Chapter II: Part 2

"He had a tarrier, and one day going through the Wood of Annagh himself and the tarrier wakened a hare, and the two o' thim was hunting her through and fro, and he cursing the full of a house on the tarrier. He shtud then on the big rock that's in it, and he let a whistle on his two fingers. The two greyhounds was sthretched within at the kitchen fire up at the Big House, and sorra word of lie I'm tellin', but Poor Fellow put an ear on him, and the two of them legged it out of the kitchen and away with them to the wood, and they never stopped nor stayed till they found Tom, and themselves and the tarrier killed the hare."

The big rock and the Big House were severed by an Irish mile of tree trunks and briars, but criticism is the last thing required from a listener, and I hope I played my part.

Rickeen was again possessed by a spasm of industry: the chips flew out, the tall young ash cracked, and sank into the arms of its neighbours. There was a singular simplicity about the forestry of the establishment. When the bitter cry of the cook went forth for wood wherewith to cook the impending meal, Rickeen prayed that the divil might roast and baste all the women in Ireland, and cut down a convenient young tree. By this means the plantations were lightly thinned at the ends nearest the house, and as a general thing the cook gave notice every three weeks, which prevented any unwholesome stagnation.

"But as for dogs," continued Rickeen, a little later, as he snicked off the greeny-grey branches, "the grandest dog ever was in this counthry was Mullowny's. Ye couldn't know what kind of a breed was in him, but ye'd _have_ to like him, he was that spotted."

Here a long-drawn yell came forth from the yard, resolving itself gradually into a statement to Rickeen that the Misthress wanted her keys, and himself was the last one she seen them with.

Rickeen put down his hatchet in fateful silence. His dog, couched in a brake where the young bracken stems curled like bishops' croziers round her crafty snout, raised one yellow eyebrow out of what was apparently deep sleep, arose, and followed him with her wonted gravity. Her cold manner was the next thing to good breeding; in spite of a family tree exclusively composed of crosses, in spite of a coat suggestive of a badger skin that has been used as a door mat, there was that in her pale eyes and in the set smile at the corners of her mouth that discouraged familiarity, and induced other dogs to feign a sudden interest in their own affairs as she approached. To follow Rickeen she gnawed ropes, and swam lakes, and ate her way through doors, and Rickeen never to my knowledge addressed her, except with the command to drive in the cows. In her next incarnation she will probably be the ideal colonist's wife.

I remained sitting on a stump in the silence, and thought of my first love, Bran. Through the tree stems I could see a grassy hill sloping to the lake side, where, at the age of nine, I grovelled one morning among the cowslips and mopped my soaking tears with my holland waggoner, and wished for death, because Bran had been drowned. Bran was a cur, half silky and gracious Gordon setter, half woolly vulgarian of the Irish cottage breed, and to us, his comrades, a hero, an object of passionate faith, and, as such, the victim of many well-meant but excruciating honours. He wore, with docile consciousness of his absurdity, ornamental harness of strangling complications, and with it drew at a foot pace a grocer's box, mounted on wheels, while we walked before and after with fixed bayonets and all the gravity befitting a guard of honour operating in shrubberies teeming with banditti. It was not till an attempt was made to put the new bull dog into double harness with him that Bran showed symptoms of resentment, and the battle that then raged in the tangle of the shoulder straps and traces placed him, if possible, higher in our respect. The matter was patched up with the bull dog, who, though instant in quarrel, was not without good feeling, and next morning, at an early hour, I saw his frightful face protruding from under the bedclothes of my brother's bed, framed in a poke bonnet of sheet, while two long tails, languidly waving in welcome, hung down over the valance like bell-ropes, and witnessed to the presence of Bran and of the young deerhound, Kilfane, hidden in the deepest heart of the bed.

Perhaps Sunday was the day that Bran was most satiating to us. To go to church on the top of the family omnibus was at any time the summit of ambition; with Bran speeding easily in front, or slackening for a hurried exchange of ferocities with cabin acquaintances, the five miles (invariably driven in the teeth of a north-westerly wind) were all too short. Those inside, whose turn it would be to sit on top coming home, yearned with crooked necks through the side windows, and stimulated by glimpses of the hero, were enabled to struggle successfully with the hideous tendency of childhood to be sea-sick in covered vehicles. During church time Bran was immured in the lock-up at the police station, and many a wriggling half-hour's endurance of the sermon was gilded by expectancy of the moment when the sorrowful sighing of the prisoner would turn to ardent sniffing under the door of the lockup, and the hand of the sergeant would restore to us "life's greatest possibility."

One summer night, at about this time, as I lay in my bed, the spirits of prophecy and of poesy came upon me hand in hand, quite inexplicably. Bran was in his usual health, and, as I afterwards found, was at that very hour engaged in stealing mutton hash from the back hall: but it was decreed that I should compose an ode fatefully commemorating his violent death.

"Oh, Bran, thou wert gentle and sweet," I began, without an effort, while Mattel's Valse swung and crashed its way up through two ceilings from the drawing-room,

But now thou art past and gone,
Like a wave on the ocean so fleet,
And the deed of death was done.

Even here inspiration did not flag.

'Tis no use to wail or to weep.
For oh, alas and alack!
Thou'st gone to that eternal sleep,
From which none can bring thee back.

