Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.

by E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

  VII

  A MISDEAL

  The wagonette slewed and slackened mysteriously on the top of the longhill above Drumcurran. So many remarkable things had happened since wehad entrusted ourselves to the guidance of Mr. Bernard Shute that Irose in my place and possessed myself of the brake, and in so doing sawthe horses with their heads hard in against their chests, and theirquarters jammed crookedly against the splashboard, being apparentlytied into knots by some inexplicable power.

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

  The horses and pole were by this time making an acute angle with thewagonette, and the groom plunged from the box to their heads. MissSally Knox, who was sitting beside me, looked over the edge.

  "Put on the brake! the reins are twisted round the axle!" she cried,and fell into a fit of laughter.

  We all--that is to say, Philippa, Miss Shute, Miss Knox, and I--got outas speedily as might be; but, I think, without panic; Mr. Shute alonestuck to the ship, with the horses struggling and rearing below him.The groom and I contrived to back them, and by so doing caused thereins to unwind themselves from the axle.

  "It was my fault," said Mr. Shute, hauling them in as fast as we couldgive them to him; "I broke the reins yesterday, and these are thephaeton ones, and about six fathoms long at that, and I forgot and letthe slack go overboard. It's all right, I won't do it again."

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

  As we neared the town of Drumcurran the fact that we were on our way toa horse fair became alarmingly apparent. It is impossible to imaginehow we pursued an uninjured course through the companies of horsemen,the crowded carts, the squealing colts, the irresponsible led horses,and, most immutable of all obstacles, the groups of countrywomen, withthe hoods of their heavy blue cloaks over their heads. They lookedlike nuns of some obscure order; they were deaf and blind as rampartsof sandbags; nothing less callous to human life than a Parisiancabdriver could have burst a way through them. Many times during thatdrive I had cause to be thankful for the sterling qualities of Mr.Shute's brake; with its aid he dragged his over-fed bays into a crawlthat finally, and not without injury to the varnish, took the wagonetteto the Royal Hotel. Every available stall in the yard was by that timefilled, and it was only by virtue of the fact that the kitchenmaid wasnearly related to my cook that the indignant groom was permitted tostable the bays in a den known as the calf-house.

  That I should have lent myself to such an expedition was wholly due tomy wife. Since Philippa had taken up her residence in Ireland she haddiscovered a taste for horses that was not to be extinguished, even byan occasional afternoon on the Quaker, whose paces had become harderthan rock in his many journeys to Petty Sessions; she had alsodiscovered the Shutes, newcomers on the outer edge of our vast visitingdistrict, and between them this party to Drumcurran Horse Fair had beendevised. Philippa proposed to buy herself a hunter. Bernard Shutewished to do the same, possibly two hunters, money being no difficultywith this fortunate young man. Miss Sally Knox was of the company, andI also had been kindly invited, as to a missionary meeting, to come,and bring my cheque-book. The only saving clause in the affair was thefact that Mr. Flurry Knox was to meet us at the scene of action.

  The fair was held in a couple of large fields outside the town, and onthe farther bank of the Curranhilty River. Across a wide andglittering ford, horses of all sizes and sorts were splashing, and along row of stepping-stones was hopped, and staggered, and scrambledover by a ceaseless variety of foot-passengers. A man with a cartplied as a ferry boat, doing a heavy trade among the applewomen andvendors of "crubeens," _alias_ pigs' feet, a grisly delicacy peculiarto Irish open-air holiday-making, and the July sun blazed on a scenethat even Miss Cecilia Shute found to be almost repayment enough forthe alarms of the drive.

  "As a rule, I am so bored by driving that I find it reviving to befrightened," she said to me, as we climbed to safety on a heatheryridge above the fields dedicated to galloping the horses; "but when mybrother scraped all those people off one side of that car, and ran thepole into the cart of lemonade-bottles, I began to wish for courage totell him I was going to get out and walk home."

