows. I don't believe they know themselves! Whatever it

was, the old lady drives five miles to Fortwilliam every Sunday, rather

than go to his church, just outside her own back gates," Lady Knox said

with a laugh like a terrier's bark. "I wish I'd fought with him

myself," she said; "he gives us forty minutes every Sunday."

As I struggled into my boots the following morning, I felt that Sir

Valentine's acid confidences on cub-hunting, bestowed on me at

midnight, did credit to his judgment. "A very moderate amusement, my

dear Major," he had said, in his dry little voice; "you should stick to

shooting. No one expects you to shoot before daybreak."

It was six o'clock as I crept downstairs, and found Lady Knox and Miss

Sally at breakfast, with two lamps on the table, and a foggy daylight

oozing in from under the half-raised blinds. Philippa was already in

the hall, pumping up her bicycle, in a state of excitement at the

prospect of her first experience of hunting that would have been more

comprehensible to me had she been going to ride a strange horse, as I

was. As I bolted my food I saw the horses being led past the windows,

and a faint twang of a horn told that Flurry Knox and his hounds were

not far off.

Miss Sally jumped up.

"If I'm not on the Cockatoo before the hounds come up, I shall never

get there!" she said, hobbling out of the room in the toils of her

safety habit. Her small, alert face looked very childish under her

riding-hat; the lamp-light struck sparks out of her thick coil of

golden-red hair: I wondered how I had ever thought her like her prim

little father.

She was already on her white cob when I got to the hall-door, and

Flurry Knox was riding over the glistening wet grass with his hounds,

while his whip, Dr. Jerome Hickey, was having a stirring time with the

young entry and the rabbit-holes. They moved on without stopping, up a

back avenue, under tall and dripping trees, to a thick laurel covert,

at some little distance from the house. Into this the hounds were

thrown, and the usual period of fidgety inaction set in for the riders,

of whom, all told, there were about half-a-dozen. Lady Knox, square

and solid, on her big, confidential iron-grey, was near me, and her

eyes were on me and my mount; with her rubicund face and white collar

she was more than ever like a coachman.

"Sorcerer looks as if he suited you well," she said, after a few

minutes of silence, during which the hounds rustled and crackled

steadily through the laurels; "he's a little high on the leg, and so

are you, you know, so you show each other off."

Sorcerer was standing like a rock, with his good-looking head in the

air and his eyes fastened on the covert. His manners, so far, had been

those of a perfect gentleman, and were in marked contrast to those of

Miss Sally's cob, who was sidling, hopping, and snatching unappeasably

at his bit. Philippa had disappeared from view down the avenue ahead.

The fog was melting, and the sun threw long blades of light through the

trees; everything was quiet, and in the distance the curtained windows

of the house marked the warm repose of Sir Valentine, and those of the

party who shared his opinion of cubbing.

"Hark! hark to cry there!"

It was Flurry's voice, away at the other side of the covert. The

rustling and brushing through the laurels became more vehement, then

passed out of hearing.

"He never will leave his hounds alone," said Lady Knox disapprovingly.

Miss Sally and the Cockatoo moved away in a series of heraldic capers

towards the end of the laurel plantation, and at the same moment I saw

Philippa on her bicycle shoot into view on the drive ahead of us.

"I've seen a fox!" she screamed, white with what I believe to have been

personal terror, though she says it was excitement; "it passed quite

close to me!"

"What way did he go?" bellowed a voice which I recognised as Dr.

Hickey's, somewhere in the deep of the laurels.

"Down the drive!" returned Philippa, with a pea-hen quality in her

tones with which I was quite unacquainted.

An electrifying screech of "Gone away!" was projected from the laurels

by Dr. Hickey.

"Gone away!" chanted Flurry's horn at the top of the covert.

"This is what he calls cubbing!" said Lady Knox, "a mere farce!" but

none the less she loosed her sedate monster into a canter.

Sorcerer got his hind-legs under him, and hardened his crest against

the bit, as we all hustled along the drive after the flying figure of

my wife. I knew very little about horses, but I realised that even

with the hounds tumbling hysterically out of the covert, and the

Cockatoo kicking the gravel into his face, Sorcerer comported himself

with the manners of the best society. Up a side road I saw Flurry Knox

opening half of a gate and cramming through it; in a moment we also had

crammed through, and the turf of a pasture field was under our feet.

Dr. Hickey leaned forward and took hold of his horse; I did likewise,

with the trifling difference that my horse took hold of me, and I

steered for Flurry Knox with single-hearted purpose, the hounds,

already a field ahead, being merely an exciting and noisy accompaniment

of this endeavour. A heavy stone wall was the first occurrence of

note. Flurry chose a place where the top was loose, and his

clumsy-looking brown mare changed feet on the rattling stones like a

fairy. Sorcerer came at it, tense and collected as a bow at full

stretch, and sailed steeply into the air; I saw the wall far beneath

me, with an unsuspected ditch on the far side, and I felt my hat

following me at the full stretch of its guard as we swept over it,

then, with a long slant, we descended to earth some sixteen feet from

where we had left it, and I was possessor of the gratifying fact that I

had achieved a good-sized "fly," and had not perceptibly moved in my

saddle. Subsequent disillusioning experience has taught me that but

few horses jump like Sorcerer, so gallantly, so sympathetically, and

with such supreme mastery of the subject; but none the less the

enthusiasm that he imparted to me has never been extinguished, and that

October morning ride revealed to me the unsuspected intoxication of

fox-hunting.

Behind me I heard the scrabbling of the Cockatoo's little hoofs among

the loose stones, and Lady Knox, galloping on my left, jerked a

maternal chin over her shoulder to mark her daughter's progress. For

my part, had there been an entire circus behind me, I was far too much

occupied with ramming on my hat and trying to hold Sorcerer, to have

looked round, and all my spare faculties were devoted to steering for

Flurry, who had taken a right-handed turn, and was at that moment

surmounting a bank of uncertain and briary aspect. I surmounted it

also, with the swiftness and simplicity for which the Quaker's methods

of bank jumping had not prepared me, and two or three fields, traversed

at the same steeplechase pace, brought us to a road and to an abrupt

check. There, suddenly, were the hounds, scrambling in baffled silence

down into the road from the opposite bank, to look for the line they

had overrun, and there, amazingly, was Philippa, engaged in excited

converse with several men with spades over their shoulders.

"Did ye see the fox, boys?" shouted Flurry, addressing the group.

"We did! we did!" cried my wife and her friends in chorus; "he ran up

the road!"

"We'd be badly off without Mrs. Yeates!" said Flurry, as he whirled his

mare round and clattered up the road with a hustle of hounds after him.

It occurred to me as forcibly as any mere earthly thing can occur to

those who are wrapped in the sublimities of a run, that, for a young

woman who had never before seen a fox out of a cage at the Zoo,

Philippa was taking to hunting very kindly. Her cheeks were a most

brilliant pink, her blue eyes shone.