The magnificence of the close was almost stupefying to the author; even the second line of the verse had seemed full of a rending passion. I sank to sleep, aware that I had taken my place in literature.

A year afterwards came the miserable tears among the cowslips, the first taste of the bitter core of sentiment, and the discovery that the prophetic ode did not express the position.

Bran occupies the whole foreground of the history of pets, but there were many of a lesser sort. There was even another elegy, beginning:

Stranger, with reverence draw near,
A Linnet lies below.

But birds were not our foible.

Rabbits followed each other in bewildering succession, and travelled to their doom by the same track. We fed them with milk and water out of eggspoons, with daisies, and with clover, but the morning always came when the foundling lay stiff in its hay, its black eyes glazed, and the limp daisies untouched beside it. One notable exception is recorded, a young rabbit brought in with a broken leg, who out of pure contrariety and improbability lived for a year. It became precocious beyond belief, and sat all day observing life from the arm of its proprietor. At night it slept, or affected to sleep, in a box in her room, biding its time till the candle was put out. Under cover of darkness it would then stealthily come forth and would buck with precision from the floor on to the face of the sleeper, repeating the feat as often as repulsed, until a burrow in some corner of the bed was granted. (It is not out of place here to mention that its nails were cut with extreme care and regularity.) Its diet presented no difficulty, save in the matter of restriction. It partook of the family meals as they came: porridge, marmalade, bread and butter, meat; uncooked green vegetables were not so much as mentioned in its presence. It even, horrible to confess, frequently ate rabbit-pie, and cracked and crunched the bones of its relatives with cannibal glee. On these scandalous foods it throve, but remained dwarfish and uncanny. It had moods of suspicion and brooding, when it sat in the chimney of an empty room. Once, under the protection, no doubt, of the evil spirits with whom it was in league, it leaped from a window sill forty feet above the ground, alighted with a flop, and greeted those who rushed to pick up the corpse with a cold stare of inquiry as to what the excitement was about. It met its death by presuming in the open field upon the long-suffering of the dogs whom it terrorised in the house.

Outside the inner circle of pets, and within the outer circle of the donkeys whom we partly loved, partly scorned, and daily martyrised, kids held a certain position of their own. They are not to be commended, being skittish, peevish, tactless and strong, but they were not without attraction. One of them, black and white, with oblique barley-sugar eyes, showed much inclination towards the profession of house dog, and learned many essentials of that trade; the doors that were worth waiting at, the perils and rich prizes of the kitchen passages, the moment to intrude, the moment to fly. An incident of its career can best be told in the words of a certain Bridget, a notable member of the long dynasty of Bridgets that passed processionally through the establishment _en route_ for America.

"The Misthress was below in the hall and she heard one above on the top landin', walkin' as sthrong as a man. 'Bridget!' says she," (the voice of command was given with great elegance and hauteur), "and what was in it but the young goat, and it commenced walkin' down the stairs. 'Come here, Bridget!' says the Misthress, and sure of course the goat said nothing, but goin' on always from step to step. 'Arrah musha! The divil go from ye,' says the Misthress, 'why don't ye spake? What sort of hoppin' is it ye have up there?'" (The elegance of the imitation here yielded to the narrator's sense of what was fitting.) "Faith, the goat stood then, like it'd be afraid. 'The Lord save us, it's the fairies!' says the Misthress, an' there wasn't one in the house but she called, and what did they get in it but the goat, an' it having a stocking half ate!"

Not long afterwards (next day probably) the kid was sent back on an outside car to its native place, a region of bog and rock and scrub, where its lamentations for the schoolroom fire had ample scope. It was escorted to its Siberia by a large party from the schoolroom, filled with curiosity to see how it would be received in its family circle. The boy who was left to hold the horse became also impelled to see the meeting, with the result that the horse and car were found a little later on their backs in a bog ditch, which conclusion is not to this hour known to the authorities.

It was in the winter that the Reign of Terror of the Monkeys began. The first of them, large and grey, wearing the name of Lizzie, and a red flannel coat, arrived in December, and it was humanely arranged that she should live close to the kitchen fire on the flour bin. It was also enacted that she was to be chained to the wall "until she got to know people a little."

