UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 f 
 
 All on the Irish Shore 
 
 Irish Sketches
 
 STORIES AND SKETCHES OF IRISH LIFE. 
 
 By E. CE. SoMERViLLE and Martin Ross. 
 
 SOME EXPERIENCES OF AN 
 
 IRISH R.M. 
 
 With 31 Illustrations by E. (E. Somerville. 
 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 FURTHER EXPERIENCES OF AN 
 
 IRISH R.M. 
 
 With 35 Illustrations by E. CE. Somerville. 
 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 ALL ON THE IRISH SHORE. 
 
 With 10 Illustrations by E. CE. Somerville. 
 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS. 
 
 With 51 Illustrations by E. CE. Somerville. 
 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d! 
 
 AN IRISH COUSIN. 
 Crown 8vo. 
 
 THE REAL CHARLOTTE. 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 THE SILVER FOX. 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 paternoster row, LONDON 
 NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
 
 ROBERT TRINDER, ESQ., M.F.H. 
 
 A Grand Filly.]
 
 All o n the Irish Shore 
 
 Irish Sketches 
 
 E. CE. Somerville and Martin ARoss, pseud.) 
 
 Authors of \//ole,f Floveoce. 
 
 "Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.," " The Real Charlotte" 
 
 "The Silver Fox," " A Patrick's Day Hunt " 
 etc., etc. 
 
 With Illustrations by E. CE. Somerville 
 
 NEW IMPRESSION (igob) 
 
 REISSUE 
 
 Longmans, Green, and Co. 
 
 39 Paternoster Row, London 
 
 New York, Bombay, and Calcutta 
 
 1910
 
 PR6037 
 (56 A44 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 
 
 Best Edition: First printed, March, 1903; Reprinted, April, 1903; Jutie, 1903; 
 September, 1903; September, 1908. 
 
 Colonial Library: March, 1903; April, 1903; /mm, 1903; September, 1908.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The following stories appeared originally in 
 the pages of the Badmmton Magazine, Black 
 and White, Longinans Magazine, Ladys 
 Pictorial, National Review and Pall Mall 
 Gazette. They are now reprinted by the 
 courtesy of the several Editors.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOE 
 
 The Tinker's Dog i 
 
 Fanny Fitz's Gamble 31 
 
 The Connemara Mare 67 
 
 A Grand Filly 108 
 
 A Nineteenth-century Miracle - - . - 130 
 
 High Tea at McKeown's 150 
 
 The Bagman's Pony i75 
 
 An Irish Problem ------- 192 
 
 The Dane's Breechin' 218 
 
 "Matchbox" 247 
 
 "As I WAS Going to Bandon Fair" - - - 265 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " Robert Trinder, Esq., M.F.H." - - Frontispiece 
 
 "A Silence that was the Outcome partly of 
 Stupidity, partly of Caution, and partly of 
 
 Lack of English Speech" - - - - 34 
 
 "Mr. Gunning was lookin' out for a Cob"- - 86 
 
 Robert's Aunt 112 
 
 The Blood-healer 147 
 
 "The Grey-haired Kitchen-maid"- - - - 165 
 
 Sweeny -... igg 
 
 "Musha! MushaI" 229 
 
 "Croppy" 239 
 
 A Hierarch of Hokse-dealino . - - - 371
 
 THE TINKER'S DOG. 
 
 " Can't you head 'em off, Patsey ? Run, you fool ! 
 run, can't you ? " 
 
 Sounds followed that suggested the intemperate 
 use of Mr. Freddy Alexander's pocket-handkerchief, 
 but that were, in effect, produced by his struggle 
 with a brand new hunting-horn. To this demon- 
 stration about as much attention was paid by the 
 nine couple of buccaneers whom he was now 
 exercising for the first time as might have been 
 expected, and it was brought to an abrupt conclu- 
 sion by the sudden charge of two of them from the 
 rear. Being coupled, they mowed his legs from 
 under him as irresistibly as chain shot, and being 
 puppies, and of an imbecile friendliness, they re- 
 mained to lick his face and generally make merry 
 over him as he struggled to his feet. 
 