  "Well, if you only knew it," said Bernard, who was spreading rugs overthe low furze bushes in the touching belief that the prickles would notcome through, "the time you came nearest to walking home was when thelash of the whip got twisted round Nancy's tail. Miss Knox, you're anauthority on these things--don't you think it would be a good scheme tohave a light anchor in the trap, and when the horses began to play thefool, you'd heave the anchor over the fence and bring them up allstanding?"

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

  "Oh, that's all right," returned the inventor; "I'd have a dodge tocast them loose, with the pole and the splinter-bar."

  "You'd never see them again," responded Miss Knox demurely, "if youthought that mattered."

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

  She was surveying Miss Sally through her pince-nez as she spoke, andwas, I have reason to believe, deciding that by the end of the day herbrother would be well on in the first stages of his fifteenth loveaffair.

  It has possibly been suspected that Mr. Bernard Shute was a sailor, hadbeen a sailor rather, until within the last year, when he had tumbledinto a fortune and a property, and out of the navy, in the shortesttime on record. His enthusiasm for horses had been nourished by thehirelings of Malta, and other resorts of her Majesty's ships, and hisknowledge of them was, so far, bounded by the fact that it was moreusual to come off over their heads than their tails. For the rest, hewas a clean-shaved and personable youth, with a laugh which I may,without offensive intention, define as possessing a what-cheerinessspecial to his profession, and a habit, engendered no doubt by longsojourns at the Antipodes, of getting his clothes in large hideousconsignments from a naval outfitter.

  It was eleven o'clock, and the fair was in full swing. Its vortex wasin the centre of the field below us, where a low bank of sods and earthhad been erected as a trial jump, with a yelling crowd of men and boysat either end, acting instead of the usual wings to prevent a swerve.Strings of reluctant horses were scourged over the bank by dozens ofwilling hands, while exhortation, cheers, and criticism were freelyshowered upon each performance.

  "Give the knees to the saddle, boy, and leave the heels slack.""That's a nice horse. He'd keep a jock on his back where another'dthrow him!" "Well jumped, begor! She fled that fairly!" as anungainly three-year-old flounced over the bank without putting a hoofon it. Then her owner, unloosing his pride in simile after the mannerof his race,

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

  A giggling group of country girls elbowed their way past us out of thecrowd of spectators, one of the number inciting her fellows to hurry onto the other field "until they'd see the lads galloping the horses," towhich another responding that she'd "be skinned alive for the horses,"the party sped on their way. We--_i.e._ my wife, Miss Knox, BernardShute, and myself--followed in their wake, a matter by no means as easyas it looked. Miss Shute had exhibited her wonted intelligence byremaining on the hilltop with the "Spectator"; she had not reached thehappy point of possessing a mind ten years older than her age, and aface ten years younger, without also developing the gift of scentingboredom from afar. We squeezed past the noses and heels of fidgetyhorses, and circumnavigated their attendant groups of critics, whilehalf-trained brutes in snaffles bolted to nowhere and back again, andwhinnying foals ran to and fro in search of their mothers.

  A moderate bank divided the upper from the lower fields, and as everyfeasible spot in it was commanded by a refusing horse, the choice of aplace and moment for crossing it required judgment. I got Philippaacross it in safety; Miss Knox, though as capable as any young woman inIreland of getting over a bank, either on horseback or on her own legs,had to submit to the assistance of Mr.
Shute, and the laws of dynamicsdecreed that a force sufficient to raise a bower anchor should hoisther seven stone odd to the top of the bank with such speed that shelanded half on her knees and half in the arms of her pioneer. A groupof portentously quiet men stood near, their eyes on the ground, theirhands in their pockets; they were all dressed so much alike that I didnot at first notice that Flurry Knox was among them; when I did, Iperceived that his eyes, instead of being on the ground, were surveyingMr. Shute with that measure of disapproval that he habitually bestowedupon strange men.