There are Northern stories, Eastern ones, too, I believe, of houses in which evil spirits having once gained entrance, remained in immutable possession. Thus it was with us. In a short time Lizzie got to know every one very thoroughly. She bit each visitor indiscriminately, and having analysed the samples, she arranged a sliding scale of likes and dislikes, on the negative principle. That is to say, she would tolerate A till B arrived, when she bit A. On C's appearance she bit both A and B, and so on up to Z. The master of the house was Z. (Herein she showed her infernal cunning.) Z was never bitten. The kitchenmaid, in whose control were the dainties that Lizzie's soul loved, was Y, _i.e._, she was only bitten on the arrival of the master. Lizzie's bad life had the sole merit of brevity. One of her customs was to strike a match, and having burnt the hair on her grimy, nervous little arm, to eat the frizzled remains. (Thus invalidating the vaunt that man is the only animal that cooks.) Having on several occasions nearly set the house on fire, matches were forbidden to her, but one fortunate day a new boxful somehow fell into her possession, and, varying her wonted practice, she ate off the heads of most of the matches. Therewith her spirit passed; but only temporarily. In less than a year she was with us again. This time in the guise of a small brown monkey, that went by the name of Jack. A clear proof of obsession by the spirit of Lizzie was afforded in the fact that precisely the same sliding scale of hatred was observed, culminating as before in the master of the house. Jack was in some particulars less repellent than his predecessor. He was smaller, and was given to fits, which gave a hope that his life might not long be spared. By this time the flour-bin from long camping would have supplied the germs of enteric to an entire army corps. (I hasten to say that, being in Ireland, it was never used as a flour-bin having been thus temporarily styled as a concession to convention during the brief reign of an English cook who had long before fled to her native land.) Between the flour-bin and the wall Jack's fits usually took place, and it was the wont of the tender-hearted kitchenmaid (known to this day among her fellows as "Mary-the-Monkey." The suffix "the Monkey" being a distinguishing mark; as "Philippe-le-Bel," "Robert-the-Lion") to unchain him after one of these seizures and to sit before the fire with him on her lap. No experience seemed to teach her that his first act on recovery was to bite her suddenly and then escape. The alarm was spread in precisely the same manner on each successive occasion. First a shrill and piercing scream from "Mary-the-Monkey," usually coupled with an appeal to her God. Then an answering yell from the next victim in the pantry. Then a shouting, and an earthquake slamming of doors through the house as its occupants one and all sped to safety. Finally the voice of the master assuring the invisible household that all was well, and that the monkey would never bite any one if they did not show that they were afraid of him.

Jack died in a fit, and was mourned only by the master and the faithful kitchenmaid. Yet had he and his fellow had any desire for social success it would have been easy for them to have achieved it in a family so inured to pets as ours.

But monkeys are worse than tactless. They understand their own hideousness and unpopularity, yet will not make a step towards amiability. A little leaning to the pathetic would have made us adore them, but they prefer to remain malevolent, remote, uttering coarse, mysterious grunts and screeches, out of hearts full of cold devilry. It is in keeping with their vulgarity that they should thrust their way into an assemblage of pets; an insult even to the kid and the rabbit, an outrage to the memory of Bran.

*THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PUMP*

The date of its birth is uncertain. A torpid tradition places it in the Early Victorian Era, but the Regency is more probable; even the Rebellion of '96 may not have been beyond its ken. Being a native of West Galway, neither Regency nor Early Victorian Era was likely to be an epoch in its surroundings. It belonged to the period when

"... Dick Martin ruled
The trackless wilds of Connemara;"

and the men who put it in its place scarcely knew whether king or queen ruled in an England that was as remote from them as the India of to-day.

It is probable that in the youth of the pump its labours were light. Baths were the eccentricity of a few, a revival of the corrupt days of the Roman Empire; and the process by which the stalwart fox-hunter of the beginning of this century got into his clothes was one that it might be well to slur over, invaluable as he and his costume have been to the Christmas numbers. Vast and simple cooking operations, conducted on an open grate four feet long; vats of meat pickle lying in cellars where the light came greenly through ivied windows; cauldrons of potatoes, and possibly cauldrons of punch; these formed the highest claims on the water-supply before the dynasty of the bath was proclaimed in the establishment. The deathless discontent that followed the innovation has produced many stirring household episodes, none of them more sudden and complete than that which occurred on the day when one of those vessels of wrath, the bath, was repainted for the first time. The local carpenter had arrived for the purpose, with what disdain for such trifling can be imagined. Arriving early, he discovered the bath as yet unemptied, an added insult to a man whose time was much occupied with fishing on the lake, and other serious matters. The housemaid, with ill-timed coquetry, put out her tongue at him when approached on the subject. In silence more bodeful than repartee he returned to the bath, carried it to the door, and emptied its contents down the passage. A stupefied stillness fell upon the bystanders, then arose outcry almost choked by rage, while behind a locked door the carpenter whistled and audibly chuckled over his work.

In those days the turf-boy was an institution, oppressive, but necessitated by an establishment where coal had never been seen, and an armful of turf burned away in an hour. All day they plied bare-foot between the turf-house and the various fuel depots of the house with baskets of the long, hard sods on their backs, and guile and mutiny in their hearts, because that with the office of turf-boy was linked the hated one of water-carrier. About this latter clustered battles of endless variety, involving the sacred person of the cook, and frequently topped as with a banner by her giving of warning. After long warfare it was lightly thought that the exodus of cooks might be stayed by the introduction of a self-filling boiler supplied from a small tank, which must, by Median and Persian law, be replenished every morning. It was done, and for an incredible fortnight the charm of novelty retained its hold on the turf-boys; the tank was filled, the ball-cock did its work like a book, and the Dublin cook was fain to seek another grievance. The inevitable hour drew on when the tank, like any other entertainment, must cease to amuse, the hour in which it ebbed unreplenished to its dregs, while the turf-boys, much preoccupied with making a wicker snare for blackbirds, known as a cradle-bird, sat round the fire, and dismissed the boiler from their minds with a calm, native trust in Providence. It was in the meridian of this peace that the boiler burst, with a single and shattering report. What followed on that crack of doom it is not necessary to record; the imagination of any householder can shadow forth the attitude of the cook, and no living pen could reproduce the flight of the turf-boys.