"Oh, Sinclair!" she exclaimed, "they say he's going for Aussolas, and

there's a road I can ride all the way!"

"Ye can, Miss! Sure we'll show you!" chorussed her cortège.

Her foot was on the pedal ready to mount. Decidedly my wife was in no

need of assistance from me.

Up the road a hound gave a yelp of discovery, and flung himself over a

stile into the fields; the rest of the pack went squealing and jostling

after him, and I followed Flurry over one of those infinitely varied

erections, pleasantly termed "gaps" in Ireland. On this occasion the

gap was made of three razor-edged slabs of slate leaning against an

iron bar, and Sorcerer conveyed to me his thorough knowledge of the

matter by a lift of his hind-quarters that made me feel as if I were

being skilfully kicked downstairs. To what extent I looked it, I

cannot say, nor providentially can Philippa, as she had already

started. I only know that undeserved good luck restored to me my

stirrup before Sorcerer got away with me in the next field.

What followed was, I am told, a very fast fifteen minutes; for me time

was not; the empty fields rushed past uncounted, fences came and went

in a flash, while the wind sang in my ears, and the dazzle of the early

sun was in my eyes. I saw the hounds occasionally, sometimes pouring

over a green bank, as the charging breaker lifts and flings itself,

sometimes driving across a field, as the white tongues of foam slide

racing over the sand; and always ahead of me was Flurry Knox, going as

a man goes who knows his country, who knows his horse, and whose heart

is wholly and absolutely in the right place.

Do what I would, Sorcerer's implacable stride carried me closer and

closer to the brown mare, till, as I thundered down the slope of a long

field, I was not twenty yards behind Flurry. Sorcerer had stiffened

his neck to iron, and to slow him down was beyond me; but I fought his

head away to the right, and found myself coming hard and steady at a

stonefaced bank with broken ground in front of it. Flurry bore away to

the left, shouting something that I did not understand. That Sorcerer

shortened his stride at the right moment was entirely due to his own

judgment; standing well away from the jump, he rose like a stag out of

the tussocky ground, and as he swung my twelve stone six into the air

the obstacle revealed itself to him and me as consisting not of one

bank but of two, and between the two lay a deep grassy lane, half

choked with furze. I have often been asked to state the width of the

bohereen, and can only reply that in my opinion it was at least

eighteen feet; Flurry Knox and Dr. Hickey, who did not jump it, say

that it is not more than five. What Sorcerer did with it I cannot say;

the sensation was of a towering flight with a kick back in it, a

biggish drop, and a landing on cee-springs, still on the downhill

grade. That was how one of the best horses in Ireland took one of

Ireland's most ignorant riders over a very nasty place.

A sombre line of fir-wood lay ahead, rimmed with a grey wall, and in

another couple of minutes we had pulled up on the Aussolas road, and

were watching the hounds struggling over the wall into Aussolas demesne.

"No hurry now," said Flurry, turning in his saddle to watch the

Cockatoo jump into the road, "he's to ground in the big earth inside.

Well, Major, it's well for you that's a big-jumped horse. I thought

you were a dead man a while ago when you faced him at the bohereen!"

I was disclaiming intention in the matter when Lady Knox and the others

joined us.

"I thought you told me your wife was no sportswoman," she said to me,

critically scanning Sorcerer's legs for cuts the while, "but when I saw

her a minute ago she had abandoned her bicycle and was running across

country like----"

"Look at her now!" interrupted Miss Sally. "Oh!--oh!" In the interval

between these exclamations my incredulous eyes beheld my wife in

mid-air, hand in hand with a couple of stalwart country boys, with whom

she was leaping in unison from the top of a bank on to the road.

Every one, even the saturnine Dr. Hickey, began to laugh; I rode back

to Philippa, who was exchanging compliments and congratulations with

her escort.

"Oh, Sinclair!" she cried, "wasn't it splendid? I saw you jumping, and

everything! Where are they going now?"

"My dear girl," I said, with marital disapproval, "you're killing

yourself. Where's your bicycle?"

"Oh, it's punctured in a sort of lane, back there. It's all right; and

then they"--she breathlessly waved her hand at her attendants--"they

showed me the way."

"Begor! you proved very good, Miss!" said a grinning cavalier.

"Faith she did!" said another, polishing his shining brow with his

white flannel coat-sleeve, "she lepped like a haarse!"

"And may I ask how you propose to go home?" said I.

"I don't know and I don't care! I'm not going home!" She cast an

entirely disobedient eye at me. "And your eye-glass is hanging down

your back and your tie is bulging out over your waistcoat!"

The little group of riders had begun to move away.

"We're going on into Aussolas," called out Flurry; "come on, and make

my grandmother give you some breakfast, Mrs. Yeates; she always has it

at eight o'clock."

The front gates were close at hand, and we turned in under the tall

beech-trees, with the unswept leaves rustling round the horses' feet,

and the lovely blue of the October morning sky filling the spaces

between smooth grey branches and golden leaves. The woods rang with

the voices of the hounds, enjoying an untrammelled rabbit hunt, while

the Master and the Whip, both on foot, strolled along unconcernedly

with their bridles over their arms, making themselves agreeable to my

wife, an occasional touch of Flurry's horn, or a crack of Dr. Rickey's

whip, just indicating to the pack that the authorities still took a

friendly interest in their doings.

Down a grassy glade in the wood a party of old Mrs. Knox's young horses

suddenly swept into view, headed by an old mare, who, with her tail

over her back, stampeded ponderously past our cavalcade, shaking and

swinging her handsome old head, while her youthful friends bucked and

kicked and snapped at each other round her with the ferocious humour of

their kind.

"Here, Jerome, take the horn," said Flurry to Dr. Hickey; "I'm going to

see Mrs. Yeates up to the house, the way these tomfools won't gallop on

top of her."

From this point it seems to me that Philippa's adventures are more

worthy of record than mine, and as she has favoured me with a full

account of them, I venture to think my version may be relied on.

Mrs. Knox was already at breakfast when Philippa was led, quaking, into

her formidable presence. My wife's acquaintance with Mrs. Knox was, so

far, limited to a state visit on either side, and she found but little

comfort in Flurry's assurances that his grandmother wouldn't mind if he

brought all the hounds in to breakfast, coupled with the statement that

she would put her eyes on sticks for the Major.

Whatever the truth of this may have been, Mrs. Knox received her guest

with an equanimity quite unshaken by the fact that her boots were in

the fender instead of on her feet, and that a couple of shawls of

varying dimensions and degrees of age did not conceal the inner

presence of a magenta flannel dressing-jacket. She installed Philippa

at the table and plied her with food, oblivious as to whether the

needful implements with which to eat it were forthcoming or no. She

told Flurry where a vixen had reared her family, and she watched him

ride away, with some biting comments on his mare's hocks screamed after

him from the window.