  "You're later than I thought you'd be," he said. "I have a horsehalf-bought for Mrs. Yeates. It's that old mare of Bobby Bennett's;she makes a little noise, but she's a good mare, and you couldn't throwher down if you tried. Bobby wants thirty pounds for her, but I thinkyou might get her for less. She's in the hotel stables, and you cansee her when you go to lunch."

  We moved on towards the rushy bank of the river, and Philippa and SallyKnox seated themselves on a low rock, looking, in their white frocks,as incongruous in that dingy preoccupied assemblage as the dreamymeadow-sweet and purple spires of loosestrife that thronged the riverbanks. Bernard Shute had been lost in the shifting maze of men andhorses, who were, for the most part, galloping with the blind fury ofcharging bulls; but presently, among a party who seemed to be ridingthe finish of a race, we descried our friend, and a second or two laterhe hauled a brown mare to a standstill in front of us.

  "The fellow's asking forty-five pounds for her," he said to Miss Sally;"she's a nailer to gallop. I don't think it's too much?"

  "Her grandsire was the Mountain Hare," said the owner of the mare,hurrying up to continue her family history, "and he was the grandesthorse in the four baronies. He was forty-two years of age when hedied, and they waked him the same as ye'd wake a Christian. They hadwhisky and porther--and bread--and a piper in it."

  "Thim Mountain Hare colts is no great things," interrupted Mr. Shute'sgroom contemptuously. "I seen a colt once that was one of his stock,and if there was forty men and their wives, and they after him withsticks, he wouldn't lep a sod of turf."

  "Lep, is it!" ejaculated the owner in a voice shrill with outrage."You may lead that mare out through the counthry, and there isn't afence in it that she wouldn't go up to it as indepindent as if she wasgoing to her bed, and your honour's ladyship knows that dam well, MissKnox."

  "You want too much money for her, McCarthy," returned Miss Sally, withher little air of preternatural wisdom.

  "God pardon you, Miss Knox! Sure a lady like you knows well thatforty-five pounds is no money for that mare. Forty-five pounds!" Helaughed. "It'd be as good for me to make her a present to thegentleman all out as take three farthings less for her! She's toogrand entirely for a poor farmer like me, and if it wasn't for the longweak family I have, I wouldn't part with her under twice the money."

  "Three fine lumps of daughters in America paying his rent for him,"commented Flurry in the background. "That's the long weak family!"

  Bernard dismounted and slapped the mare's ribs approvingly.

  "I haven't had such a gallop since I was at Rio," he said. "What doyou think of her, Miss Knox?" Then, without waiting for an answer, "Ilike her. I think I may as well give him the forty-five and have donewith it!"

  At these ingenuous words I saw a spasm of anguish cross the countenanceof McCarthy, easily interpreted as the first pang of a life-long regretthat he had not asked twice the money. Flurry Knox put up an eyebrowand winked at me; Mr. Shute's groom turned away for very shame. SallyKnox laughed with the deplorable levity of nineteen.

  Thus, with a brevity absolutely scandalous in the eyes of allbeholders, the bargain was concluded.

  Flurry strolled up to Philippa, observing an elaborate remoteness fromMiss Sally and Mr. Shute.

  "I believe I'm selling a horse here myself to-day," he said; "would youlike to have a look at him, Mrs. Yeates?"

  "Oh, are you selling, Knox?" struck in Bernard, to whose brain theglory of buying a horse had obviously mounted like new wine; "I wantanother, and I know yours are the right sort."

  "Well, as you seem fond of galloping," said Flurry sardonically, "thisone might suit you."

  "You don't mean the Moonlighter?" said Miss Knox, looking fixedly athim.

  "Supposing I did, have you anything to say against him?" replied Flurry.

  Decidedly he was in a very bad temper. Miss Sally shrugged hershoulders, and gave a little shred of a laugh, but said no more.