 By this time the leaders of the pack were well 
 away up a ploughed field, over a fence and into 
 a furze brake, from which their rejoicing yelps 
 streamed back on the damp breeze. The Master 
 of the Craffroe Hounds picked himself up, and 
 sprinted up the hill after the Whip and Kennel 
 Huntsman — a composite official recently promoted
 
 2 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 from the stable yard — in a way that showed that 
 his failure in horn-blowing was not the fault of his 
 lungs. His feet were held by the heavy soil, he 
 tripped in the muddy ridges ; none the less he and 
 Patsey plunged together over the stony rampart of 
 the field in time to see Negress and Lily springing 
 through the furze in kangaroo leaps, while they 
 uttered long squeals of ecstasy. The rest of the 
 pack, with a confidence gained in many a success- 
 ful riot, got to them as promptly as if six Whips 
 were behind them, and the whole faction plunged 
 into a little wood on the top of what was evidently 
 a burning scent 
 
 "Was it a fox, Patsey?" said the Master ex- 
 citedly. 
 
 " I dunno, Master Freddy ; it might be 'twas a 
 hare," returned Patsey, taking in a hurried reef in 
 the strap that was responsible for the support of 
 his trousers. 
 
 Freddy was small and light, and four short years 
 before had been a renowned hare in his school 
 paper-chases : he went through the wood at a pace 
 that gave Patsey and the puppies all they could do 
 to keep with him, and dropped into a road just in 
 time to see the pack streaming up a narrow lane 
 near the end of the wood. At this point they 
 were reinforced by a yellow dachshund who, with 
 wildly flapping ears, and at that caricature of a
 
 The Tinker s Dog. 3 
 
 gallop peculiar to his kind, joined himself to the 
 hunters. 
 
 " Glory be to Mercy ! " exclaimed Patsey, " the 
 misthress's dog ! " 
 
 Almost simultaneously the pack precipitated 
 themselves into a ruined cabin at the end of the 
 lane; instantly from within arose an uproar of 
 sounds — crashes of an ironmongery sort, yells of 
 dogs, raucous human curses ; then the ruin exuded 
 hounds, hens and turkeys at every one of the gaps 
 in its walls, and there issued from what had been 
 the doorway a tall man with a red beard, armed 
 with a large frying-pan, with which he rained blows 
 on the fleeing Craffroe Pack. It must be admitted 
 that the speed with which these abandoned their 
 prey, whatever it was, suggested a very intimate 
 acquaintance with the wrath of cooks and the perils 
 of resistance. 
 
 Before their lawful custodians had recovered from 
 this spectacle, a tall lady in black was suddenly 
 merged in the vtelee, alternately calling loudly and 
 incongruously for "Bismarck," and blowing shrill 
 blasts on a whistle. 
 
 " If the tinker laves a sthroke of the pan on the 
 misthress's dog, the Lord help him ! " said Patsey, 
 starting in pursuit of Lily, who, with tail tucked in 
 and a wounded hind leg buckled up, was removing 
 herself swiftly from the scene of action.
 
 4 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Mrs. Alexander shoved her way into the cabin, 
 through a filthy group of gabbling male and female 
 tinkers, and found herself involved in a wreck of 
 branches and ragged tarpaulin that had once formed 
 a kind of tent, but was now strewn on the floor by 
 the incursion and excursion of the chase. Earth- 
 quake throes were convulsing the tarpaulin ; a 
 tinker woman, full of zeal, dashed at it and flung it 
 back, revealing, amongst other debris, an old wooden 
 bedstead heaped with rags. On either side of one 
 of its legs protruded the passion-fraught faces of the 
 coupled hound-puppies, who, still linked together, 
 had passed through the period of unavailing struggle 
 into a state of paralysed insanity of terror. Muffled 
 squeals and tinny crashes told that conflict was 
 still raging beneath the bed ; the tinker women 
 screamed abuse and complaint ; and suddenly the 
 dachshund's long yellow nose, streaming with blood, 
 worked its way out of the folds. His mistress 
 snatched at his collar and dragged him forth, and 
 at his heels followed an infuriated tom cat, which, 
 with its tail as thick as a muff, went like a streak 
 through the confusion, and was lost in the dark 
 ruin of the chimney. 
 