The dining-room at Aussolas Castle is one of the many rooms in Ireland

in which Cromwell is said to have stabled his horse (and probably no

one would have objected less than Mrs. Knox had she been consulted in

the matter). Philippa questions if the room had ever been tidied up

since, and she endorses Flurry's observation that "there wasn't a day

in the year you wouldn't get feeding for a hen and chickens on the

floor." Opposite to Philippa, on a Louis Quinze chair, sat Mrs. Knox's

woolly dog, its suspicious little eyes peering at her out of their

setting of pink lids and dirty white wool. A couple of young horses

outside the windows tore at the matted creepers on the walls, or thrust

faces that were half-shy, half-impudent, into the room. Portly pigeons

waddled to and fro on the broad window-sill, sometimes flying in to

perch on the picture-frames, while they kept up incessantly a hoarse

and pompous cooing.

Animals and children are, as a rule, alike destructive to conversation;

but Mrs. Knox, when she chose, _bien entendu_, could have made herself

agreeable in a Noah's ark, and Philippa has a gift of sympathetic

attention that personal experience has taught me to regard with

distrust as well as respect, while it has often made me realise the

worldly wisdom of Kingsley's injunction:

"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever."

Family prayers, declaimed by Mrs. Knox with alarming austerity,

followed close on breakfast, Philippa and a vinegar-faced henchwoman

forming the family. The prayers were long, and through the open window

as they progressed came distantly a whoop or two; the declamatory tones

staggered a little, and then continued at a distinctly higher rate of

speed.

"Ma'am! Ma'am!" whispered a small voice at the window.

Mrs. Knox made a repressive gesture and held on her way. A sudden

outcry of hounds followed, and the owner of the whisper, a small boy

with a face freckled like a turkey's egg, darted from the window and

dragged a donkey and bath-chair into view. Philippa admits to having

lost the thread of the discourse, but she thinks that the "Amen" that

immediately ensued can hardly have come in its usual place. Mrs. Knox

shut the book abruptly, scrambled up from her knees, and said, "They've

found!"

In a surprisingly short space of time she had added to her attire her

boots, a fur cape, and a garden hat, and was in the bath-chair, the

small boy stimulating the donkey with the success peculiar to his

class, while Philippa hung on behind.

The woods of Aussolas are hilly and extensive, and on that particular

morning it seemed that they held as many foxes as hounds. In vain was

the horn blown, and the whips cracked, small rejoicing parties of

hounds, each with a fox of its own, scoured to and fro: every labourer

in the vicinity had left his work, and was sedulously heading every fox

with yells that would have befitted a tiger hunt, and sticks and stones

when occasion served.

"Will I pull out as far as the big rosy-dandhrum, ma'am?" inquired the

small boy; "I seen three of the dogs go in it, and they yowling."

"You will," said Mrs. Knox, thumping the donkey on the back with her

umbrella; "here! Jeremiah Regan! Come down out of that with that

pitchfork! Do you want to kill the fox, you fool?"

"I do not, your honour, ma'am," responded Jeremiah Regan, a tall young

countryman, emerging from a bramble brake.

"Did you see him?" said Mrs. Knox eagerly.

"I seen himself and his ten pups drinking below at the lake ere

yestherday, your honour, ma'am, and he as big as a chestnut horse!"

said Jeremiah.

"Faugh! Yesterday!" snorted Mrs. Knox; "go on to the rhododendrons,

Johnny!"

The party, reinforced by Jeremiah and the pitchfork, progressed at a

high rate of speed along the shrubbery path, encountering _en route_

Lady Knox, stooping on to her horse's neck under the sweeping branches

of the laurels.

"Your horse is too high for my coverts, Lady Knox," said the Lady of

the Manor, with a malicious eye at Lady Knox's flushed face and dinged

hat; "I'm afraid you will be left behind like Absalom when the hounds

go away!"

"As they never do anything here but hunt rabbits," retorted her

ladyship, "I don't think that's likely."

Mrs. Knox gave her donkey another whack, and passed on.

"Rabbits, my dear!" she said scornfully to Philippa. "That's all she

knows about it. I declare it disgusts me to see a woman of that age

making such a Judy of herself! Rabbits indeed!"

Down in the thicket of rhododendron everything was very quiet for a

time. Philippa strained her eyes in vain to see any of the riders; the

horn blowing and the whip cracking passed on almost out of hearing.

Once or twice a hound worked through the rhododendrons, glanced at the

party, and hurried on, immersed in business. All at once Johnny, the

donkey-boy, whispered excitedly:

"Look at he! Look at he!" and pointed to a boulder of grey rock that

stood out among the dark evergreens. A big yellow cub was crouching on

it; he instantly slid into the shelter of the bushes, and the

irrepressible Jeremiah, uttering a rending shriek, plunged into the

thicket after him. Two or three hounds came rushing at the sound, and

after this Philippa says she finds some difficulty in recalling the

proper order of events; chiefly, she confesses, because of the wholly

ridiculous tears of excitement that blurred her eyes.

"We ran," she said, "we simply tore, and the donkey galloped, and as

for that old Mrs. Knox, she was giving cracked screams to the hounds

all the time, and they were screaming too; and then somehow we were all

out on the road!"

What seems to have occurred was that three couple of hounds, Jeremiah

Regan, and Mrs. Knox's equipage, amongst them somehow hustled the cub

out of Aussolas demesne and up on to a hill on the farther side of the

road. Jeremiah was sent back by his mistress to fetch Flurry, and the

rest of the party pursued a thrilling course along the road, parallel

with that of the hounds, who were hunting slowly through the gorse on

the hillside.

"Upon my honour and word, Mrs. Yeates, my dear, we have the hunt to

ourselves!" said Mrs. Knox to the panting Philippa, as they pounded

along the road. "Johnny, d'ye see the fox?"

"I do, ma'am!" shrieked Johnny, who possessed the usual field-glass

vision bestowed upon his kind. "Look at him over-right us on the hill

above! Hi! The spotty dog have him! No, he's gone from him! _Gwan

out o' that_!" This to the donkey, with blows that sounded like the

beating of carpets, and produced rather more dust.

They had left Aussolas some half a mile behind, when, from a strip of

wood on their right, the fox suddenly slipped over the bank on to the

road just ahead of them, ran up it for a few yards and whisked in at a

small entrance gate, with the three couple of hounds yelling on a

red-hot scent, not thirty yards behind. The bath-chair party whirled

in at their heels, Philippa and the donkey considerably blown, Johnny

scarlet through his freckles, but as fresh as paint, the old lady blind

and deaf to all things save the chase. The hounds went raging through

the shrubs beside the drive, and away down a grassy slope towards a

shallow glen, in the bottom of which ran a little stream, and after

them over the grass bumped the bath-chair. At the stream they turned

sharply and ran up the glen towards the avenue, which crossed it by

means of a rough stone viaduct.