It is more agreeable to turn to another scene, in which the pump played its part to a limited extent, when, on the last night of the old year, the coach-house was garlanded with holly and ivy, and "Pete-een bawn," the Albino fiddler, sat on high on a window-sill, twitching out jigs and reels from the fiddle that he played on his knee, while the thick boots of a roomful of dancers kept light and unflagging time. As the crowning hour of twelve drew on, preparations began for the brew of punch that was to usher in the new year, and a tasting committee, formed of the gamekeeper and the kitchenmaid, was met by the supreme question of what to brew it in. A bucket was considered too small, the churn was rejected because it had "an ugly smell." Finally some genius bethought him of a hip-bath. The bath was snatched from the nearest bedroom by a bevy of turf-boys, the stone jar of John Jameson was emptied into it, and followed with more reticence by kettles of boiling water; all that remained was to provide each guest with a cup to dip into the reeking pool. Ten minutes later the bath was empty, and a ring of boys radiated from it at full length, lapping the last drops, and even licking the enamel, while the dancing was resumed with startling emphasis. Outside, a light snow was on the ground, the north wind blew dark in that bitter midnight, and the ice on the lake uttered strange sounds--hollow, musical shocks with the voice of the imprisoned water in them. Every tree in the woods stood separate in white silhouette, the rime sifting through the branches in a dry whisper. Upon this subtle mood of winter came forth from the open doors of the coach-house the light of lamps with tin reflectors, the shrewish scream of the fiddle as Pete-een bawn jerked his white head in accord with "The hare was in the corn," the aroma of punch and of clothes seasoned in turf smoke. It is better to withdraw from these early hours of the new year, before the uncertain homeward footsteps blotted the thin snow, and the exponents of the genial first stage of drunkenness assisted the exponents of the aggressive second stage to pull themselves together for early Mass.

It has been mentioned that the pump was subject to chronic and mysterious ailments, on which every skilled opinion in the country was brought to bear, while the water famine was sore in the land, and the turf-boys plied with buckets and bewailings between the lake and the cook, and unearthly pronged creatures gyrated in the water-bottles. It was during one of these visitations, when the back yard was torn up into entrenchments, and the pump lay two miles away at the forge, that the Garrygillihy horse races were held, and with this event the revolt of the turf-boys broke forth. On the previous day they concealed themselves in an old limekiln and mended their trousers; on the morning itself they made the simple statement that "if the servants was to die dancing for turf and wather they'll not get it to-day," after which ultimatum they were seen no more. Many things happened in their absence, not at first sight connected with it; the cook went to bed in the afternoon, the hens walked upstairs to the pantry, and picked out the inside of a plum cake, and a cow got into the coach-house, and ate the cushion of the car. The cook gave warning next day, the kitchenmaid, in tears, followed suit, because the cook had called her a "jumper" (_i.e._, a pervert to Protestantism); the housemaid, also in tears, asserted that the kitchenmaid "had a spleen agin her," and the stableman was heard darkly soliloquising over the cleaning of the bits that "a lie was _something_, but there was no dealing with a d--d lie." All these things were subsequently traced by tortuous ways to the grand central fact that the turf-boys had gone to the Garrygillihy races.

There came at length a notable crisis, when the pump showed that it had, like most of its countrymen, a power of rising to the occasion. It was on a bright morning in May that the kitchen chimney caught fire, an event of yearly occurrence, and by no means displeasing to the authorities. The big shaft roared with furnace heat up its eighty feet, the ugly blaze wavered from the chimney top; a few buckets of water were poured down, and all became quiet. It had happened in the immemorial manner, but just once too often. Four hours later, in the stillness of the hot afternoon, the voice of the fire was heard again, a soft, busy crackling in the timbers of the roof, a muffled booming sound that grew above it; a tongue of flame through the slates, a drip of melted lead from the eaves, and the house was full of shouts and rushing feet. An hour afterwards the battle was over, and the toilers could fling themselves down, breathless, to realise an incredible escape, and the clang of the pump handle ceased. Throughout that hour of stress none of the pump's repertoire of evil symptoms was exhibited, nor did it fail to respond to the astonishing variety of receptacles presented to its grim beak. Next day it gasped forth the mud of the bottom of the well, and fell into a fractious disorder from which it has never rallied; but none the less the old house at its back owes its life to the allegiance of its comrade of a hundred years.

*HUNTING MAHATMAS*

Many people have learnt from "Kim" what it is to be a "Chela," and there was a time, not long ago, when every self-respecting evening paper and most of the magazines had something sufficiently--or self-sufficiently--illuminating to say about Karma or the Mahatma. I am not skilled in Buddhism, but I have assimilated a fact or two about Mahatmas, and in so doing have become aware of wider issues.

A Mahatma, I believe, implies primarily a teacher, an instructor, a sage or hermit with intermittently social tendencies; it also implies the possession of many useful endowments. Matter and space appear to be negligible accidents to the competent Mahatma. As a mere after-dinner triviality he will summon you a cigarette from infinity and will materialise it on the table; moving to higher things, he can produce a copy of the _Times_ in the remoter parts of Tibet on the day on which it appears in London, advertisements and all, but exclusive, I fancy, of library privileges. Transcending these lighter accomplishments, however, is his power of transporting himself to a chosen place at a chosen time without visible means of progression. He, we are assured, can fade from the landscape with the beautiful elusiveness of a rainbow, and can develop himself elsewhere, in or out of the landscape, with a precision with which the rainbow cannot hope to compete.