 Mrs. Alexander stayed for no explanations : she 
 extricated herself from the tinker party, and, filled 
 with a righteous wrath, went forth to look for her 
 son. From a plantation three fields away came
 
 'The Tinker s Dog. 5 
 
 the asphyxiated bleats of the horn and the desolate 
 bawls of Patsey Crimmeen. Mrs. Alexander de- 
 cided that it was better for the present to leave 
 the personnel of the Craffroe Hunt to their own 
 devices. 
 
 It was but three days before these occurrences 
 that Mr. Freddy Alexander had stood on the 
 platform of the Craffroe Station, with a throbbing 
 heart, and a very dirty paper in his hand containing 
 a list of eighteen names, that ranged alphabetically 
 from "Batchellor" to " Warior." At his elbow 
 stood a small man with a large moustache, and the 
 thinnest legs that were ever buttoned into gaiters, 
 who was assuring him that to no other man in 
 Ireland would he have sold those hounds at such 
 a price ; a statement that was probably unimpeach- 
 able. 
 
 " The only reason I'm parting them is I'm giving 
 up me drag, and selling me stock, and guing into 
 partnership with a veterinary surgeon in Rugby. 
 You've some of the best blood in Ireland in those 
 hounds." 
 
 " Is it blood ? " chimed in an old man who was 
 standing, slightly drunk, at Mr. Alexander's other 
 elbow. " The most of them hounds is by the Kerry 
 Rapparee, and he was the last of the old Moynalty 
 Baygles. Black dogs they were, with red eyes ! 
 Every one o' them as big as a yearling calf, and
 
 6 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 they'd hunt anything that'd roar before them ! " 
 He steadied himself on the new Master's arm. " I 
 have them gethered in the ladies' waiting-room, sir, 
 the way ye'll have no throuble, 'Twould be as 
 good for ye to lave the muzzles on them till ye'll 
 be through the town." 
 
 Freddy Alexander cannot to this hour decide 
 what was the worst incident of that homeward 
 journey ; on the whole, perhaps, the most serious 
 was the escape of Governess, who subsequently 
 ravaged the country for two days, and was at length 
 captured in the act of killing Mrs. Alexander's 
 white Leghorn cock. For a young gentleman 
 whose experience of hounds consisted in having 
 learned at Cambridge to some slight and painful 
 extent that if he rode too near them he got sworn 
 at, the purchaser of the Kerry Rapparee's descend- 
 ants had undertaken no mean task. 
 
 On the morning following on the first run of the 
 Craffroe Hounds, Mrs. Alexander was sitting at her 
 escritoire, making up her weekly accounts and 
 entering in her poultry-book the untimely demise 
 of the Leghorn cock. She was a lady of secret 
 enthusiasms which sheltered themselves behind 
 habits of the most businesslike severity. Her books 
 were models of order, and as she neatly inscribed 
 the Leghorn cock's epitaph, " Killed by hounds," 
 she could not repress the compensating thought
 
 The 'Tinker s Dog. 7 
 
 that she had never seen Freddy's dark eyes and 
 olive complexion look so well as when he had tried 
 on his new pink coat. 
 
 At this point she heard a step on the gravel out- 
 side ; Bismarck uttered a bloodhound bay and got 
 under the sofa. It was a sunny morning in late 
 October, and the French window was open ; out- 
 side it, ragged as a Russian poodle and nearly as 
 black, stood the tinker who had the day before 
 wielded the frying-pan with such effect. 
 
 " Me lady," began the tinker, " I ax yer ladyship's 
 pardon, but me little dog is dead." 
 