  In a comparatively secluded corner of the field we came uponMoonlighter, sidling and fussing, with flickering ears, his tailtightly tucked in and his strong back humped in a manner that bodedlittle good. Even to my untutored eye, he appeared to be an uncommonlygood-looking animal, a well-bred grey, with shoulders that raked backas far as the eye could wish, the true Irish jumping hindquarters, anda showy head and neck; it was obvious that nothing except MichaelHallahane's adroit chucks at his bridle kept him from displaying hisjumping powers free of charge. Bernard stared at him in silence; notthe pregnant and intimidating silence of the connoisseur, but thetongue-tied muteness of helpless ignorance. His eye for horses hadmost probably been formed on circus posters, and the advertisements ofa well-known embrocation, and Moonlighter approximated in colour andconduct to these models.

  "I can see he's a ripping fine horse," he said at length; "I think Ishould like to try him."

  Miss Knox changed countenance perceptibly, and gave a perturbed glanceat Flurry. Flurry remained impenetrably unamiable.

  "I don't pretend to be a judge of horses," went on Mr. Shute. "I daresay I needn't tell you that!" with a very engaging smile at Miss Sally;"but I like this one awfully."

  As even Philippa said afterwards, she would not have given herself awaylike that over buying a reel of cotton.

  "Are you quite sure that he's really the sort of horse you want?" saidMiss Knox, with rather more colour in her face than usual; "he's onlyfour years old, and he's hardly a finished hunter."

  The object of her philanthropy looked rather puzzled. "What! can't hejump?" he said.

  "Is it jump?" exclaimed Michael Hallahane, unable any longer to containhimself; "is it the horse that jumped five foot of a clothes line inHeffernan's yard, and not a one on his back but himself, and didn'tleave so much as the thrack of his hoof on the quilt that was hangingon it!"

  "That's about good enough," said Mr. Shute, with his large friendlylaugh; "what's your price, Knox? I must have the horse that jumped thequilt! I'd like to try him, if you don't mind. There are somejolly-looking banks over there."

  "My price is a hundred sovereigns," said Flurry; "you can try him ifyou like."

  "Oh, don't!" cried Sally impulsively; but Bernard's foot was already inthe stirrup. "I call it disgraceful!" I heard her say in a low voiceto her kinsman--"you know he can't ride."

  The kinsman permitted himself a malign smile. "That's his look-out,"he said.

  Perhaps the unexpected docility with which Moonlighter allowed himselfto be manoeuvred through the crowd was due to Bernard's thirteen stone;at all events, his progress through a gate into the next field wasunexceptionable. Bernard, however, had no idea of encouraging thistranquillity. He had come out to gallop, and without further ceremonyhe drove his heels into Moonlighter's sides, and took the consequencesin the shape of a very fine and able buck. How he remained within evenvisiting distance of the saddle it is impossible to explain; perhapshis early experience in the rigging stood him in good stead in thematter of hanging on by his hands; but, however preserved, he didremain, and went away down the field at what he himself subsequentlydescribed as "the rate of knots."

  Flurry flung away his cigarette and ran to a point of betterobservation. We all ran, including Michael Hallahane and variousonlookers, and were in time to see Mr. Shute charging the leastadvantageous spot in a hollow-faced furzy bank. Nothing but the greyhorse's extreme activity got the pair safely over; he jumped it on aslant, changed feet in the heart of a furze-bus
h, and was lost to view.In what relative positions Bernard and his steed alighted was to us amatter of conjecture; when we caught sight of them again, Moonlighterwas running away, with his rider still on his back, while the slope ofthe ground lent wings to his flight.

  "That young gentleman will be apt to be killed," said Michael Hallahanewith composure, not to say enjoyment.

  "He'll be into the long bog with him pretty soon," said Flurry, hiskeen eye tracking the fugitive.

  "Oh!--I thought he was off that time!" exclaimed Miss Sally, with agasp in which consternation and amusement were blended. "There! He_is_ into the bog!"

