Chapter X: Part 10

"Well, the skin o' a pig couldn't stand that, and Andy, he was middlin' smart at a repartee, so 'Bap yersel',' says he, and with that he let a growl out o' him ye might have heared te Portadown. Ye never heared the like, nor what's more, Andy Wilson's mare, she never heared the like, and she just made the wan lep and landed in the strame fornenst William; then James he tuk a howlt o' William, and 'Bap yersel', says he; and with that he coped him off his gran' white horse, and he drooked him in the watter.

"Then there was the fine play, and the best divarsion ever ye seen. Some they were for William, and some they were for James, and every wan he up with his fut or his fist, or onny other weepon that come convenient, and the boys they were all bloodin' other, and murder and all sorts."

"I thought you were all friends at Scarva?"

"And so we were--just friends fightin' through other."

"Was any one hurt?"

"Was anyone hurted? Sure, they were just trailin' theirselves off the ground. Ye wud have died larfin'. There's Jimmy Hanlon was never his own man since, and I had me nose broke on me--I find it yet--and some says there was a wee girl from Tanderagee got herself killed."

"What became of William?"

"He was clean drowned."

"And King James?"

"He's in hell with Johnny M'Adam."

I tried to explain that I had not meant the King himself, but the actor in whom nature had been stronger than dramatic instinct, but Tummus either could not or would not dissociate the two. He really was not attending to me: I had perceived for some time that his thoughts were wandering far from our conversation. Suddenly a spasm convulsed his features. With one hand he raised his hoe in the air like a tomahawk, disregarding the weed of his afternoon's toil, which was left limp and helpless on the gravel; with the other he grasped his side. I feared the old man was going to have a fit, but it was only uncontrollable laughter at some joke as yet hidden from me.

"Well, do ye know what I'm goin' te tell ye? I wud just allow William was a middlin' polished boy, so he was. He subsidised the Pope o' Rome, did he? Man, oh! Do ye tell me that? That bates all, and him goin' to take just twiste what he let on."

Old Tummus unquestionably was absolutely sober at the beginning of our interview, and had remained "dry" during it, but he now became gradually intoxicated with what had appeared to him to be his hero's splendid cunning. The thought of a genius which could overreach someone else in a bargain rose to his brain like champagne. He swayed on his feet; he ran his words into each other; he assumed a gaiety of manner and expression quite unusual to him.

I watched him lurch down the walk, and then pause on the bridge. He supported himself by the wooden railing, which creaked as he swayed to and fro, and addressed the stream and the trees--

"Do ye know what I'm goin' to tell ye? I wud just allow he was a middlin' polished boy--so he was."

The Game Leg.

_From "The Furry Farm."_

BY K. F. PURDON.

Heffernan's house at the Furry Farm stood very backwards from the roadside, hiding itself, you'd really think, from anyone that might be happening by. As if it need do that! Why, there was no more snug, well-looked-after place in the whole of Ardenoo than Heffernan's always was, with full and plenty in it for man and beast, though it wasn't to say too tasty-looking.

And it was terrible lonesome. There wasn't a neighbour within the bawl of an ass of it. Heffernan, of course, had always been used to it, so that he didn't so much mind; still, he missed Art, after he going off with little Rosy Rafferty. That was nigh hand as bad upon him as losing the girl herself. He had got to depend on Art for every hand's turn, a thing that left him worse, when he was without him. And he was very slow-going. As long as Julia was there, she did all, and Heffernan might stand to one side and look at her. And so he missed her now, more than ever; and still he had no wish to see her back, though even to milk the cows came awkward to him.

He was contending with the work one evening, and the calves in particular were leaving him distracted; above all, a small little white one that he designed for Rosy, when he'd have her Woman of the House at the Furry Farm. That calf, I needn't say, was not the pick of the bunch, but as Mickey thought to himself, a girl wouldn't know any better than choose a calf by the colour, and there would be no good wasting anything of value on her. At all events, it would be "child's pig and Daddy's bacon" most likely with that calf. But sure, what matter! Rosy was never to have any call to it, or anything else at the Furry Farm.

Those calves were a very sweet lot, so that Mickey might have been feeling all the pleasure in life, just watching them, with their soft, little muzzles down in the warm, sweet milk, snorting with the pure enjoyment. But Mickey was only grousing to get done, and vexed at the way the big calves were shoving the little ones away, and still he couldn't hinder them. Art used to regulate them very simple by means of a little ash quick he kept, to slap the forward calves across the face when they'd get too impudent. But as often as Mickey had seen him do that, he couldn't do the same. The ash quick was so close to him that if it had been any nearer it would have bitten him. Stuck up in a corner of the bit of ruin that had once been Castle Heffernan it was. But it might as well have been in America for all the good it was to Mickey.

"I wish to God I was rid of the whole of yous, this minute!" says he to himself, and he with his face all red and steamy, and the milk slobbering out of the pail down upon the ground, the way the calves were butting him about the legs.