 "Well?" said Mrs. Alexander, fixing a gaze of 
 clear grey rectitude upon him. 
 
 " Me lady," continued the tinker, reverentially 
 but firmly, " 'twas afther he was run by thim dogs 
 yestherday, and 'twas your ladyship's dog that 
 finished him. He tore the throat out of him under 
 the bed ! " He pointed an accusing forefinger at 
 Bismarck, whose lambent eyes of terror glowed 
 from beneath the valance of the sofa. 
 
 " Nonsense ! I saw your dog ; he was twice my 
 dog's size," said Bismarck's mistress decidedly, not, 
 however, without a remembrance of the blood on 
 Bismarck's nose. She adored courage, and had 
 always cherished a belief that Bismarck's sharklike 
 jaws implied the possession of latent ferocity. 
 
 "Ah, but he was very wake, ma'am, afther he
 
 8 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 bein' hunted," urged the tinker. " I never slep' a 
 wink the whole night, but keepin' sups o' milk to 
 him and all sorts. Ah, ma'am, ye wouldn't like to 
 be lookin' at him ! " 
 
 The tinker was a very good-looking young man, 
 almost apostolic in type, with a golden red aureole 
 of hair and beard and candid blue eyes. These 
 latter filled with tears as their owner continued : — 
 
 " He was like a brother for me ; sure he follied 
 me from home. 'Twas he was dam wise ! Sure at 
 home all me mother'd say to him was, " Where's 
 the ducks. Captain ? " an' he wouldn't lave wather 
 nor boghole round the counthry but he'd have them 
 walked and the ducks gethered. The pigs could 
 be in their choice place, wherever they'd be he'd 
 go around them. If ye'd tell him. to put back the 
 childhren from the fire, he'd ketch them by the 
 sleeve and dhrag them." 
 
 The requiem ceased, and the tinker looked griev- 
 ingly into his hat. 
 
 " What is your name ? " asked Mrs. Alexander 
 sternly. " How long is it since you left home ? " 
 
 Had the tinker been as well acquainted with her 
 as he was afterwards destined to become, he would 
 have been aware that when she was most judicial 
 she was frequently least certain of what her verdict 
 was going to be. 
 
 "Me name's Willy Fennessy, me lady," replied
 
 The Tinker s Dog. 9 
 
 the tinker, " an' I'm goin' the roads no more than 
 three months. Indeed, me lady, I think the time 
 too long that I'm with these blagyard thravellers. 
 All the friends I have was poor Captain, and he's 
 gone from me." 
 
 " Go round to the kitchen," said Mrs. Alexander. 
 
 The results of Willy Fennessy's going round to 
 the kitchen were far-reaching. Its most immediate 
 consequences were that (i) he mended the venti- 
 lator of the kitchen range ; (2) he skinned a brace 
 of rabbits for Miss Barnet, the cook ; (3) he arranged 
 to come next day and repair the clandestine 
 devastations of the maids among the china. 
 
 He was pronounced to be a very agreeable young 
 man. 
 
 Before luncheon (of which meal he partook in 
 the kitchen) he had been consulted by Patsey 
 Crimmeen about the chimney of the kennel boiler, 
 had single-handed reduced it to submission, and 
 had, in addition, boiled the meal for the hounds 
 with a knowledge of proportion and an untiring 
 devotion to the use of the potstick which produced 
 "stirabout" of a smoothness and excellence that 
 Miss Barnet herself might have been proud of. 
 
 " You know, mother," said Freddy that evening, 
 " you do want another chap in the garden badly." 
 
 " Well it's not so much the garden," said Mrs. 
 Alexander with alacrity, " but I think he might be
 
 10 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 very useful to you, dear, and it's such a great matter 
 his being a teetotaler, and he seems so fond of 
 animals. I really feel we ought to try and make 
 up to him somehow for the loss of his dog ; 
 though, indeed, a more deplorable object than that 
 poor mangy dog I never saw ! " 
 
 "All right: we'll put him in the back lodge, and 
 we'll give him Bizzy as a watch dog. Won't we 
 Bizzy ? " replied Freddy, dragging the somnolent 
 Bismarck from out of the heart of the hearthrug 
 and accepting without repugnance the comprehen- 
 sive lick that enveloped his chin. 
 