  It did not take us long to arrive at the scene of disaster, to which,as to a dog-fight, other foot-runners were already hurrying, and on ourarrival we found things looking remarkably unpleasant for Mr. Shute andMoonlighter. The latter was sunk to his withers in the sheet of blackslime into which he had stampeded; the former, submerged to the waistthree yards farther away in the bog, was trying to drag himself towardsfirm ground by the aid of tussocks of wiry grass.

  "Hit him!" shouted Flurry. "Hit him! he'll sink if he stops there!"

  Mr. Shute turned on his adviser a face streaming with black mud, out ofwhich his brown eyes and white teeth gleamed with undauntedcheerfulness.

  "All jolly fine," he called back; "if I let go this grass I'll sinktoo!"

  A shout of laughter from the male portion of the spectatorssympathetically greeted this announcement, and a dozen equally futilemethods of escape were suggested. Among those who had joined us was,fortunately, one of the many boys who pervaded the fair sellinghalters, and, by means of several of these knotted together, a line ofcommunication was established. Moonlighter, who had fallen into thestate of inane stupor in which horses in his plight so often indulge,was roused to activity by showers of stones and imprecations butfaintly chastened by the presence of ladies. Bernard, hanging on tohis tail, belaboured him with a cane, and, finally, the reins provinggood, the task of towing the victims ashore was achieved.

  "He's mine, Knox, you know," were Mr. Shute's first words as hescrambled to his feet; "he's the best horse I ever got across--worthtwice the money!"

  "Faith, he's aisy plased!" remarked a bystander.

  "Oh, do go and borrow some dry clothes," interposed Philippapractically; "surely there must be some one----"

  "There's a shop in the town where he can strip a peg for 13_s._ 9_d._,"said Flurry grimly; "I wouldn't care myself about the clothes you'dborrow here!"

  The morning sun shone jovially upon Moonlighter and his rider, cakingmomently the black bog stuff with which both were coated, and as thegroup disintegrated, and we turned to go back, every man present waspleasurably aware that the buttons of Mr. Shute's riding breeches hadburst at the knee, causing a large triangular hiatus above his gaiter.

  "Well," said Flurry conclusively to me as we retraced our steps, "Ialways thought the fellow was a fool, but I never thought he was such adamned fool."

  It seemed an interminable time since breakfast when our party, somewhatshattered by the stirring events of the morning, found itself gatheredin an upstairs room at the Royal Hotel, waiting for a meal that hadbeen ordained some two hours before. The air was charged with themingled odours of boiling cabbage and frying mutton; we affected tospeak of them with disgust, but our souls yearned to them. Femaleministrants, with rustling skirts and pounding feet, raced along thepassages with trays that were never for us, and opening doors releasedroaring gusts of conversation, blended with the clatter of knives andforks, and still we starved. Even the ginger-coloured check suit,lately labelled "The Sandringham. Wonderful value, 16_s._ 9_d._" inthe window of Drumcurran's leading mart, and now displayed upon Mr.Shute's all too lengthy limbs, had lost its power to charm.

  "Oh, don't tear that bell quite out by the roots, Bernard," said hissister, from the heart of a lamentable yawn. "I dare say it onlyamuses them when we ring, but it may remind them that we are stillalive. Major Yeates, do you or do you not regret the pigs' feet?"

  "More than I can express," I said, turning from the window, where I hadbeen looking down at the endless succession of horses' backs and men'shats, moving in two opposing currents in the street below. "I dare sayif we talk about them for a little we shall feel ill, and that will bebetter than nothing."

  At this juncture, however, a heavy-laden tray thumped against the door,and our repast was borne into the room by a hot young woman in creakingboots, who hoarsely explained that what kept her was waiting on thepotatoes, and that the ould pan that was in it was playing Puck withthe beefsteaks.

  "Well," said Miss Shute, as she began to try conclusions between ablunt knife and a bullet-proof mutton chop, "I have never lived in thecountry before, but I have always been given to understand that thevillage inn was one of its chief attractions." She delicately movedthe potato dish so as to cover the traces of a bygone egg, and herglance lingered on the flies that dragged their way across a meltingmound of salt butter. "I like local colour, but I don't care about iton the tablecloth."