There is a matter that seems to me to have escaped observation--it certainly is not generally admitted--that in society not notably occult, in what, in fact, are often spoken of as Hunting Circles (though why circles, save with a very bad fox, it is hard to say), these privileged beings are found. Unsuspected, unappreciated, his high gifts often despised, even disliked, the Mahatma blooms in what might seem the uncongenial soil of many a hunting country.

There is a difference, distinct and, in my mind, well defined, between the people who hunt and the people who go hunting. The people who hunt are the professionals; serious, impassioned even, but with subdued emotion; fanatics who live only to conjugate the verb To Hunt in all its moods and tenses; recognising implicitly the force of its imperative, accepting its future with joy, its past with loquacity. For them hunt numbers are compiled, and runs recorded with geographical accuracy and microscopic detail; they cut out the work, they give the time. Yet it is not among their thrusting ranks that the Mahatma is found. He is evolved, in perfect response to the need for him, among the wider brotherhood of those who go hunting. These are the true free lances of the chase. Having cast off the fear of public opinion, and purged themselves of the love of display, they have no conventions to respect and no position to lose. Hand in hand with their devotion to sport goes the most saving good sense. How despicable to these enfranchised minds must be the meaningless twists, the desperate endeavours of the zealots who, infatuated as a string of ants, surmount unwaveringly every obstacle that lies in their path! As, from a pleasant hill side, the Mahatma views these struggles, he must surely feel how well it is with him, and how useful a thing it is to combine moral courage with intelligence.

But in a hilly and gateless country, such as Ireland excels in, moral courage and intelligence will not suffice; inspiration is needed, and straightway, out of a hovering and uncertain horde of riders, the Mahatma materialises. The hour has come, and the man. (These things, it may be noted, often synchronise with the interposition of the class of fence that is like an east wind, in being neither good for man nor beast.) Without a shadow of hesitation the Mahatma turns his horse at a right angle from the line the hounds are running, possibly even in a diametrically opposite direction. It matters not; the result will justify him. The hovering horde vacillates no longer; no word is spoken, no allegiance sworn; his sovereignty is as instant and unquestioned as that of the queen bee; one telepathic moment has transformed them into his disciples.

It is here that the superiority of the hunting Mahatma to the religious variety makes itself felt. Like the Magic Carpet in the "Arabian Nights" he has the mystic power of transporting not only himself but his adherents. One moment and you may see him skilfully "knocking a gap" (_i.e._, unbuilding a wall) or opening a gate, as the case may be, while the disciples wait respectfully; the next they are lost, swallowed up in the Fifth Dimension, or wherever it is that Mahatmas move and have their being. It may be a quarter of an hour afterwards, it may be twenty minutes; the hunt arrives, heated, something blown, and very proud of itself, at a road where there is a momentary check. There, drawn up, calm and omniscient, is the Mahatma, with the disciples. He has seen the fox (who, it may not be out of place to note, is on these occasions always the largest dog-fox that the country has ever produced). He advises the huntsman, with perfect knowledge, where to cast his hounds, and once more betakes himself, with his party, to the Fifth Dimension. During the various turns and chances of the average hunting run in rough country, he is met with on every road that is crossed by the hunt. He is a directory of the most obscure and unsuspected gaps, an amateur of padlocks, a Samson who can lift from their hinges the gates of Gaza, or any other gates that may intervene. He is present at all disasters, and acts as a sort of convalescent home for their victims, and as a rallying-place for those who have been thrown out.

As I muse over his gifts, and the benevolence with which they are exercised, my heart warms to him and his compeers. Had I my way no hunt establishment should be without its own accredited Mahatma. He should be entitled to the letters M.F.H. as unquestioningly as the Master. I would blazon them on his broad back (the Mahatma's figure is wont to be a fine one), plain for all men to see, and brand them on his ample sandwich-case. "Mahatma to the Meaths!" Any man might be pleased to have some such an inscription on his tombstone. "Mahatma to the Blazers" might hold some hint of incongruity; yet, however blazing one may be, there are moments----

It has happened to me, in a remote part of the County Waterford, to have lost the hounds, and at the same moment to find myself confronted by a frowning bank, hollow-faced, afforested with furze, wholly, as it seemed to me, impassable. While I surveyed it in dejection the cry of the hounds was borne to me on the wind; the music had a dying fall, they were running hard, and away from me. It was then that the voice of the local Mahatma fell like a falling star from the hillside above me.

"Go on a small piece to the right and ye'll get a passage."

I obeyed, and saw that hoof marks of cattle led to a cleft in the bank, so masked with furze bushes as to be invisible. I squeezed through it, and found the valley smiling before me, and the hounds still within reach. But the Mahatma had gone.

I met him at the next check, cool and unruffled, silent as to the miraculous nature of his transit.

"Ye're barefooted," he said briefly.

I found that I had indeed lost a foreshoe.

Strange that such faculties as his should command so little general admiration! Upon his final manifestation, which occurred after the fox had gone to ground, I heard the Master say brutally:

"How the devil did you get here?"

The Master had given his horse two bad cuts.