 From which it may be gathered that Mrs. Alex- 
 ander and her son had fallen, like their household 
 under the fatal spell of the fascinating tinker. 
 
 At about the time that this conversation was 
 taking place, Mr. Fennessy, having spent an even- 
 ing of valedictory carouse with his tribe in the 
 ruined cottage, was walking, somewhat unsteadily, 
 towards the wood, dragging after him by a rope a 
 large dog. He did not notice that he was being 
 followed by a barefooted woman, but the dog did, 
 and, being an intelligent dog, was in some degree 
 reassured. In the wood the tinker spent some time 
 in selecting a tree with a projecting branch suitable 
 to his purpose, and having found one he proceeded 
 to hang the dog. Even in his cups Mr. Fennessy 
 made sentiment subservient to common sense.
 
 ^he Tinkers Bog. II 
 
 It is hardly too much to say that in a week the 
 tinker had taken up a position in the Craffroe 
 household only comparable to that of Ygdrasil, who 
 in Norse mythology forms the ultimate support of 
 all things. Save for the incessant demands upon 
 his skill in the matter of solder and stitches, his 
 recent tinkerhood was politely ignored, or treated 
 as an escapade excusable in a youth of spirit. Had 
 not his father owned a farm and seven cows in the 
 county Limerick, and had not he himself three 
 times returned the price of his ticket to America to 
 a circle of adoring and wealthy relatives in Boston ? 
 His position in the kitchen and yard became 
 speedily assured. Under his regime the hounds 
 were valeted as they had never been before. Lily 
 herself (newly washed, with " blue " in the water) 
 was scarcely more white than the concrete floor of 
 the kennel yard, and the puppies, Ruby and Remus, 
 who had unaccountably developed a virulent form 
 of mange, were immediately taken in hand by 
 the all-accomplished tinker, and anointed with a 
 mixture whose very noisomeness was to Patsey 
 Crimmeen a sufficient guarantee of its efficacy, and 
 was impressive even to the Master, fresh from much 
 anxious study of veterinary lore. 
 
 " He's the best man we've got ! " said Freddy 
 proudly to a dubious uncle. " there isn't a mortal 
 thing he can't put his hand to."
 
 12 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 " Or lay his hands on," suggested the dubious 
 uncle. " May I ask if his colleagues are still within 
 a mile of the place ? " 
 
 " Oh, he hates the very sight of 'em ! " said 
 Freddy hastily, " cuts 'em dead whenever he sees 
 'em." 
 
 " It's no use your crabbing him, George," broke 
 in Mrs. Alexander, " we won't give him up to you ! 
 Wait till you see how he has mended the lock of 
 the hall door ! " 
 
 " I should recommend you to buy a new one at 
 once," said Sir George Ker, in a way that was 
 singularly exasperating to the paragon's proprietors. 
 
 Mrs. Alexander was, or so her friends said, some- 
 what given to vaunting herself of her paragons, 
 under which heading, it may be a:dmitted, practi- 
 cally all her household were included. She was, 
 indeed, one of those persons who may or may 
 not be heroes to their valets, but whose valets are 
 almost invariably heroes to them. It was, therefore, 
 excessively discomposing to her that, during the 
 following week, in the very height of apparently 
 cloudless domestic tranquillity, the housemaid and 
 the parlourmaid should in one black hour succes- 
 sively demand an audience, and successively, in the 
 floods of tears proper to such occasions, give warn- 
 ing. Inquiry as to their reasons was fruitless. 
 They were unhappy : one said she wouldn't get her
 
 The Tinkers Dog. 13 
 
 appetite, and that her mother was sick ; the other 
 said she wouldn't get her sleep in it, and there was 
 things — sob — going on — sob. 
 