"'Pon me conscience, he's into the old culvert!" exclaimed Mrs. Knox;

"there was one of my hounds choked there once, long ago! Beat on the

donkey, Johnny!"

At this juncture Philippa's narrative again becomes incoherent, not to

say breathless. She is, however, positive that it was somewhere about

here that the upset of the bath-chair occurred, but she cannot be clear

as to whether she picked up the donkey or Mrs. Knox, or whether she

herself was picked up by Johnny while Mrs. Knox picked up the donkey.

From my knowledge of Mrs. Knox I should say she picked up herself and

no one else. At all events, the next salient point is the palpitating

moment when Mrs. Knox, Johnny, and Philippa successively applying an

eye to the opening of the culvert by which the stream trickled under

the viaduct, while five dripping hounds bayed and leaped around them,

discovered by more senses than that of sight that the fox was in it,

and furthermore that one of the hounds was in it too.

"There's a sthrong grating before him at the far end," said Johnny, his

head in at the mouth of the hole, his voice sounding as if he were

talking into a jug, "the two of them's fighting in it; they'll be

choked surely!"

"Then don't stand gabbling there, you little fool, but get in and pull

the hound out!" exclaimed Mrs. Knox, who was balancing herself on a

stone in the stream.

"I'd be in dread, ma'am," whined Johnny.

"Balderdash!" said the implacable Mrs. Knox. "In with you!"

I understand that Philippa assisted Johnny into the culvert, and

presume that it was in so doing that she acquired the two Robinson

Crusoe bare footprints which decorated her jacket when I next met her.

"Have you got hold of him yet, Johnny?" cried Mrs. Knox up the culvert.

"I have, ma'am, by the tail," responded Johnny's voice, sepulchral in

the depths.

"Can you stir him, Johnny?"

"I cannot, ma'am, and the wather is rising in it."

"Well, please God, they'll not open the mill dam!" remarked Mrs. Knox

philosophically to Philippa, as she caught hold of Johnny's dirty

ankles. "Hold on to the tail, Johnny!"

She hauled, with, as might be expected, no appreciable result. "Run,

my dear, and look for somebody, and we'll have that fox yet!"

Philippa ran, whither she knew not, pursued by fearful visions of

bursting mill-dams, and maddened foxes at bay. As she sped up the

avenue she heard voices, robust male voices, in a shrubbery, and made

for them. Advancing along an embowered walk towards her was what she

took for one wild instant to be a funeral; a second glance showed her

that it was a party of clergymen of all ages, walking by twos and

threes in the dappled shade of the over-arching trees. Obviously she

had intruded her sacrilegious presence into a Clerical Meeting. She

acknowledges that at this awe-inspiring spectacle she faltered, but the

thought of Johnny, the hound, and the fox, suffocating, possibly

drowning together in the culvert, nerved her. She does not remember

what she said or how she said it, but I fancy she must have conveyed to

them the impression that old Mrs. Knox was being drowned, as she

immediately found herself heading a charge of the Irish Church towards

the scene of disaster.

Fate has not always used me well, but on this occasion it was

mercifully decreed that I and the other members of the hunt should be

privileged to arrive in time to see my wife and her rescue party

precipitating themselves down the glen.

"Holy Biddy!" ejaculated Flurry, "is she running a paper-chase with all

the parsons? But look! For pity's sake will you look at my

grandmother and my Uncle Eustace?"

Mrs. Knox and her sworn enemy the old clergyman, whom I had met at

dinner the night before, were standing, apparently in the stream,

tugging at two bare legs that projected from a hole in the viaduct, and

arguing at the top of their voices. The bath-chair lay on its side

with the donkey grazing beside it, on the bank a stout Archdeacon was

tendering advice, and the hounds danced and howled round the entire

group.

"I tell you, Eliza, you had better let the Archdeacon try," thundered

Mr. Hamilton.

"Then I tell you I will not!" vociferated Mrs. Knox, with a tug at the

end of the sentence that elicited a subterranean lament from Johnny.

"Now who was right about the second grating? I told you so twenty

years ago!"

Exactly as Philippa and her rescue party arrived, the efforts of Mrs.

Knox and her brother-in-law triumphed. The struggling, sopping form of

Johnny was slowly drawn from the hole, drenched, speechless, but

clinging to the stern of a hound, who, in its turn, had its jaws fast

in the hind-quarters of a limp, yellow cub.

"Oh, it's dead!" wailed Philippa, "I _did_ think I should have been in

time to save it!"

"Well, if that doesn't beat all!" said Dr. Hickey.

VII

A MISDEAL

The wagonette slewed and slackened mysteriously on the top of the long

hill above Drumcurran. So many remarkable things had happened since we

had entrusted ourselves to the guidance of Mr. Bernard Shute that I

rose in my place and possessed myself of the brake, and in so doing saw

the horses with their heads hard in against their chests, and their

quarters jammed crookedly against the splashboard, being apparently

tied into knots by some inexplicable power.

"Some one's pulling the reins out of my hand!" exclaimed Mr. Shute.

The horses and pole were by this time making an acute angle with the

wagonette, and the groom plunged from the box to their heads. Miss

Sally Knox, who was sitting beside me, looked over the edge.

"Put on the brake! the reins are twisted round the axle!" she cried,

and fell into a fit of laughter.

We all--that is to say, Philippa, Miss Shute, Miss Knox, and I--got out

as speedily as might be; but, I think, without panic; Mr. Shute alone

stuck to the ship, with the horses struggling and rearing below him.

The groom and I contrived to back them, and by so doing caused the

reins to unwind themselves from the axle.

"It was my fault," said Mr. Shute, hauling them in as fast as we could

give them to him; "I broke the reins yesterday, and these are the

phaeton ones, and about six fathoms long at that, and I forgot and let

the slack go overboard. It's all right, I won't do it again."

With this reassurance we confided ourselves once more to the wagonette.

As we neared the town of Drumcurran the fact that we were on our way to

a horse fair became alarmingly apparent. It is impossible to imagine

how we pursued an uninjured course through the companies of horsemen,

the crowded carts, the squealing colts, the irresponsible led horses,

and, most immutable of all obstacles, the groups of countrywomen, with

the hoods of their heavy blue cloaks over their heads. They looked

like nuns of some obscure order; they were deaf and blind as ramparts

of sandbags; nothing less callous to human life than a Parisian

cabdriver could have burst a way through them. Many times during that

drive I had cause to be thankful for the sterling qualities of Mr.

Shute's brake; with its aid he dragged his over-fed bays into a crawl

that finally, and not without injury to the varnish, took the wagonette

to the Royal Hotel. Every available stall in the yard was by that time

filled, and it was only by virtue of the fact that the kitchenmaid was

nearly related to my cook that the indignant groom was permitted to

stable the bays in a den known as the calf-house.