The Mahatma maintained a Druid silence; it was not for him to comment on the eternal supremacy of Mind over Matter.

*A PATRICK'S DAY HUNT*

I wash meself every Sathurday morning, whether I want it or no and 'twas washing my face I was when William Sheehan came in the door, and it no more than ten o'clock in the morning.

That's the way I remember 'twas a Sathurday, and Pathrick's Day was Monday.

"God bless the work!" says he.

"You too," says I.

"Would ye lend me the loan of a harness," says he, "to drive Anne Roche"--(that's his wife)--"to town on Pathrick's Day?"

The dear knows, says I to meself, if I walked two mile asking a harness it isn't to drive that one I'd ask it!

"I will to be sure," says I, "and welcome, but is it to town you're going on Pathrick's Day in place of going to Kyleranny? Sure you know yourself there's the fun of Cork in Kyleranny when the Hunt's in it on a Holy-day!"

"I believe so indeed," says he.

"Faith you do believe it," says I. "D'ye remember one time," I says, "when the Hunt was in it, Stephen's Day it was, you comin down Knockranny Hill hoppin' a quarther of a mile on your one leg, and the other foot fasht in the stirrup, and the owld mare you had that time throttin' on always. The Smith said it was the pleasantest thing ever he seen!"

"God be with the owld days!" says William, "that was long ago times, before I was married," says he.

"Thrue for you!" says I.

"Will ye lend me the harness?" says he to me again.

"Come here now William," says I, "you an' me is friends this many a year. There isn't one in the counthry I have as much wish for as yourself. The Divil sweep ye!" says I. "Sure it's follying the Hunt you should be, in place of goin' drivin' a side-car to town like a servant boy!" says I, "and you that was careing a puppy all the winter for the Hunt, the same as meself!"

"Ah, that was the grand pup!" says he. "'Twas a pity he died, and God knows," says he, "I dunno in the world what killed him, if it wasn't a bottle of varnish he dhrank one morning."

Faith, says I to meself, it's aisy known what killed the poor pup. It isn't long ourselves'd live if we didn't get our victuals!

I drew out then, and I gave William a puck in the chest.

"I'm tellin' you now," says I. "Dang the harness ye'll get from me on Pathrick's Day! No! But you'll throw the saddle on the pony a' Monday morning and you'll come out to the Hunt to jolly yourself!"

"Sure the pony has the colour o' lameness on him since I had him at Cappagh Fair last Tuesday, under pigs," says he. "That was thirty mile on him."

"Arrah! what signifies that?" says I, "that little horse is as tough as an eel!"

"And he have a sore place on his shesht, about as big as a thimble," says he.

"And is it on his shesht you'd go put the saddle?" says I.

"Well, it is not," says he.

"And as to go putting a collar and harness on a crayture that has the skin sthripped," says I, "if it was an ass itself the polis'd be afther ye for it."

"Indeed I'm told so," says he.

"Musha, Divil's cure to ye!" says I, "isn't it what ye can be tellin' your wife?" says I. "How simple ye are!" says I.

Not another word he spoke but to walk away out o' the house.

"Ye have the man annoyed with your thricks, Conny," says me wife, "why wouldn't ye give him what he was axing and not to be blackguarding that way? Maybe yerself wouldn't be so ready to go borrowing a harness for your wife?" says she.

"Maybe if I was married to Anne Roche it isn't me razor she'd take to go cuttin' spuds for seed?" says I.

"Arrah, sit down to your breakfast, Conny," says she, "and have done with your chat!"

"I'm tellin' you," says I, "if Anne Roche goes to town on Pathrick's Day, it's her own two legs'll carry her!"

"Glory be to God!" says me wife, "she'll be mad altogether! She'll tear iron!" says she.

"Divil mend her!" says I.

Now as for the foxy mare I had that time, I declare to ye if ye had her within in the stable, and to be keeping oats to her for two days, she'd have as much thricks and _tashpy_ in her, and she'd be as anxious for the road as a lad that'd be goin' to a fair.

If she was to be kept within always and getting what she'd ax of hay and oats, it's all would be about it she'd break the sidecar! (and faith, she was nigh handy to doin' that same one time!) But what can a crayture do that's working always, and getting black potatoes for her diet?

I went to her St. Pathrick's morning early, and the full up of a tin basin of oats in my hand. The very minute I opened the door:

"Ah--hem!" says she to me, this way.

"The Divil go from you!" says I, "wasn't the year long enough for you to get a cough, and not to be sick on Pathrick's Day? And if ye were coughing the full o' the house ye'll not stop within to-day!" says I, "ye can have your choice thing of coughing to-morrow!" says I.

And b'lieve me, 'tis she that had that same.

I rode her out quite and aisy, it's no more than five mile to Kyleranny, and the two lads of sons I have was legging it out before me.

"What have ye in the bottles?" says I to the eldest little fella when I passed them out.

"Milk, Sir!" says he.

"And what have ye in the bag?" says I to the other lad.

"Me boots, Sir," says he.

I knew well that was a lie for them, but I said nayther here nor there to them.

When I was passing Macarthy's, coming into Kyleranny, what was in it but William Sheehan's yella horse--"Shan Bui" is the name we has in this counthry for them yella horses with the black sthripe on their back--and he outside the door, and a bag on his nose.