 Mrs. Alexander concluded the interview abruptly, 
 and descended to the kitchen to interview her 
 queen paragon, Barnet, on the crisis. 
 
 Miss Barnet was a stout and comely English 
 lady, of that liberal forty that frankly admits itself 
 in advertisements to be twenty-eight. It was 
 understood that she had only accepted office in 
 Ireland because, in the first place, the butler to 
 whom she had long been affianced had married 
 another, and because, in the second place, she had 
 a brother buried in Belfast. She was, perhaps, the 
 one person in the world whose opinion about 
 poultry Mrs. Alexander ranked higher than her 
 own. She now allowed a restrained acidity to 
 mingle with her dignity of manner, scarcely more 
 than the calculated lemon essence in her faultless 
 castle puddings, but enough to indicate that she, 
 too, had grievances. She didn't know why they 
 were leaving. She had heard some talk about a 
 fairy or something, but she didn't hold with such 
 nonsense. 
 
 " Gerrls is very frightful ! " broke in an unex- 
 pected voice ; " owld standards like meself maybe 
 wouldn't feel it ! " 
 
 A large basket of linen had suddenly blocked
 
 14 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 the scullery door, and from beneath it a little 
 woman, like an Australian aborigine, delivered 
 herself of this dark saying. 
 
 "What are you talking about, Mrs. Griffen?" 
 demanded Mrs. Alexander, turning in vexed be- 
 wilderment to her laundress, "what does all this 
 
 mean ? " 
 
 " The Lord save us, ma'am, there's some says it 
 means a death in the house ! " replied Mrs. Griffen 
 with unabated cheerfulness, "an' indeed 'twas no 
 blame for the little gerrls to be frightened an' they 
 
 meetin' it in the passages " 
 
 " Meeting what ? " interrupted her mistress. Mrs 
 Griffen was an old and privileged retainer, but there 
 were limits even for Mrs. Griffen. 
 
 " Sure, ma'am, there's no one knows what was in 
 it," returned Mrs. Griffen, " but whatever it was they 
 heard it goin' on before them always in the panthry 
 passage, an' it walkin' as sthrong as a man. It 
 whipped away up the stairs, and they seen the big 
 snout snorting out at them through the banisters, 
 and a bare back on it the same as a pig ; and the 
 two cheeks on it as white as yer own, and away 
 with it ! And with that Mary Anne got a wakeness, 
 and only for Willy Fennessy bein' in the kitchen 
 an' ketching a hold of her, she'd have cracked her 
 head on the range, the crayture ! " 
 
 Here Barnet smiled with ineffable contempt.
 
 The Tinkers Dog. 15 
 
 " What I'm tellin' them is," continued Mrs. Griffen, 
 warming with her subject, " maybe that thing was 
 a pairson that's dead, an' might be owin' a pound 
 to another one, or has something that way on his 
 soul, an' it's in the want o' some one that'll ax it 
 what's throublin' it. The like o' thim couldn't spake 
 till ye'll spake to thim first. But, sure, gerrls has 
 no courage " 
 
 Barnet's smile was again one of wintry superi- 
 ority. 
 
 " Willy Fennessy and Patsey Crimmeen was 
 afther seein' it too last night," went on Mrs. Griffen, 
 ** an' poor Willy was as much frightened ! He said 
 surely 'twas a ghost. On the back avenue it was, 
 an' one minute 'twas as big as an ass, an' another 
 minute it'd be no bigger than a bonnive " 
 
 ^fc)fc>^ 
 
 " Oh, the Lord save us ! " wailed the kitchenmaid 
 irrepressibly from the scullery. 
 
 " I shall speak to Fennessy myself about this," 
 said Mrs. Alexander, making for the door with 
 concentrated purpose, " and in the meantime I wish 
 to hear no more of this rubbish." 
 