That I should have lent myself to such an expedition was wholly due to

my wife. Since Philippa had taken up her residence in Ireland she had

discovered a taste for horses that was not to be extinguished, even by

an occasional afternoon on the Quaker, whose paces had become harder

than rock in his many journeys to Petty Sessions; she had also

discovered the Shutes, newcomers on the outer edge of our vast visiting

district, and between them this party to Drumcurran Horse Fair had been

devised. Philippa proposed to buy herself a hunter. Bernard Shute

wished to do the same, possibly two hunters, money being no difficulty

with this fortunate young man. Miss Sally Knox was of the company, and

I also had been kindly invited, as to a missionary meeting, to come,

and bring my cheque-book. The only saving clause in the affair was the

fact that Mr. Flurry Knox was to meet us at the scene of action.

The fair was held in a couple of large fields outside the town, and on

the farther bank of the Curranhilty River. Across a wide and

glittering ford, horses of all sizes and sorts were splashing, and a

long row of stepping-stones was hopped, and staggered, and scrambled

over by a ceaseless variety of foot-passengers. A man with a cart

plied as a ferry boat, doing a heavy trade among the applewomen and

vendors of "crubeens," _alias_ pigs' feet, a grisly delicacy peculiar

to Irish open-air holiday-making, and the July sun blazed on a scene

that even Miss Cecilia Shute found to be almost repayment enough for

the alarms of the drive.

"As a rule, I am so bored by driving that I find it reviving to be

frightened," she said to me, as we climbed to safety on a heathery

ridge above the fields dedicated to galloping the horses; "but when my

brother scraped all those people off one side of that car, and ran the

pole into the cart of lemonade-bottles, I began to wish for courage to

tell him I was going to get out and walk home."

"Well, if you only knew it," said Bernard, who was spreading rugs over

the low furze bushes in the touching belief that the prickles would not

come through, "the time you came nearest to walking home was when the

lash of the whip got twisted round Nancy's tail. Miss Knox, you're an

authority on these things--don't you think it would be a good scheme to

have a light anchor in the trap, and when the horses began to play the

fool, you'd heave the anchor over the fence and bring them up all

standing?"

"They wouldn't stand very long," remarked Miss Sally.

"Oh, that's all right," returned the inventor; "I'd have a dodge to

cast them loose, with the pole and the splinter-bar."

"You'd never see them again," responded Miss Knox demurely, "if you

thought that mattered."

"It would be the brightest feature of the case," said Miss Shute.

She was surveying Miss Sally through her pince-nez as she spoke, and

was, I have reason to believe, deciding that by the end of the day her

brother would be well on in the first stages of his fifteenth love

affair.

It has possibly been suspected that Mr. Bernard Shute was a sailor, had

been a sailor rather, until within the last year, when he had tumbled

into a fortune and a property, and out of the navy, in the shortest

time on record. His enthusiasm for horses had been nourished by the

hirelings of Malta, and other resorts of her Majesty's ships, and his

knowledge of them was, so far, bounded by the fact that it was more

usual to come off over their heads than their tails. For the rest, he

was a clean-shaved and personable youth, with a laugh which I may,

without offensive intention, define as possessing a what-cheeriness

special to his profession, and a habit, engendered no doubt by long

sojourns at the Antipodes, of getting his clothes in large hideous

consignments from a naval outfitter.

It was eleven o'clock, and the fair was in full swing. Its vortex was

in the centre of the field below us, where a low bank of sods and earth

had been erected as a trial jump, with a yelling crowd of men and boys

at either end, acting instead of the usual wings to prevent a swerve.

Strings of reluctant horses were scourged over the bank by dozens of

willing hands, while exhortation, cheers, and criticism were freely

showered upon each performance.

"Give the knees to the saddle, boy, and leave the heels slack."

"That's a nice horse. He'd keep a jock on his back where another'd

throw him!" "Well jumped, begor! She fled that fairly!" as an

ungainly three-year-old flounced over the bank without putting a hoof

on it. Then her owner, unloosing his pride in simile after the manner

of his race,

"Ah ha! when she give a lep, man, she's that free, she's like a hare

for it!"

A giggling group of country girls elbowed their way past us out of the

crowd of spectators, one of the number inciting her fellows to hurry on

to the other field "until they'd see the lads galloping the horses," to

which another responding that she'd "be skinned alive for the horses,"

the party sped on their way. We--_i.e._ my wife, Miss Knox, Bernard

Shute, and myself--followed in their wake, a matter by no means as easy

as it looked. Miss Shute had exhibited her wonted intelligence by

remaining on the hilltop with the "Spectator"; she had not reached the

happy point of possessing a mind ten years older than her age, and a

face ten years younger, without also developing the gift of scenting

boredom from afar. We squeezed past the noses and heels of fidgety

horses, and circumnavigated their attendant groups of critics, while

half-trained brutes in snaffles bolted to nowhere and back again, and

whinnying foals ran to and fro in search of their mothers.

A moderate bank divided the upper from the lower fields, and as every

feasible spot in it was commanded by a refusing horse, the choice of a

place and moment for crossing it required judgment. I got Philippa

across it in safety; Miss Knox, though as capable as any young woman in

Ireland of getting over a bank, either on horseback or on her own legs,

had to submit to the assistance of Mr. Shute, and the laws of dynamics

decreed that a force sufficient to raise a bower anchor should hoist

her seven stone odd to the top of the bank with such speed that she

landed half on her knees and half in the arms of her pioneer. A group

of portentously quiet men stood near, their eyes on the ground, their

hands in their pockets; they were all dressed so much alike that I did

not at first notice that Flurry Knox was among them; when I did, I

perceived that his eyes, instead of being on the ground, were surveying

Mr. Shute with that measure of disapproval that he habitually bestowed

upon strange men.

"You're later than I thought you'd be," he said. "I have a horse

half-bought for Mrs. Yeates. It's that old mare of Bobby Bennett's;

she makes a little noise, but she's a good mare, and you couldn't throw

her down if you tried. Bobby wants thirty pounds for her, but I think

you might get her for less. She's in the hotel stables, and you can

see her when you go to lunch."

We moved on towards the rushy bank of the river, and Philippa and Sally

Knox seated themselves on a low rock, looking, in their white frocks,

as incongruous in that dingy preoccupied assemblage as the dreamy

meadow-sweet and purple spires of loosestrife that thronged the river

banks. Bernard Shute had been lost in the shifting maze of men and

horses, who were, for the most part, galloping with the blind fury of

charging bulls; but presently, among a party who seemed to be riding

the finish of a race, we descried our friend, and a second or two later

he hauled a brown mare to a standstill in front of us.

"The fellow's asking forty-five pounds for her," he said to Miss Sally;

"she's a nailer to gallop. I don't think it's too much?"