Musha, more power to ye William! says I to meself, ye stole away clever! But indeed it's aisy known that Herself had the kay of the bin!

Himself came out then; he was afther drinkin' a couple or three glasses o' portlier to hearten himself, the poor fella, and he was 'long with me from that out from first to last, but not a word good nor bad he spoke of the wife.

The like o' the crowd of people that was in Kyleranny that day never you seen--side-cars, and carts, and phaytons, and all sorts, let alone them that was goin' huntin'. Ye wouldn't hardly know there was hounds in it at all with the dint of the people that'd be around them, and it'd be as good for you to thry to get into Heaven as to get past the cross roads. Ye'd lose your life cursin' before the owld women'd stand out from under your feet. Ye'd have to be going around them this way, the same as a person that'd be winding a watch.

"Is it sick the Major is, that he's not in it?" says I to Tim Hurley the Whip (that's the son of an Aunt of mine by the mother), when I got to come at him, "and Johnny Daly riding Monaloo?"

"He has the 'fluenzy," says Tim.

"Is it bad with him?" says I.

"He's bad enough to-day," says he, "but yesterday he was clear dead altogether."

"It's a pity anything would ail him," says I.

The Major was a fine man, always, and his family was a fine family. Sure me father used to say that in owld times if ye went to the Big House ye'd get the smell o' roast beef when ye'd be no more than half way up the avenue, and there'd be dhrinkin' all day and knockin' all night, and if ye axed the change of a half-crown, it wasn't in it.

Faith, I said to John Daly, there wouldn't be any fun, nor no cursin' nor nothing, when the Major wouldn't be in it.

"Maybe I might please ye yet before the day's out," says he, lookin' at me ugly enough. "Time's up!" says he then, and with that he comminced to bugle, and away with himself and Tim and the dogs, out north for Dempsey's Gorse.

Well, you'd have to pity William Sheehan if ye seen him that time follyin' the hounds out the road from Kyleranny to Dempsey's Gorse. As soon as me bowld Shan Bui felt the horses throttin, and batthering, and belting the road afther him, he made all sorts of shapes and forms of himself, and as for William, if it wasn't for the almighty howlt he cot of the crupper of the owld saddle, he was a dead man.

"Blasht your sowl, William!" says owld Dan Donovan to him, "if you would save your bones," says he, "you will lead him out now for a mile till you're coming up to Dempsey's, and when ye have the hill agin him then's the time ye'll get satisfaction!"

Well, William had great courage the same day. He held his howlt on the little horse out to Dempsey's, and when we come to the gap into the southern field, below the house, Johnny Daly went away in up through the land. Well, at the third field west of where Dempsey had the turnips two years ago, there was about three foot of a stone wall before us. The yella pony jumped it very crabbed, but the minute he landed, and he havin' the fall o' the ground before him, he made a ball of himself, and he bet a lash on Dan Donovan's owld white mare that wasn't sayin' a word, only goin' from step to step over the wall, like a Christian, and with that he legged it away down the hill!

B'lieve me, William was promising God that time that if he come safe out of it he'd howld to the side-car and not ax to go huntin' agin! But indeed poor William had great courage all through, only for the wife.

"Whatever way it is," says I to Dan Donovan, and we wheeling round the brink o' the hill, "every horse that's in it will have his 'nough of grass ate before the dogs'll have them furze bushes rattled out, and, I'm tellin'ye, that'll quieten them."

"The divil a fox is there in it at all," says Dan.

"Well, now," says William, "there's a woman of the Sullivans' that has a little house beyond, is afther tellin' me a while ago himself and his pups has a nest in it some place. Last week she seen them walkin' in and out of it, like young pigs."

"Maybe she didn't tell ye what way her sons has them pairsecuted with greyhounds and bulldogs and all sorts!" says Dan.

Well, divil such screechin' ever ye heard as what the dogs comminced then down in the furze.

"That's Fiddler!" says Dan, "that's a great hound! Maybe it's a cat he have nooked in it!"

"Faith, well is he called Fiddler!" says I, "he roars most furious."

"Look over! Look over at Johnny Daly!" says William, "what bugling he have now! If it's a cat itself, what harm would it do them to ate her! It's little ateing there is in the like of her; them poor craytures of dogs does be starved with the hunger; and that's what has them yowling this way."

"Look at Johnny skelpin' round the bog!" says I, "mind ye, he's souple yet, and he as gross as a bullock, and a back on him as long as a double-ditch!"

"Whisht!" says Dan, "that's the Whip man screechin' to the dogs! They have a fox surely!"

"Ye lie!" says William, "that's Jeremi'h Drishcoll's screech, I seen him within in the furze. Hi cock! Jeremi'h! Bate him out of it boy!"

"Ah, that's a fine sober fox," says owld Dan, "he'll not lave his den for them. It's a pity now," says he, "that the Major wouldn't have a fox keeping in a stable, and on a holiday, or the like o' that, to put a halter on him and lead him out before the hounds. Begob, he'd give them a nice chase!"

With that all the lads on the hills around let a roar out o' them.

"Hulla! Hulla! Hulla!" says they. "Look at the cat! Look at he! Look at he! Down him! Land him!"

Every dog that was in it legged it to the roar.

Well, if ye seen Johnny Daly comin' down the hill that time ye'd think the fairies was afther him. He'd jump the house, he was that mad!