That very minute, he heard a sound behind him. He turned about, and, my dear! the heart jumped into his mouth, as he saw a great, immense red face, just peeping over the wall that shut in his yard from the boreen. That wall was no more than four feet high. Wouldn't anyone think it strange to see such a face, only that far from the ground! and it with a bushy, black beard around it, and big rolling eyes, and a wide, old hat cocked back upon it? You'd have to think it was something "not right"; an Appearance or Witchery work of some kind.

But, let alone that, isn't there something very terrifying and frightful in finding yourself being watched, when you think you're alone; and of all things, by a man? The worst of a wild beast wouldn't put the same bad fear in your heart.

"Good evening, Mr. Heffernan," says the newcomer, with a grin upon him, free and pleasant; "that's a fine lot of calves you have there!"

Heffernan was so put about that he made no answer, and the man went on to say, "Is it that you don't know me? Sure, you couldn't forget poor old Hopping Hughie as simple as that!"

And he gave himself a shove, so that he raised his shoulders above the wall. A brave, big pair they were, too, but they were only just held up on crutches. Hughie could balance himself upon them, and get about, as handy as you please. But he was dead of his two legs.

"Oh, Hughie...!" says Heffernan, pretty stiff; "well, and what do you want here?"

"Och, nothing in life...."

"Take it, then, and let you be off about your business!" says Mickey, as quick as a flash, for once; and he that was proud when he had it said!

Hughie had a most notorious tongue himself, but he knew when to keep it quiet, and he thought it as good to appear very mild and down in himself now, so he said, "My business! sure, what word is that to say to a poor old fellah on chrutches! Not like you, Mr. Heffernan, that'll be off to the fair of Balloch to-morrow morning, bright and early, with them grand fine calves of yours. The price they'll go! There isn't the peel of them in Ardenoo!"

"Do you tell me that?" says Heffernan, that a child could cheat.

"That's what they do be telling me," says Hughie. He could build a nest in your ear, he was that cunning. He thought he saw a chance of getting to the fair himself, and a night's lodging as well, if he managed right.

"I wish to goodness I could get them there, so," says Mickey, "and hasn't one to drive them for me!"

"Would I do?" says Hughie.

Heffernan looked at him up and down.

"Sure you'd not be able!"

"Whoo! me not able? Maybe I'm like the singed cat, better than I look! I'm slow, but fair and easy goes far in a day! Never you fear but I'll get your calves to Balloch the same way the boy ate the cake, very handy...."

The simplest thing would have been for Heffernan to take and drive the calves himself. But he never had the fashion of doing such things. Anyway, it wouldn't answer for the people to see a man with a good means of his own, like Mickey, turning drover that way.

So he thought again, while Hughie watched him, and then says he, "You'll have to be off out of this before the stars have left the sky!"

"And why wouldn't I?" says Hughie; "only give me a bit of supper and a shakedown for the night, the way I'll be fresh for the road to-morrow."

Hughie was looking to be put sitting down in the kitchen alongside Heffernan himself, and to have the settle-bed foreninst the fire to sleep in. But he had to content himself with the straw in the barn and a plateful carried out to him. Queer and slow-going Heffernan might be, but he wasn't thinking of having the likes of Hopping Hughie in his chimney-corner, where he had often thought to see little Rosy Rafferty and she smiling at him.

Hughie took it all very contented. Gay and happy he was after his supper, and soon fell asleep on the straw, with his ragged pockets that empty that the divil could dance a hornpipe in them and not strike a copper there; while Mickey above in bed in his own house, with his fine farm and all his stock about him, calves and cows and pigs, not to speak of the money in the old stocking under the thatch ... Mickey couldn't sleep, only worrying, thinking was he right to go to sell the calves at all; and to be letting Hughie drive them!

"I had little to do," he thought, "to be letting him in about the place at all, and couldn't tell what divilment he might be up to, as soon as he gets me asleep! Hughie's terrible wicked, and as strong as a ditch! I done well to speak him civil, anyway. But I'll not let them calves stir one peg out of this with him! I'd sooner risk keeping them longer...."

There's the way he was going on, tossing and tumbling and tormenting himself, as if bed wasn't a place to rest yourself in and not be raking up annoyances.

So it wasn't till near morning that Mickey dozed off, and never wakened till it was more than time to be off to the fair.

Up he jumped and out to stop Hughie. But the yard was silent and empty. Hughie and the calves were gone.

Mickey was more uneasy than ever.

"A nice bosthoon I must be," he thought, "to go trust my good-looking calves to a k'nat like Hughie! And he to go off without any breakfast, too...!"

Heffernan was a good warrant to feed man or beast. But he mightn't have minded about Hughie, that had plenty of little ways of providing for himself. His pockets would be like sideboards, the way he would have them stuck out with meat and eggs, and so on, that he would be given along the road. Hughie was better fed than plenty that bestowed food upon him.

Balloch, where the fair is held, is the wildest and most lonesome place in Ardenoo, with a steep, rough bit of road leading up to it, very awkward to drive along. Up this comes Heffernan, on his sidecar, driving his best, and in a great hurry to know where he would come on Hughie. He had it laid out in his own mind that sight nor light of his calves he never would get in this world again. So it was a great surprise to him to find them there before him, safe and sound. His heart lightened at that as if a mill-stone was lifted off it.