  "Well, I'm feeling quite anxious about Irish country hotels now," saidBernard; "they're getting so civilised and respectable. After all,when you go back to England no one cares a pin to hear that you've beendone up to the knocker. That don't amuse them a bit. But all myfriends are as pleased as anything when I tell them of the pothousewhere I slept in my clothes rather than face the sheets, or how, when Icomplained to the landlady next day, she said, 'Cock ye up! Wasn't ithis Reverence the Dean of Kilcoe had them last!'"

  We smiled wanly; what I chiefly felt was respect for any hungry man whocould jest in presence of such a meal.

  "All this time my hunter hasn't been bought," said Philippa presently,leaning back in her chair, and abandoning the unequal contest with herbeefsteak. "Who is Bobby Bennett? Will his horse carry a lady?"

  Sally Knox looked at me and began to laugh.

  "You should ask Major Yeates about Bobby Bennett," she said.

  Confound Miss Sally! It had never seemed worth while to tell Philippaall that story about my doing up Miss Bobby Bennett's hair, and I sankmy face in my tumbler of stagnant whisky-and-soda to conceal the colourthat suddenly adorned it. Any intelligent man will understand that itwas a situation calculated to amuse the ungodly, but without any realfun in it. I explained Miss Bennett as briefly as possible, and at allthe more critical points Miss Sally's hazel-green eyes roamed slowlyand mercilessly towards me.

  "You haven't told Mrs. Yeates that she's one of the greatesthorse-copers in the country," she said, when I had got through somehow;"she can sell you a very good horse sometimes, and a very bad one too,if she gets the chance."

  "No one will ever explain to me," said Miss Shute, scanning us all withher dark, half-amused, and wholly sophisticated eyes, "why horse-copingis more respectable than cheating at cards. I rather respect peoplewho are able to cheat at cards; if every one did, it would make whistso much more cheerful; but there is no forgiveness for dealing yourselfthe right card, and there is no condemnation for dealing your neighboura very wrong horse!"

  "Your neighbour is supposed to be able to take care of himself," saidBernard.

  "Well, why doesn't that apply to card-players?" returned his sister;"are they all in a state of helpless innocence?"

  "I'm helplessly innocent," announced Philippa, "so I hope Miss Bennettwon't deal me a wrong horse."

  "Oh, her mare is one of the right ones," said Miss Sally; "she's alovely jumper, and her manners are the very best."

  The door opened, and Flurry Knox put in his head. "Bobby Bennett'sdownstairs," he said to me mysteriously.

  I got up, not without consciousness of Miss Sally's eye, and preparedto follow him. "You'd better come too, Mrs. Yeates, to keep an eye onhim. Don't let him give her more than thirty, and if he gives that sheshould return him two sovereigns." This last injunction was bestowedin a whisper as we descended the stairs.

  Miss Bennett was in the crowded yard of the hotel, looking handsome andov
erdressed, and she greeted me with just that touch of Auld Lang Synein her manner that I could best have dispensed with. I turned to thebusiness in hand without delay. The brown mare was led forth from thestable and paraded for our benefit; she was one of those inconspicuous,meritorious animals about whom there seems nothing particular to say,and I felt her legs and looked hard at her hocks, and was not much thewiser.

  "It's no use my saying she doesn't make a noise," said Miss Bobby,"because every one in the country will tell you she does. You can havea vet. if you like, and that's the only fault he can find with her.But if Mrs. Yeates hasn't hunted before now, I'll guarantee Cruiskeenas just the thing for her. She's really safe and confidential. Mylittle brother Georgie has hunted her--_you_ remember Georgie, MajorYeates?--the night of the ball, you know--and he's only eleven. Mr.Knox can tell you what sort she is."

  "Oh, she's a grand mare," said Mr. Knox, thus appealed to; "you'd hearher coming three fields off like a German band!"