"Her grandsire was the Mountain Hare," said the owner of the mare,

hurrying up to continue her family history, "and he was the grandest

horse in the four baronies. He was forty-two years of age when he

died, and they waked him the same as ye'd wake a Christian. They had

whisky and porther--and bread--and a piper in it."

"Thim Mountain Hare colts is no great things," interrupted Mr. Shute's

groom contemptuously. "I seen a colt once that was one of his stock,

and if there was forty men and their wives, and they after him with

sticks, he wouldn't lep a sod of turf."

"Lep, is it!" ejaculated the owner in a voice shrill with outrage.

"You may lead that mare out through the counthry, and there isn't a

fence in it that she wouldn't go up to it as indepindent as if she was

going to her bed, and your honour's ladyship knows that dam well, Miss

Knox."

"You want too much money for her, McCarthy," returned Miss Sally, with

her little air of preternatural wisdom.

"God pardon you, Miss Knox! Sure a lady like you knows well that

forty-five pounds is no money for that mare. Forty-five pounds!" He

laughed. "It'd be as good for me to make her a present to the

gentleman all out as take three farthings less for her! She's too

grand entirely for a poor farmer like me, and if it wasn't for the long

weak family I have, I wouldn't part with her under twice the money."

"Three fine lumps of daughters in America paying his rent for him,"

commented Flurry in the background. "That's the long weak family!"

Bernard dismounted and slapped the mare's ribs approvingly.

"I haven't had such a gallop since I was at Rio," he said. "What do

you think of her, Miss Knox?" Then, without waiting for an answer, "I

like her. I think I may as well give him the forty-five and have done

with it!"

At these ingenuous words I saw a spasm of anguish cross the countenance

of McCarthy, easily interpreted as the first pang of a life-long regret

that he had not asked twice the money. Flurry Knox put up an eyebrow

and winked at me; Mr. Shute's groom turned away for very shame. Sally

Knox laughed with the deplorable levity of nineteen.

Thus, with a brevity absolutely scandalous in the eyes of all

beholders, the bargain was concluded.

Flurry strolled up to Philippa, observing an elaborate remoteness from

Miss Sally and Mr. Shute.

"I believe I'm selling a horse here myself to-day," he said; "would you

like to have a look at him, Mrs. Yeates?"

"Oh, are you selling, Knox?" struck in Bernard, to whose brain the

glory of buying a horse had obviously mounted like new wine; "I want

another, and I know yours are the right sort."

"Well, as you seem fond of galloping," said Flurry sardonically, "this

one might suit you."

"You don't mean the Moonlighter?" said Miss Knox, looking fixedly at

him.

"Supposing I did, have you anything to say against him?" replied Flurry.

Decidedly he was in a very bad temper. Miss Sally shrugged her

shoulders, and gave a little shred of a laugh, but said no more.

In a comparatively secluded corner of the field we came upon

Moonlighter, sidling and fussing, with flickering ears, his tail

tightly tucked in and his strong back humped in a manner that boded

little good. Even to my untutored eye, he appeared to be an uncommonly

good-looking animal, a well-bred grey, with shoulders that raked back

as far as the eye could wish, the true Irish jumping hindquarters, and

a showy head and neck; it was obvious that nothing except Michael

Hallahane's adroit chucks at his bridle kept him from displaying his

jumping powers free of charge. Bernard stared at him in silence; not

the pregnant and intimidating silence of the connoisseur, but the

tongue-tied muteness of helpless ignorance. His eye for horses had

most probably been formed on circus posters, and the advertisements of

a well-known embrocation, and Moonlighter approximated in colour and

conduct to these models.

"I can see he's a ripping fine horse," he said at length; "I think I

should like to try him."

Miss Knox changed countenance perceptibly, and gave a perturbed glance

at Flurry. Flurry remained impenetrably unamiable.

"I don't pretend to be a judge of horses," went on Mr. Shute. "I dare

say I needn't tell you that!" with a very engaging smile at Miss Sally;

"but I like this one awfully."

As even Philippa said afterwards, she would not have given herself away

like that over buying a reel of cotton.

"Are you quite sure that he's really the sort of horse you want?" said

Miss Knox, with rather more colour in her face than usual; "he's only

four years old, and he's hardly a finished hunter."

The object of her philanthropy looked rather puzzled. "What! can't he

jump?" he said.

"Is it jump?" exclaimed Michael Hallahane, unable any longer to contain

himself; "is it the horse that jumped five foot of a clothes line in

Heffernan's yard, and not a one on his back but himself, and didn't

leave so much as the thrack of his hoof on the quilt that was hanging

on it!"

"That's about good enough," said Mr. Shute, with his large friendly

laugh; "what's your price, Knox? I must have the horse that jumped the

quilt! I'd like to try him, if you don't mind. There are some

jolly-looking banks over there."

"My price is a hundred sovereigns," said Flurry; "you can try him if

you like."

"Oh, don't!" cried Sally impulsively; but Bernard's foot was already in

the stirrup. "I call it disgraceful!" I heard her say in a low voice

to her kinsman--"you know he can't ride."

The kinsman permitted himself a malign smile. "That's his look-out,"

he said.

Perhaps the unexpected docility with which Moonlighter allowed himself

to be manoeuvred through the crowd was due to Bernard's thirteen stone;

at all events, his progress through a gate into the next field was

unexceptionable. Bernard, however, had no idea of encouraging this

tranquillity. He had come out to gallop, and without further ceremony

he drove his heels into Moonlighter's sides, and took the consequences

in the shape of a very fine and able buck. How he remained within even

visiting distance of the saddle it is impossible to explain; perhaps

his early experience in the rigging stood him in good stead in the

matter of hanging on by his hands; but, however preserved, he did

remain, and went away down the field at what he himself subsequently

described as "the rate of knots."

Flurry flung away his cigarette and ran to a point of better

observation. We all ran, including Michael Hallahane and various

onlookers, and were in time to see Mr. Shute charging the least

advantageous spot in a hollow-faced furzy bank. Nothing but the grey

horse's extreme activity got the pair safely over; he jumped it on a

slant, changed feet in the heart of a furze-bush, and was lost to view.

In what relative positions Bernard and his steed alighted was to us a

matter of conjecture; when we caught sight of them again, Moonlighter

was running away, with his rider still on his back, while the slope of

the ground lent wings to his flight.

"That young gentleman will be apt to be killed," said Michael Hallahane

with composure, not to say enjoyment.

"He'll be into the long bog with him pretty soon," said Flurry, his

keen eye tracking the fugitive.

"Oh!--I thought he was off that time!" exclaimed Miss Sally, with a

gasp in which consternation and amusement were blended. "There! He

_is_ into the bog!"

It did not take us long to arrive at the scene of disaster, to which,

as to a dog-fight, other foot-runners were already hurrying, and on our

arrival we found things looking remarkably unpleasant for Mr. Shute and

Moonlighter. The latter was sunk to his withers in the sheet of black

slime into which he had stampeded; the former, submerged to the waist

three yards farther away in the bog, was trying to drag himself towards

firm ground by the aid of tussocks of wiry grass.