And the fine appearance there was upon them. Not a better spot in the fair-green than where Hughie had them, opposite a drink-tent where the people would be thronging most! And it was a choice spot for Hughie too. Happy and contented he was, his back against a tree, leaning his weight on one crutch and the other convenient to his hand.

"So there's where you are," says Hughie, a bit scornful. Sure it was a foolish remark to pass and the man there before him, as plain as the nose on your face. But Hughie was puzzled too by the look of relief he saw on Mickey's face. He understood nothing of what Heffernan was passing through. It's an old saying and a true one, "Them that has the world has care!" but them that hasn't it, what do they know about it?

While Hughie was turning this over in his mind, Mickey was throwing an eye upon the calves, and then, seeing they were all right, he was bandying off with himself, when Hughie said, "Terrible dry work it is, driving stock along them dusty roads since the early morning," and he rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth with a grin.

At that, Mickey put his hand into his pocket and felt round about, and then pulled it out empty.

"I'll see you later, Hughie," says he, "I'll not forget you, never fear! Just let you wait here till I have the poor mare attended to that drew me here...."

So he went off to do this, and then into the drink-tent with him, the way he could be getting a sup himself. But no sign of he to give anything to Hughie. And there now is where Mickey made a big mistake.

He met up with a couple or three that he was acquainted with in the tent, and they began to talk of this thing and that thing, so that it was a gay little while before Mickey came out again.

When he did: "What sort is the drink in there, Mr. Heffernan?" says Hughie.

Now what Mickey had taken at that time was no more than would warm the cockles of his heart. So he looked quite pleasant and said, "Go in yourself, Hughie, and here's what will enable you to judge it!"

And he held out a shilling to Hughie.

"A bird never yet flew upon the one wing, Mr. Heffernan!" said Hughie, that was looking to get another shilling, and that would be only his due for driving the calves.

Mickey said nothing one way or the other, only went off, and left Hughie standing there, holding out his hand in front of him with the shilling in it, lonesome.

He that was vexed! He got redder in the face than ever, and gave out a few curses, till he remembered there wasn't one to hear him. So he stopped and went into the tent and I needn't say he got the best value he could there.

But all the time he was thinking how badly Heffernan was after treating him, putting him off without enough to see him through the fair even, let alone with a trifle in his pockets to help him on his rounds. He began planning how he could pay out Mickey.

He got himself back to the same spot, near the calves, to see what would happen. After a time, he saw Heffernan coming back, and little Barney Maguire with him. A very decent boy Barney was, quiet and agreeable; never too anxious for work, but very knowledgable about how things should be done, from a wake to a sheep-shearing. Heffernan always liked to have Barney with him at a fair.

The two of them stood near the calves, careless-like, as if they took no interest in them at all.

A dealer came up.

"How much for them calves? Not that I'm in need of the like," says he.

"Nobody wants you to take them, so," says Barney, "but the price is three pounds ... or was it guineas you're after saying, Mr. Heffernan?"

Heffernan said nothing, and the dealer spoke up very fierce; "Three pounds! Put thirty shillings on them, and I'll be talking to ye!"

Mickey again only looked at his adviser, and says Barney, "Thirty shillings! 'Tis you that's bidding wide, this day! May the Lord forgive you! Is it wanting a present you are of the finest calves in Ardenoo?"

Heffernan swelled out with delight at that; as if Barney's word could make his calves either better or worse.

"Wasn't it fifty-seven and sixpence you're after telling me you were offered only yesterday, Mr. Heffernan," says Barney, "just for the small ones of the lot?"

"Och! I dare say! don't you?" says the dealer; "the woman that owns you it was that made you that bid, to save your word!"

Poor Mickey! and he hadn't a woman at all! The dealer of course being strange couldn't know that, nor why Hughie gave a laugh out of him.

But that didn't matter. Mickey took no notice. A man that's a bit "thick" escapes many a prod that another would feel sharp. So in all things you can see how them that are afflicted are looked after in some little way we don't know.

The dealer looked at the calves again.

"Troth, I'm thinking it's the wrong ones yous have here! Yous must have forgotten them fine three-pound calves at home!"

And Mickey began looking very anxiously at them, as he thought maybe he had made some mistake.

"Them calves," says the dealer, slowly, "isn't like a pretty girl, that everyone will be looking to get! And, besides, they're no size! A terrible small calf they are!"

"Small!" said Barney, "It's too big they are! And if they're little itself, what harm! Isn't a mouse the prettiest animal you might ask to see?"

"Ay, it is," says the dealer, "but it'll take a power of mice to stock a farm!" and off with him in a real passion--by the way of.

But Barney knew better than to mind. The dealer came back, and at long last the calves were sold and paid for. Then the lucky-penny had to be given. Hard-set Barney was to get Heffernan to do that. In the end Mickey was so bothered over it that he dropped a shilling just where Hughie was standing leaning his weight on the one crutch as usual.

As quick as a flash, he had the other up, and made a kind of a lurch forward, as if to look for the money. But he managed to get the second crutch down upon the shilling, to hide it; and then he looked round about the ground as innocent as a child, as if he was striving his best to find the money for Mickey.