  "And well for you if you could keep within three fields of her!"retorted Miss Bennett. "At all events, she's not like the hunter yousold Uncle, that used to kick the stars as soon as I put my foot in thestirrup!"

  "'Twas the size of the foot frightened him," said Flurry.

  "Do you know how Uncle cured him?" said Miss Bennett, turning her backon her adversary; "he had him tied head and tail across the yard gate,and every man that came in had to get over his back!"

  "That's no bad one!" said Flurry.

  Philippa looked from one to the other in bewilderment, while thebadinage continued, swift and unsmiling, as became two hierarchs ofhorse-dealing; it went on at intervals for the next ten minutes, and atthe end of that time I had bought the mare for thirty pounds. As MissBennett said nothing about giving me back two of them, I had not thenerve to suggest it.

  After this Flurry and Miss Bennett went away, and were swallowed up inthe fair; we returned to our friends upstairs, and began to arrangeabout getting home. This, among other difficulties, involved thetracking and capture of the Shutes' groom, and took so long that itnecessitated tea. Bernard and I had settled to ride our new purchaseshome, and the groom was to drive the wagonette--an alteration ardentlyfurthered by Miss Shute. The afternoon was well advanced when Bernardand I struggled through the turmoil of the hotel yard in search of ourhorses, and, the hotel hostler being nowhere to be found, the Shutes'man saddled our animals for us, and then withdrew, to grapplesingle-handed with the bays in the calf-house.

  "Good business for me, that Knox is sending the grey horse home forme," remarked Bernard, as his new mare followed him tractably out ofthe stall. "He'd have been rather a handful in this hole of a place."

  He shoved his way out of the yard in front of me, seemingly quitecomfortable and at home upon the descendant of the Mountain Hare, and Ifollowed as closely as drunken carmen and shafts of erratic carts wouldpermit. Cruiskeen evinced a decided tendency to turn to the right onleaving the yard, but she took my leftward tug in good part, and wemoved on through the streets of Drumcurran with a dignity that was onlyimpaired by the irrepressible determination of Mr. Shute's new trousersto run up his leg. It was a trifle disappointing that Cruiskeen shouldcarry her nose in the air like a camel, but I set it down to my own badhands, and to that cause I also imputed her frequent desire to stop, adesire that appeared to coincide with every fourth or fifthpublic-house on the line of march. Indeed, at the last corner beforewe left the town, Miss Bennett's mare and I had a serious difference ofopinion, in the course of which she mounted the pavement and remainedplanted in front of a very disreputable public-house, whose owner hadbeen before me several times for various infringements of the LicensingActs. Bernard and the corner-boys were of course much pleased; Iinwardly resolved to let Miss Bennett know how her groom occupied histime in Drumcurran.

  We got out into the calm of the country roads without further incident,and I there discovered that Cruiskeen was possessed of a dromedaryswiftness in trotting, that the action was about as comfortable as thedromedary's, and that it was extremely difficult to moderate the pace.

  "I say! This is something like going!" said Bernard, cantering hardbeside me with slack rein and every appearance of happiness. "Do youmean to keep it up all the way?"

  "You'd better ask this devil," I replied, hauling on the futile ringsnaffle. "Miss Bennett must have an arm like a prize-fighter. If thisis what she calls confidential, I don't want her confidences."