"Plase God he'll not come our way!" says I.

I declare to ye now, if you seen Jeremi'h Driscoll leppin' the furze bushes, and Johnny Daly afther him with the whip, ye'd as soon be lookin' at it as ateing your dinner. And as for Tim Hurley, you'd have to pity him, sthrivin' to go around every hound that was in it.

"The dogs have her ate! More power! They have the owld cat ate!" says Smartheen, that was sitting up on the wall behind us. "She was dam cute! I thought she'd besht them! The shkamer!"

'Twasn't long afther that till Tim Hurley had all the dogs gothered and counted, and 'tis he that got his own trouble with them! Them poor fellas of Whips catches great hardship. Johnny Daly faced away up the hill agin them, and the whole o' thim afther him.

"It's for Bludth he's making," says I, "and if that's to be the way, it's there ye'll see leppin!" says I. "Tighten yerself now Dan!" says I, "thim banks above in Bludth does be made up very crabby, and as for walls, it's not stones at all they has in them, but bog mould and slates!"

Well, for all, poor William Sheehan had great courage that day.

"Your sowl to the divil, Smartheen!" says he. "Knock a few o' thim stones, boy!"

With that he gives the yella pony a salamandher of a belt, and he coorsed him about three turns around the field the way he'd knock the wind out o' him, in regard of he being out on grass always, and when he thought he felt him jaded it's then he faced him in at the wall. But in spite of all he jumped it very sevare and very ugly. Them Shan Buies is very piggish that way.

Meself, I don't like them flippant leppers; I'd like a horse that will put his two forefeet into the butt o' the wall, and give ye time to say two Aves and a Father before he leps out.

"As for my mare," says I to Dan, the same time, "she boxed her knee a fortnight ago, and it's big with her yet, and faith she's avouring it always. And indeed that's a cross place in any case," says I. "God bless ye, Smartheen," says I, "throw down a couple more o' them stones!"

I'm tellin' ye Smartheen was a decent civil boy always.

We follied on the bohireens afther that, ye'd think 'twas a wedding with all that was in it! Throttin' and steppin' their horses, and the hounds and the ladies and gentlemen and all out before us.

"Faith," says I, "they'd get as nice a shweat this way as what they'd get in any quadhreel whatever in Dublin Castle," says I, "and as for jogglin' and jowltin'," says I, "any one'd be the better o' this in his health while he'll live," says I.

Indeed, all that was in it was teeming down with the heat before we were up into Bludth at all.

Comin' up out o' the bohireen there was a stick left across in the end of it, keepin' in calves; a middlin' heavy pole, and the two ends fasht. If it was in the Cork Park races ye wouldn't see as much fun as what we knocked out of it with young Tom Dennehy! Sure he was ridin' the Docthor's grey mare, an' he dhressed out, and grand yalla gaiters on him, and he in dhread of his life!

"Dennehy took great use out o' the bohireens all through!" says one of the lads "'tis time for him to throw a lep for us now!"

It's well the Docthor wasn't looking at them that time, and they weltin' the mare with switches and stones, and Dennehy howlding her back from the lep when she'd be gethered for it.--Begob! he fell heavy when the crayture jumped in the spite of him! And there's where the fun was!

Ye wouldn't blame him to be afraid if it wasn't for the dirty little boasting he has always. But indeed 'twould stun any one to hear the talk of the Dennehys.

"Mind yourself now, William," says Dan, afther the three of us had a place made out above on the hill for ourselves to stand aisy. "The hill tops is lakes afther the rain," says he, "though be Jingo!" says he, "that little horse went over the hill very knacky!"

"Look at Smartheen comin' down the bohireen over!" says I, "what have he in the bag? Ye'd say it was a side o' bacon with all the dogs that's snortin' afther it."

"Be dom!" says William, "but it's a fox! Look at Johnny Daly that has all his own dogs dhrove in under the wall. B'lieve me, them two has it settled out! We'll see sport now," says he, "afther Smartheen'll throw down the owld bag and give the fox a couple of kicks for to rise his heart for him!"

Well, what it was vexed Johnny Daly I dunno, but he was mad altogether! He lepped out the wall before him, and he as wicked with the passion as that he didn't roar, nor say a word, till he had Smartheen cot by the coat and the whip ruz to him to sthrike him! Ye wouldn't know what was the two o' thim sayin', but Smartheen thought to run, and 'twas then Johnny cot the bag secondly to take it from him. Every lad that was in it comminced to cheer and to bawl when they seen the two o' thim in howlts. I believe meself let a few screeches, but as for William, if it was his father that he seen took by the polis, an' he dhrunk, he wouldn't have more nature for him than what he showed to that boy.

"_Hon-a-maun-dhiaoul_! He'll have him dhragged off the horse!" says Dan.

"He will! He will!" says I, "he's dam stubborn!"

Maybe if it wasn't for the way Johnny crooked the owld horse with the spur, sthrivin' to squeeze the leg around him, he'd have held his howlt, but a Turk couldn't stand it with the hoist that owld Monaloo let out of him.

"He's down!" says Dan. "He's dead! 'Tis on his head he's fallen!"

"Ye're a liar!" says William, "it's on the fox he fell! The big mastheen of a tyrant!"