"Hit him!" shouted Flurry. "Hit him! he'll sink if he stops there!"

Mr. Shute turned on his adviser a face streaming with black mud, out of

which his brown eyes and white teeth gleamed with undaunted

cheerfulness.

"All jolly fine," he called back; "if I let go this grass I'll sink

too!"

A shout of laughter from the male portion of the spectators

sympathetically greeted this announcement, and a dozen equally futile

methods of escape were suggested. Among those who had joined us was,

fortunately, one of the many boys who pervaded the fair selling

halters, and, by means of several of these knotted together, a line of

communication was established. Moonlighter, who had fallen into the

state of inane stupor in which horses in his plight so often indulge,

was roused to activity by showers of stones and imprecations but

faintly chastened by the presence of ladies. Bernard, hanging on to

his tail, belaboured him with a cane, and, finally, the reins proving

good, the task of towing the victims ashore was achieved.

"He's mine, Knox, you know," were Mr. Shute's first words as he

scrambled to his feet; "he's the best horse I ever got across--worth

twice the money!"

"Faith, he's aisy plased!" remarked a bystander.

"Oh, do go and borrow some dry clothes," interposed Philippa

practically; "surely there must be some one----"

"There's a shop in the town where he can strip a peg for 13_s._ 9_d._,"

said Flurry grimly; "I wouldn't care myself about the clothes you'd

borrow here!"

The morning sun shone jovially upon Moonlighter and his rider, caking

momently the black bog stuff with which both were coated, and as the

group disintegrated, and we turned to go back, every man present was

pleasurably aware that the buttons of Mr. Shute's riding breeches had

burst at the knee, causing a large triangular hiatus above his gaiter.

"Well," said Flurry conclusively to me as we retraced our steps, "I

always thought the fellow was a fool, but I never thought he was such a

damned fool."

It seemed an interminable time since breakfast when our party, somewhat

shattered by the stirring events of the morning, found itself gathered

in an upstairs room at the Royal Hotel, waiting for a meal that had

been ordained some two hours before. The air was charged with the

mingled odours of boiling cabbage and frying mutton; we affected to

speak of them with disgust, but our souls yearned to them. Female

ministrants, with rustling skirts and pounding feet, raced along the

passages with trays that were never for us, and opening doors released

roaring gusts of conversation, blended with the clatter of knives and

forks, and still we starved. Even the ginger-coloured check suit,

lately labelled "The Sandringham. Wonderful value, 16_s._ 9_d._" in

the window of Drumcurran's leading mart, and now displayed upon Mr.

Shute's all too lengthy limbs, had lost its power to charm.

"Oh, don't tear that bell quite out by the roots, Bernard," said his

sister, from the heart of a lamentable yawn. "I dare say it only

amuses them when we ring, but it may remind them that we are still

alive. Major Yeates, do you or do you not regret the pigs' feet?"

"More than I can express," I said, turning from the window, where I had

been looking down at the endless succession of horses' backs and men's

hats, moving in two opposing currents in the street below. "I dare say

if we talk about them for a little we shall feel ill, and that will be

better than nothing."

At this juncture, however, a heavy-laden tray thumped against the door,

and our repast was borne into the room by a hot young woman in creaking

boots, who hoarsely explained that what kept her was waiting on the

potatoes, and that the ould pan that was in it was playing Puck with

the beefsteaks.

"Well," said Miss Shute, as she began to try conclusions between a

blunt knife and a bullet-proof mutton chop, "I have never lived in the

country before, but I have always been given to understand that the

village inn was one of its chief attractions." She delicately moved

the potato dish so as to cover the traces of a bygone egg, and her

glance lingered on the flies that dragged their way across a melting

mound of salt butter. "I like local colour, but I don't care about it

on the tablecloth."

"Well, I'm feeling quite anxious about Irish country hotels now," said

Bernard; "they're getting so civilised and respectable. After all,

when you go back to England no one cares a pin to hear that you've been

done up to the knocker. That don't amuse them a bit. But all my

friends are as pleased as anything when I tell them of the pothouse

where I slept in my clothes rather than face the sheets, or how, when I

complained to the landlady next day, she said, 'Cock ye up! Wasn't it

his Reverence the Dean of Kilcoe had them last!'"

We smiled wanly; what I chiefly felt was respect for any hungry man who

could jest in presence of such a meal.

"All this time my hunter hasn't been bought," said Philippa presently,

leaning back in her chair, and abandoning the unequal contest with her

beefsteak. "Who is Bobby Bennett? Will his horse carry a lady?"

Sally Knox looked at me and began to laugh.

"You should ask Major Yeates about Bobby Bennett," she said.

Confound Miss Sally! It had never seemed worth while to tell Philippa

all that story about my doing up Miss Bobby Bennett's hair, and I sank

my face in my tumbler of stagnant whisky-and-soda to conceal the colour

that suddenly adorned it. Any intelligent man will understand that it

was a situation calculated to amuse the ungodly, but without any real

fun in it. I explained Miss Bennett as briefly as possible, and at all

the more critical points Miss Sally's hazel-green eyes roamed slowly

and mercilessly towards me.

"You haven't told Mrs. Yeates that she's one of the greatest

horse-copers in the country," she said, when I had got through somehow;

"she can sell you a very good horse sometimes, and a very bad one too,

if she gets the chance."

"No one will ever explain to me," said Miss Shute, scanning us all with

her dark, half-amused, and wholly sophisticated eyes, "why horse-coping

is more respectable than cheating at cards. I rather respect people

who are able to cheat at cards; if every one did, it would make whist

so much more cheerful; but there is no forgiveness for dealing yourself

the right card, and there is no condemnation for dealing your neighbour

a very wrong horse!"

"Your neighbour is supposed to be able to take care of himself," said

Bernard.

"Well, why doesn't that apply to card-players?" returned his sister;

"are they all in a state of helpless innocence?"

"I'm helplessly innocent," announced Philippa, "so I hope Miss Bennett

won't deal me a wrong horse."

"Oh, her mare is one of the right ones," said Miss Sally; "she's a

lovely jumper, and her manners are the very best."

The door opened, and Flurry Knox put in his head. "Bobby Bennett's

downstairs," he said to me mysteriously.

I got up, not without consciousness of Miss Sally's eye, and prepared

to follow him. "You'd better come too, Mrs. Yeates, to keep an eye on

him. Don't let him give her more than thirty, and if he gives that she

should return him two sovereigns." This last injunction was bestowed

in a whisper as we descended the stairs.

Miss Bennett was in the crowded yard of the hotel, looking handsome and

overdressed, and she greeted me with just that touch of Auld Lang Syne

in her manner that I could best have dispensed with. I turned to the

business in hand without delay. The brown mare was led forth from the

stable and paraded for our benefit; she was one of those inconspicuous,

meritorious animals about whom there seems nothing particular to say,

and I felt her legs and looked hard at her hocks, and was not much the

wiser.