  After another half-mile, during which I cursed Flurry Knox, andregistered a vow that Philippa should ride Cruiskeen in a cavalry bit,we reached the cross-roads at which Bernard's way parted from mine.Another difference of opinion between my wife's hunter and me here tookplace, this time on the subject of parting from our companion, and Iexperienced that peculiar inward sinking that accompanies the birth ofthe conviction one has been stuck. There were still some eight milesbetween me and home, but I had at least the consolation of knowing thatthe brown mare would easily cover it in forty minutes. But in thisalso disappointment awaited me. Dropping her head to about the levelof her knees, the mare subsided into a walk as slow as that of theslowest cow, and very similar in general style. In this manner Iprogressed for a further mile, breathing forth, like St. Paul,threatenings and slaughters against Bobby Bennett and all herconfederates; and then the idea occurred to me that many reallyfirst-class hunters were very poor hacks. I consoled myself with thisfor a further period, and presently an opportunity for testing itpresented itself. The road made a long loop round the flank of a hill,and it was possible to save half a mile or so by getting into thefields. It was a short cut I had often taken on the Quaker, and itinvolved nothing more serious than a couple of low stone "gaps" and aninfantine bank. I turned Cruiskeen at the first of these. She wasevidently surprised. Being in an excessively bad temper, I beat her ina way that surprised her even more, and she jumped the stonesprecipitately and with an ease that showed she knew quite well what shewas about. I vented some further emotion upon her by the convenientmedium of my cane, and galloped her across the field and over the bank,which, as they say in these parts, she "fled" without putting an ironon it. It was not the right way to jump it, but it was inspiriting,and when she had disposed of the next gap without hesitation my waningconfidence in Miss Bennett began to revive. I cantered over the ridgeof the hill, and down it towards the cottage near which I wasaccustomed to get out on to the road again. As I neared my wontedopening in the fence, I saw that it had been filled by a stout pole,well fixed into the bank at each end, but not more than three feethigh. Cruiskeen pricked her ears at it with intelligence; I trottedher at it, and gave her a whack.

  Ages afterwards there was some one speaking on the blurred edge of adream that I was dreaming about nothing in particular. I went ondreaming, and was impressed by the shape of a fat jug, mottled whiteand blue, that intruded itself painfully, and I again heard voices,very urgent and full of effort, but quite outside any concern of mine.

  I also made an effort of some kind; I was doing my very best to be goodand polite, but I was dreaming in a place that whirred, and wasengrossing, and daylight was cold and let in some unknownunpleasantness. For that time the dream got the better of thedaylight, and then, _apropos_ of nothing, I was standing up in a housewith some one's arm round me; the mottled jug was there, so was theunpleasantness, and I was talking with most careful, old-worldpoliteness.

  "Sit down now, you're all right," said Miss Bobby Bennett, who wasmopping my face with a handkerchief dipped in the jug.

  I perceived that I was asking what had happened.

  "She fell over the stick with you," said Miss Bennett; "the dirtybrute!"

  With another great effort I hooked myself on to the march of events, asa truck is dragged out of a siding and hooked to a train.

  "Oh, the Lord save us!" said a grey-haired woman who held the jug,"ye're desthroyed entirely, asthore! Oh, glory be to the merciful willof God, me heart lepped across me shesht when I seen him undher thehorse!
"

  "Go out and see if the trap's coming," said Miss Bennett; "he shouldhave found the doctor by this." She stared very closely at my face,and seemed to find it easier to talk in short sentences.

  "We must get those cuts looking better before Mrs. Yeates comes."

  After an interval, during which unexpected places in my head ached fromthe cold water, the desire to be polite and coherent again came upon me.

  "I am sure it was not your mare's fault," I said.

  Miss Bennett laughed a very little. I was glad to see her laugh; ithad struck me her face was strangely haggard and frightened.

  "Well, of course it wasn't poor Cruiskeen's fault," she said. "She'snearly home with Mr. Shute by now. That's why I came after you!"

  "Mr. Shute!" I said; "wasn't he at the fair that day?"

  "He was," answered Miss Bobby, looking at me with very compassionateeyes; "you and he got on each other's horses by mistake at the hotel,and you got the worst of the exchange!"

  "Oh!" I said, without even trying to understand.

  "He's here within, your honour's ladyship, Mrs. Yeates, ma'am," shoutedthe grey-haired woman at the door; "don't be unaisy, achudth; he'sdoing grand. Sure, I'm telling Miss Binnitt if she was his wifeitself, she couldn't give him betther care!"

  The grey-haired woman laughed.