"Where should it be, at all, at all?" says Mickey; "bewitched it should be, to say it's gone like that!"

And Heffernan, standing there with his mouth open, looked as if he had lost all belonging to him. Then he began searching about a good piece off from where the shilling fell.

"It's not there you'll get it!" said Barney, "sure you ought always look for a thing where you lost it!"

He went over to Hughie.

"None of your tricks, now! It's you has Mr. Heffernan's money, and let you give it up to him!"

"Is it me have it? Sure if I had, what would I do, only hand it over to the man that owns it!" says Hughie.

On the word, he let himself down upon the ground, and slithered over on top of the shilling.

But, quick and all as he was, Barney was quicker.

"Sure, you have it there, you vagabone, you! Give it up, and get off out of this with yourself!"

And he caught Hughie a clip on the side of the head that sent him sprawling on the broad of his back. And there, right enough, under him, was the shilling.

So Barney picked it up, and for fear of any other mistake, he handed it to the dealer.

"It's an ugly turn whatever, to be knocking a poor cripple about that-a-way!" said the dealer, dropping the lucky-penny into his pocket.

"Ach, how poor he is, and let him be crippled, itself!" says Barney; "it's easy seeing you're strange to Ardenoo, or you'd not be compassionating Hughie so tender!"

No more was said then, only in the tent with them again to wet the bargain. Hughie gathered himself up. He was in the divil's own temper. Small blame to him, too! Let alone the disappointment about the shilling, and the knock Barney gave him, the people all had a laugh at him. And he liked that as little as the next one. You'd think he'd curse down the stars out of the skies this time, the way he went on.

And it wasn't Barney's clout he cared about, half as much as Mickey's meanness. It was that had him so mad. He felt he must pay Heffernan out.

He considered a bit; then he gave his leg a slap.

"I have it now!" he said to himself.

He beckoned two young boys up to him, that were striving to sell a load of cabbage plants they had there upon the donkey's back, and getting bad call for them.

"It's a poor trade yous are doing to-day," said Hughie; "and I was thinking in meself yous should be very dry. You wouldn't care to earn the price of a pint?"

"How could we?" says the boys.

"I'll tell you! Do you see that car?" and Hughie pointed to where Heffernan had left his yoke drawn up, and the old mare cropping a bit as well as she could, being tied by the head; "well, anyone that will pull the linch-pin out of the wheel, on the far side of the car, needn't be without tuppence to wet his whistle...." and Hughie gave a rattle to a few coppers he had left in his pocket.

"Yous'll have to be smart about it, too," said he, "or maybe whoever owns that car will have gone off upon it, afore yous have time to do the primest bit of fun that ever was seen upon this fair green!"

"Whose is the car?"

"Och, if I know!" says Hughie; "but what matter for that? One man is as good as another at the bottom of a ditch! ay, and better. It will be the height of divarshin to see the roll-off they'll get below there at the foot of the hill...."

"Maybe they'd get hurted!" said the boys.

"Hurted, how-are-ye!" says Hughie; "how could anyone get hurted so simple as that? I'd be the last in the world to speak of such a thing in that case! But if yous are afraid of doing it...."

"Afraid! that's queer talk to be having!" says one of them, very stiff, for like all boys, he thought nothing so bad as to have "afraid" said to him; "no, but we're ready to do as much as the next one!"

"I wouldn't doubt yiz!" said Hughie; "h-away with the two of you, now! Only mind! don't let on a word of this to any sons of man...."

Off they went, and Hughie turned his back on them and the car, and stared at whatever was going on the other end of the fair. He hadn't long to wait, before Heffernan and Barney and the dealer came out of the drink-tent. Hughie took a look at them out of the corner of his eye.

"Ah!" he said to himself, "all 'purty-well-I-thank-ye!' after what they drank inside! But, wait a bit, Mickey Heffernan...."

The three men went over to where Heffernan's car was waiting. The boys were gone. The other two men helped Mickey to get his yoke ready. Then he got up, and they shook hands a good many times. Heffernan chucked at the reins and started off.

Hughie was watching, and when he saw how steadily the old mare picked her way down the steep boreen, he began to be afraid he hadn't hit on such a very fine plan at all. And if Mickey had only had the wit to leave it all to the poor dumb beast, she might have brought him home safe enough.

But nothing would to him, only give a shout and a flourish of the whip, half-way down the hill. The mare started and gave a jump. She was big and awk'ard, much like Mickey himself. Still it was no fault of her that, when she got to the turn, the wheel came off, and rolled away to one side. Down came the car, Mickey fell off, and there he lay, till some people that saw what was going on ran down the hill after him, and got the mare on to her feet, and not a scratch on her.

But poor Mickey! It was easy to see with half an eye that he was badly hurt.

"Someone will have to drive him home, whatever," said Barney, coming up the hill to look for more help, after doing his best to get Mickey to stand up; and sure, how was he to do that, upon a broken leg? "A poor thing it is, too, to see how a thing of the kind could occur so simple! and a decent man like Heffernan to be nigh hand killed...."

"'Deed, and he is a decent man!" said Hughie; "and why wouldn't he? I'd be a decent man meself if I had the Furry Farm and it stocked...."