"It's no use my saying she doesn't make a noise," said Miss Bobby,

"because every one in the country will tell you she does. You can have

a vet. if you like, and that's the only fault he can find with her.

But if Mrs. Yeates hasn't hunted before now, I'll guarantee Cruiskeen

as just the thing for her. She's really safe and confidential. My

little brother Georgie has hunted her--_you_ remember Georgie, Major

Yeates?--the night of the ball, you know--and he's only eleven. Mr.

Knox can tell you what sort she is."

"Oh, she's a grand mare," said Mr. Knox, thus appealed to; "you'd hear

her coming three fields off like a German band!"

"And well for you if you could keep within three fields of her!"

retorted Miss Bennett. "At all events, she's not like the hunter you

sold Uncle, that used to kick the stars as soon as I put my foot in the

stirrup!"

"'Twas the size of the foot frightened him," said Flurry.

"Do you know how Uncle cured him?" said Miss Bennett, turning her back

on her adversary; "he had him tied head and tail across the yard gate,

and every man that came in had to get over his back!"

"That's no bad one!" said Flurry.

Philippa looked from one to the other in bewilderment, while the

badinage continued, swift and unsmiling, as became two hierarchs of

horse-dealing; it went on at intervals for the next ten minutes, and at

the end of that time I had bought the mare for thirty pounds. As Miss

Bennett said nothing about giving me back two of them, I had not the

nerve to suggest it.

After this Flurry and Miss Bennett went away, and were swallowed up in

the fair; we returned to our friends upstairs, and began to arrange

about getting home. This, among other difficulties, involved the

tracking and capture of the Shutes' groom, and took so long that it

necessitated tea. Bernard and I had settled to ride our new purchases

home, and the groom was to drive the wagonette--an alteration ardently

furthered by Miss Shute. The afternoon was well advanced when Bernard

and I struggled through the turmoil of the hotel yard in search of our

horses, and, the hotel hostler being nowhere to be found, the Shutes'

man saddled our animals for us, and then withdrew, to grapple

single-handed with the bays in the calf-house.

"Good business for me, that Knox is sending the grey horse home for

me," remarked Bernard, as his new mare followed him tractably out of

the stall. "He'd have been rather a handful in this hole of a place."

He shoved his way out of the yard in front of me, seemingly quite

comfortable and at home upon the descendant of the Mountain Hare, and I

followed as closely as drunken carmen and shafts of erratic carts would

permit. Cruiskeen evinced a decided tendency to turn to the right on

leaving the yard, but she took my leftward tug in good part, and we

moved on through the streets of Drumcurran with a dignity that was only

impaired by the irrepressible determination of Mr. Shute's new trousers

to run up his leg. It was a trifle disappointing that Cruiskeen should

carry her nose in the air like a camel, but I set it down to my own bad

hands, and to that cause I also imputed her frequent desire to stop, a

desire that appeared to coincide with every fourth or fifth

public-house on the line of march. Indeed, at the last corner before

we left the town, Miss Bennett's mare and I had a serious difference of

opinion, in the course of which she mounted the pavement and remained

planted in front of a very disreputable public-house, whose owner had

been before me several times for various infringements of the Licensing

Acts. Bernard and the corner-boys were of course much pleased; I

inwardly resolved to let Miss Bennett know how her groom occupied his

time in Drumcurran.

We got out into the calm of the country roads without further incident,

and I there discovered that Cruiskeen was possessed of a dromedary

swiftness in trotting, that the action was about as comfortable as the

dromedary's, and that it was extremely difficult to moderate the pace.

"I say! This is something like going!" said Bernard, cantering hard

beside me with slack rein and every appearance of happiness. "Do you

mean to keep it up all the way?"

"You'd better ask this devil," I replied, hauling on the futile ring

snaffle. "Miss Bennett must have an arm like a prize-fighter. If this

is what she calls confidential, I don't want her confidences."

After another half-mile, during which I cursed Flurry Knox, and

registered a vow that Philippa should ride Cruiskeen in a cavalry bit,

we reached the cross-roads at which Bernard's way parted from mine.

Another difference of opinion between my wife's hunter and me here took

place, this time on the subject of parting from our companion, and I

experienced that peculiar inward sinking that accompanies the birth of

the conviction one has been stuck. There were still some eight miles

between me and home, but I had at least the consolation of knowing that

the brown mare would easily cover it in forty minutes. But in this

also disappointment awaited me. Dropping her head to about the level

of her knees, the mare subsided into a walk as slow as that of the

slowest cow, and very similar in general style. In this manner I

progressed for a further mile, breathing forth, like St. Paul,

threatenings and slaughters against Bobby Bennett and all her

confederates; and then the idea occurred to me that many really

first-class hunters were very poor hacks. I consoled myself with this

for a further period, and presently an opportunity for testing it

presented itself. The road made a long loop round the flank of a hill,

and it was possible to save half a mile or so by getting into the

fields. It was a short cut I had often taken on the Quaker, and it

involved nothing more serious than a couple of low stone "gaps" and an

infantine bank. I turned Cruiskeen at the first of these. She was

evidently surprised. Being in an excessively bad temper, I beat her in

a way that surprised her even more, and she jumped the stones

precipitately and with an ease that showed she knew quite well what she

was about. I vented some further emotion upon her by the convenient

medium of my cane, and galloped her across the field and over the bank,

which, as they say in these parts, she "fled" without putting an iron

on it. It was not the right way to jump it, but it was inspiriting,

and when she had disposed of the next gap without hesitation my waning

confidence in Miss Bennett began to revive. I cantered over the ridge

of the hill, and down it towards the cottage near which I was

accustomed to get out on to the road again. As I neared my wonted

opening in the fence, I saw that it had been filled by a stout pole,

well fixed into the bank at each end, but not more than three feet

high. Cruiskeen pricked her ears at it with intelligence; I trotted

her at it, and gave her a whack.

Ages afterwards there was some one speaking on the blurred edge of a

dream that I was dreaming about nothing in particular. I went on

dreaming, and was impressed by the shape of a fat jug, mottled white

and blue, that intruded itself painfully, and I again heard voices,

very urgent and full of effort, but quite outside any concern of mine.

I also made an effort of some kind; I was doing my very best to be good

and polite, but I was dreaming in a place that whirred, and was

engrossing, and daylight was cold and let in some unknown

unpleasantness. For that time the dream got the better of the

daylight, and then, _apropos_ of nothing, I was standing up in a house

with some one's arm round me; the mottled jug was there, so was the

unpleasantness, and I was talking with most careful, old-world

politeness.

"Sit down now, you're all right," said Miss Bobby Bennett, who was

mopping my face with a handkerchief dipped in the jug.