"He's in a poor way now, in any case," said Barney. "I doubt will he ever get over this rightly! That's apt to be a leg to him all his life!"

"Well, and so, itself!" said Hughie; "haven't I two of them lame legs? and who thinks to pity Hughie?"

"It's another matter altogether, with a man like Mr. Heffernan," said Barney; "what does the like of you miss, by not being able to get about, compared with a man that might spend his time walking a-through his cattle, and looking at his crops growing, every day in the week?"

"To be sure, he could be doing all that!" said Hughie, "but when a thing of this kind happens out so awkward, it's the will of God, and the will of man can't abate that!"

Trinket's Colt.

_From "Some Experiences of an Irish R.M."_

BY E. OE. SOMERVILLE AND MARTIN ROSS.

It was petty sessions day in Skebawn, a cold, grey day in February. A case of trespass had dragged its burden of cross-summonses and cross-swearing far into the afternoon, and when I left the bench my head was singing from the bellowings of the attorneys, and the smell of their clients was heavy upon my palate.

The streets still testified to the fact that it was market day, and I evaded with difficulty the sinuous course of carts full of soddenly screwed people, and steered an equally devious one for myself among the groups anchored round the doors of the public-houses. Skebawn possesses, among its legion of public-houses, one establishment which timorously, and almost imperceptibly, proffers tea to the thirsty. I turned in there, as was my custom on court days, and found the little dingy den, known as the Ladies' Coffee Room, in the occupancy of my friend Mr. Florence McCarthy Knox, who was drinking strong tea and eating buns with serious simplicity. It was a first and quite unexpected glimpse of that domesticity that has now become a marked feature in his character.

"You're the very man I wanted to see," I said, as I sat down beside him at the oilcloth covered table; "a man I know in England who is not much of a judge of character has asked me to buy him a four-year-old down here, and as I should rather be stuck by a friend than a dealer, I wish you'd take over the job."

Flurry poured himself out another cup of tea, and dropped three lumps of sugar into it in silence.

Finally he said, "There isn't a four-year-old in this country that I'd be seen dead with at a pig fair."

This was discouraging, from the premier authority on horseflesh in the district.

"But it isn't six weeks since you told me you had the finest filly in your stables that was ever foaled in the County Cork," I protested; "what's wrong with her?"

"Oh, is it that filly?" said Mr. Knox, with a lenient smile; "she's gone these three weeks from me. I swapped her and L6 for a three-year-old Ironmonger colt, and after that I swapped the colt and L19 for that Bandon horse I rode last week at your place, and after that again I sold the Bandon horse for L75 to old Welply, and I had to give him back a couple of sovereigns luck-money. You see, I did pretty well with the filly after all."

"Yes, yes--oh, rather," I assented, as one dizzily accepts the propositions of a bimetallist; "and you don't know of anything else----?"

The room in which we were seated was closed from the shop by a door with a muslin-curtained window in it; several of the panes were broken, and at this juncture two voices, that had for some time carried on a discussion, forced themselves upon our attention.

"Begging your pardon for contradicting you, ma'am," said the voice of Mrs. McDonald, proprietress of the tea-shop, and a leading light in Skebawn Dissenting circles, shrilly tremulous with indignation, "if the servants I recommend you won't stop with you, it's no fault of mine. If respectable young girls are set picking grass out of your gravel, in place of their proper work, certainly they will give warning!"

The voice that replied struck me as being a notable one, well-bred and imperious.

"When I take a bare-footed slut out of a cabin, I don't expect her to dictate to me what her duties are!"

Flurry jerked up his chin in a noiseless laugh. "It's my grandmother!" he whispered. "I bet you Mrs. McDonald don't get much change out of her!"

"If I set her to clean the pig-sty I expect her to obey me," continued the voice in accents that would have made me clean forty pig-stys had she desired me to do so.

"Very well, ma'am," retorted Mrs. McDonald, "if that's the way you treat your servants, you needn't come here again looking for them. I consider your conduct is neither that of a lady nor a Christian!"

"Don't you, indeed?" replied Flurry's grandmother. "Well, your opinion doesn't greatly distress me, for, to tell you the truth, I don't think you're much of a judge."

"Didn't I tell you she'd score?" murmured Flurry, who was by this time applying his eye to the hole in the muslin curtain. "She's off," he went on, returning to his tea. "She's a great character! She's eighty-three, if she's a day, and she's as sound on her legs as a three-year-old! Did you see that old shandrydan of hers in the street a while ago, and a fellow on the box with a red beard on him like Robinson Crusoe? That old mare that was on the near side, Trinket her name is--is mighty near clean bred. I can tell you her foals are worth a bit of money."

I had heard of old Mrs. Knox of Aussolas; indeed, I had seldom dined out in the neighbourhood without hearing some new story of her and her remarkable menage, but it had not yet been my privilege to meet her.

"Well, now," went on Flurry, in his low voice, "I'll tell you a thing that's just come into my head. My grandmother promised me a foal of Trinket's the day I was one-and-twenty, and that's five years ago, and deuce a one I've got from her yet. You never were at Aussolas? No, you were not. Well, I tell you the place there is like a circus with horses. She has a couple of score of them running wild in the woods, like deer."

"Oh, come," I said, "I'm a bit of a liar myself----"

"Well, she has a dozen of them, anyhow, rattling good colts, too, some of them, but they might as well be donkeys for all the good they are to me or any one. It's not once in three years she sells one, and there she has them walking after her for bits of sugar, like a lot of dirty lapdogs," ended Flurry with disgust.

"Well, what's your plan? Do you want me to make her a bid for one of the lapdogs?"

"I was thinking," replied Flurry, with great deliberation, "that my birthday's this week, and maybe I could work a four-year-old colt of Trinket's she has out of her in honour of the occasion."

"And sell your grandmother's birthday present to me?"

"Just that, I suppose," answered Flurry, with a slow wink.

A few days afterwards a letter from Mr. Knox informed me that he had "squared the old lady, and it would be all right about the colt!" He further told me that Mrs. Knox had been good enough to offer me, with him, a day's snipe shooting on the celebrated Aussolas bogs, and he proposed to drive me there the following Monday, if convenient, to shoot the Aussolas snipe bog when they got the chance. Eight o'clock on the following Monday morning saw Flurry, myself, and a groom packed into a dog-cart, with portmanteaus, gun-cases, and two rampant red setters.

It was a long drive, twelve miles at least, and a very cold one. We passed through long tracts of pasture country, filled for Flurry, with memories of runs, which were recorded for me, fence by fence, in every one of which the biggest dog-fox in the country had gone to ground, with not two feet--measured accurately on the handle of the whip--between him and the leading hound; through bogs that imperceptibly melted into lakes, and finally down and down into a valley, where the fir-trees of Aussolas clustered darkly round a glittering lake, and all but hid the grey roofs and pointed gables of Aussolas Castle.

"There's a nice stretch of a demesne for you," remarked Flurry, pointing downwards with the whip, "and one little old woman holding it all in the heel of her fist. Well able to hold it she is, too, and always was, and she'll live twenty years yet, if it's only to spite the whole lot of us, and when all's said and done, goodness knows how she'll leave it!"

"It strikes me you were lucky to keep her up to her promise about the colt," said I.

Flurry administered a composing kick to the ceaseless strivings of the red setters under the seat.

"I used to be rather a pet with her," he said, after a pause; "but mind you, I haven't got him yet, and if she gets any notion I want to sell him I'll never get him, so say nothing about the business to her."

The tall gates of Aussolas shrieked on their hinges as they admitted us, and shut with a clang behind us, in the faces of an old mare and a couple of young horses, who, foiled in their break for the excitements of the outer world, turned and galloped defiantly on either side of us. Flurry's admirable cob hammered on, regardless of all things save his duty.

"He's the only one I have that I'd trust myself here with," said his master, flicking him approvingly with the whip; "there are plenty of people afraid to come here at all, and when my grandmother goes out driving, she has a boy on the box with a basket full of stones to peg at them. Talk of the dickens, here she is herself!"

A short, upright old woman was approaching, preceded by a white woolly dog with sore eyes and a bark like a tin trumpet; we both got out of the trap and advanced to meet the Lady of the Manor.

I may summarise her attire by saying that she looked as if she had robbed a scarecrow; her face was small and incongruously refined, the skinny hand that she extended to me had the grubby tan that bespoke the professional gardener, and was decorated with a magnificent diamond ring. On her head was a massive purple velvet bonnet.

"I am very glad to meet you, Major Yeates," she said, with an old-fashioned precision of utterance; "your grandfather was a dancing partner of mine in old days at the Castle, when he was a handsome young aide-de-camp there, and I was--you may judge for yourself what I was."

She ended with a startling little hoot of laughter, and I was aware that she quite realised the world's opinion of her, and was indifferent to it.

Our way to the bogs took us across Mrs. Knox's home farm, and through a large field in which several young horses were grazing.

"There, now, that's my fellow," said Flurry, pointing to a fine-looking colt, "the chestnut with the white diamond on his forehead. He'll run into three figures before he's done, but we'll not tell that to the ould lady!"

The famous Aussolas bogs were as full of snipe as usual, and a good deal fuller of water than any bogs I had ever shot before. I was on my day, and Flurry was not, and as he is ordinarily an infinitely better snipe shot than I, I felt at peace with the world and all men as we walked back, wet through, at five o'clock.

The sunset had waned and a big white moon was making the eastern tower of Aussolas look like a thing in a fairy tale or a play when we arrived at the hall door. An individual, whom I recognised as the Robinson Crusoe coachman, admitted us to a hall, the like of which one does not often see. The walls were panelled with dark oak up to the gallery that ran round three sides of it, the balusters of the wide staircase were heavily carved, and blackened portraits of Flurry's ancestors on the spindle side, stared sourly down on their descendant as he tramped upstairs with the bog mould on his hobnailed boots.

We had just changed into dry clothes when Robinson Crusoe shoved his red beard round the corner of the door, with the information that the mistress said we were to stay for dinner. My heart sank. It was then barely half-past five. I said something about having no evening clothes, and having to get home early.

"Sure, the dinner'll be in another half-hour," said Robinson Crusoe, joining hospitably in the conversation; "and as for evening clothes--God bless ye!"

The door closed behind him.

"Never mind," said Flurry, "I dare say you'll be glad enough to eat another dinner by the time you get home," he laughed. "Poor Slipper!" he added, inconsequently, and only laughed again when I asked for an explanation.

Old Mrs. Knox received us in the library, where she was seated by a roaring turf fire, which lit the room a good deal more effectively than the pair of candles that stood beside her in tall silver candlesticks. Ceaseless and implacable growls from under her chair indicated the presence of the woolly dog. She talked with confounding culture of the books that rose all round her to the ceiling; her evening dress was accomplished by means of an additional white shawl, rather dirtier than its congeners; as I took her in to dinner she quoted Virgil to me, and in the same breath screeched an objurgation at a being whose matted head rose suddenly into view from behind an ancient Chinese screen, as I have seen the head of a Zulu woman peer over a bush.

Dinner was as incongruous as everything else. Detestable soup in a splendid old silver tureen that was nearly as dark in hue as Robinson Crusoe's thumb; a perfect salmon, perfectly cooked, on a chipped kitchen dish; such cut glass as is not easy to find nowadays; sherry that, as Flurry subsequently remarked, would burn the shell off an egg; and a bottle of port, draped in immemorial cobwebs, wan with age, and probably priceless. Throughout the vicissitudes of the meal Mrs. Knox's conversation flowed on undismayed, directed sometimes at me--she had installed me in the position of friend of her youth, and talked to me as if I were my own grandfather--sometimes at Crusoe, with whom she had several heated arguments, and sometimes she would make a statement of remarkable frankness on the subject of her horse-farming affairs to Flurry, who, very much on his best behaviour, agreed with all she said, and risked no original remark. As I listened to them both, I remembered with infinite amusement how he had told me once that "a pet name she had for him was 'Tony Lumpkin,' and no one but herself knew what she meant by it." It seemed strange that she made no allusion to Trinket's colt or to Flurry's birthday, but, mindful of my instructions, I held my peace.

As, at about half-past eight, we drove away in the moonlight, Flurry congratulated me solemnly on my success with his grandmother. He was good enough to tell me that she would marry me to-morrow if I asked her, and he wished I would, even if it was only to see what a nice grandson he'd be for me. A sympathetic giggle behind me told me that Michael, on the back seat, had heard and relished the jest.

We had left the gates of Aussolas about half-a-mile behind, when, at the corner of a by-road, Flurry pulled up. A short, squat figure arose from the black shadow of a furze bush and came out into the moonlight, swinging its arms like a cabman, and cursing audibly.

"Oh, murdher, oh, murdher, Misther Flurry! What kept ye at all? 'Twould perish the crows to be waiting here the way I am these two hours--"

"Ah, shut your mouth, Slipper!" said Flurry, who, to my surprise, had turned back the rug and was taking off his driving coat, "I couldn't help it. Come on, Yeates, we've got to get out here."

"What for?" I asked, in not unnatural bewilderment.

"It's all right. I'll tell you as we go along," replied my companion, who was already turning to follow Slipper up the by-road. "Take the trap on, Michael, and wait at the River's Cross." He waited for me to come up with him, and then put his hand on my arm. "You see, Major, this is the way it is. My grandmother's given me that colt right enough, but if I waited for her to send him over to me I'd never see a hair of his tail. So I just thought that as we were over here we might as well take him back with us, and maybe you'll give us a help with him; he'll not be altogether too handy for a first go off."

I was staggered. An infant in arms could scarcely have failed to discern the fishiness of the transaction, and I begged Mr. Knox not to put himself to this trouble on my account, as I had no doubt I could find a horse for my friend elsewhere. Mr. Knox assured me that it was no trouble at all, quite the contrary, and that, since his grandmother had given him the colt, he saw no reason why he should not take him when he wanted him; also, that if I didn't want him he'd be glad enough to keep him himself; and, finally, that I wasn't the chap to go back on a friend, but I was welcome to drive back to Shreelane with Michael this minute, if I liked.

Of course, I yielded in the end. I told Flurry I should lose my job over the business, and he said I could then marry his grandmother, and the discussion was abruptly closed by the necessity of following Slipper over a locked five-barred gate.

Our pioneer took us over about half-a-mile of country, knocking down stone gaps where practicable, and scrambling over tall banks in the deceptive moonlight. We found ourselves at length in a field with a shed in one corner of it; in a dim group of farm buildings; a little way off a light was shining.

"Wait here," said Flurry to me in a whisper; "the less noise the better. It's an open shed, and we'll just slip in and coax him out."

Slipper unwound from his waist a halter, and my colleagues glided like spectres into the shadow of the shed, leaving me to meditate on my duties as Resident Magistrate, and on the questions that would be asked in the House by our local member when Slipper had given away the adventure in his cups.

In less than a minute three shadows emerged from the shed, where two had gone in. They had got the colt.

"He came out as quiet as a calf when he winded the sugar," said Flurry; "it was well for me I filled my pockets from grandmamma's sugar basin."

He and Slipper had a rope from each side of the colt's head; they took him quickly across a field towards a gate. The colt stepped daintily between them over the moonlit grass; he snorted occasionally, but appeared on the whole amenable.

The trouble began later, and was due, as trouble often is, to the beguilements of a short cut. Against the maturer judgment of Slipper, Flurry insisted on following a route that he assured us he knew as well as his own pocket, and the consequence was, that in about five minutes I found myself standing on top of a bank hanging on to a rope, on the other end of which the colt dangled and danced, while Flurry, with the other rope, lay prone in the ditch, and Slipper administered to the bewildered colt's hindquarters such chastisement as could be ventured on.

I have no space to narrate in detail the atrocious difficulties and disasters of the short cut. How the colt set to work to buck, and went away across a field, dragging the faithful Slipper, literally _ventre-a-terre_, after him, while I picked myself in ignominy out of a briar patch, and Flurry cursed himself black in the face. How we were attacked by ferocious cur dogs and I lost my eyeglass; and how, as we neared the river's Cross, Flurry espied the police patrol on the road, and we all hid behind a rick of turf, while I realised in fulness what an exceptional ass I was, to have been beguiled into an enterprise that involved hiding with Slipper from the Royal Irish Constabulary.

Let it suffice to say that Trinket's infernal offspring was finally handed over on the highroad to Michael and Slipper, and Flurry drove me home in a state of mental and physical overthrow.

I saw nothing of my friend Mr. Knox for the next couple of days, by the end of which time I had worked up a high polish on my misgivings, and had determined to tell him that under no circumstances would I have anything to say to his grandmother's birthday present. It was like my usual luck that, instead of writing a note to this effect, I thought it would be good for my liver to walk across the hills to Tory Cottage and tell Flurry so in person.

It was a bright, blustery morning, after a muggy day. The feeling of spring was in the air, the daffodils were already in bud, and crocuses showed purple in the grass on either side of the avenue. It was only a couple of miles to Tory Cottage, by the way across the hills; I walked fast, and it was barely twelve o'clock when I saw its pink walls and clumps of evergreens below me. As I looked down at it, the chiming of Flurry's hounds in the kennels came to me on the wind; I stood still to listen, and could almost have sworn that I was hearing the clash of Magdalen bells, hard at work on May morning.

The path that I was following led downwards through a larch plantation to Flurry's back gate. Hot wafts from some hideous cauldron at the other side of a wall apprised me of the vicinity of the kennels and their _cuisine_, and the fir-trees round were hung with gruesome and unknown joints. I thanked heaven that I was not a master of hounds, and passed on as quickly as might be to the hall door.

I rang two or three times without response; then the door opened a couple of inches, and was instantly slammed in my face. I heard the hurried paddling of bare feet on oilcloth, and a voice, "Hurry, Bridgie, hurry! There's quality at the door!"

Bridgie, holding a dirty cap on with one hand, presently arrived and informed me that she believed that Mr. Knox was out about the place. She seemed perturbed, and she cast scared glances down the drive while speaking to me.

I knew enough of Flurry's habits to shape a tolerably direct course for his whereabouts. He was, as I had expected, in the training paddock, a field behind the stable-yard, in which he had put up practice jumps for his horses. It was a good-sized field with clumps of furze in it, and Flurry was standing near one of these with his hands in his pockets, singularly unoccupied. I supposed that he was prospecting for a place to put up another jump. He did not see me coming, and turned with a start as I spoke to him. There was a queer expression of mingled guilt and what I can only describe as divilment in his grey eyes as he greeted me. In my dealings with Flurry Knox, I have since formed the habit of sitting tight, in a general way, when I see that expression.

"Well, who's coming next, I wonder!" he said, as he shook hands with me; "it's not ten minutes since I had two of your d----d peelers here searching the whole place for my grandmother's colt!"

"What!" I exclaimed, feeling cold all down my back; "do you mean the police have got hold of it?"

"They haven't got hold of the colt, anyway," said Flurry, looking sideways at me from under the peak of his cap, with the glint of the sun in his eye. "I got word in time before they came."

"What do you mean?" I demanded; "where is he? For Heaven's sake don't tell me you've sent the brute over to my place!"

"It's a good job for you I didn't," replied Flurry, "as the police are on their way to Shreelane this minute to consult you about it. You!" He gave utterance to one of his short, diabolical fits of laughter. "He's where they'll not find him, anyhow. Ho! ho! It's the funniest hand I ever played!"

"Oh, yes, it's devilish funny, I've no doubt," I retorted, beginning to lose my temper, as is the manner of many people when they are frightened; "but, I give you fair warning that if Mrs. Knox asks me any questions about it, I shall tell her the whole story."

"All right," responded Flurry; "and when you do, don't forget to tell her how you flogged the colt out on to the road over her own bound's ditch."

"Very well," I said, hotly, "I may as well go home and send in my papers. They'll break me over this--"

"Ah, hold on, Major," said Flurry, soothingly, "it'll be all right. No one knows anything. It's only on spec' the old lady sent the Bobbies here. If you'll keep quiet it'll all blow over."

"I don't care," I said, struggling hopelessly in the toils; "if I meet your grandmother, and she asks me about it, I shall tell her all I know."