 " I'm sure Fennessy wishes to hear no more of 
 it," said Barnet acridly to Mrs. Griffen, when Mrs. 
 Alexander had passed swiftly out of hearing, " after 
 the way those girls have been worryin' on at him 
 about it all the morning. Such a set out ! " 
 
 Mrs. Griffen groaned in a polite and general
 
 1 6 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 way, and behind Barnet's back put her tongue out 
 of the corner of her mouth and winked at the 
 kitchenmaid. 
 
 Mrs. Alexander found her conversation with 
 Willy Fennessy less satisfactory than usual. He 
 could not give any definite account of what he and 
 Patsey had seen : maybe they'd seen nothing at all ; 
 maybe — as an obvious impromptu — it was the calf of 
 the Kerry cow ; whatever was in it, it was little he'd 
 mind it, and, in easy dismissal of the subject, would 
 the misthress be against his building a bit of a coal- 
 shed at the back of the lodge while she was away ? 
 
 That evening a new terror was added to the 
 situation. Jimmy the boot-boy, on his return from 
 taking the letters to the evening post, fled in panic 
 into the kitchen, and having complied with the 
 etiquette invariable in such cases by having "a 
 wakeness," he described to a deeply sympathetic 
 audience how he had seen something that was like 
 a woman in the avenue, and he had called to it and 
 it returned him no answer, and how he had then 
 asked it three times in the name o' God what was 
 it, and it soaked away into the trees from him, 
 and then there came something rushing in on him 
 and grunting at him to bite him, and he was full 
 sure it was the Fairy Pig from Lough Clure. 
 
 Day by day the legend grew, thickened by tales 
 of lights that had been seen moving mysteriously in
 
 'The 'Tinker s Dog. 17 
 
 the woods of Craffroe. Even the hounds were sub- 
 poenaed as witnesses ; Patsey Crimmeen's mother 
 stating that for three nights after Patsey had seen 
 that Thing they were singing and screeching to 
 each other all night. 
 
 Had Mrs. Crimmeen used the verb scratch instead 
 of screech she would have been nearer the mark. 
 The puppies, Ruby and Remus, had, after the 
 manner of the young, human and canine, not failed 
 to distribute their malady among their elders, and 
 the pack, straitly coupled, went for dismal consti- 
 tutionals, and the kennels reeked to heaven of 
 remedies, and Freddy's new hunter, Mayboy, from 
 shortness of work, smashed the partition of the loose 
 box and kicked his neighbour, Mrs. Alexander's 
 cob, in the knee. 
 
 *' The worst of it is," said Freddy confidentially 
 to his ally and adviser, the junior subaltern of the 
 detachment at Enniscar, who had come over to 
 see the hounds, " that I'm afraid Patsey Crimmeen — 
 the boy whom I'm training to whip to me, you 
 know " — (as a matter of fact, the Whip was a year 
 older than the Master) — " is beginning to drink a 
 bit. When I came down here before breakfast 
 this mornin' " — when Freddy was feeling more 
 acutely than usual his position as an M.F.H., he 
 cut his g's and talked slightly through his nose, 
 even, on occasion, going so far as to omit the
 
 I 8 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 aspirate in talking of his hounds — " there wasn't a 
 sign of him — kennel door not open or anything. 
 I let the poor brutes out into the run. I tell you, 
 what with the paraffin and the carbolic and every- 
 thing the kennel was pretty high " 
 
 " It's pretty thick now," said his friend, lighting a 
 cigarette. 
 
 " Well, I went into the boiler-house," continued 
 Freddy impressively, " and there he was, asleep on 
 the floor, with his beastly head on my kennel coat, 
 and one leg in the feeding trough ! " 
 
 Mr. Taylour made a suitable ejaculation, 
 
 " I jolly soon kicked him on to his legs," went on 
 Freddy, " not that they were much use to him — he 
 must have been on the booze all night. After that 
 I went on to the stable yard, and if you'll believe 
 me, the two chaps there had never turned up at all 
 — at half-past eight, mind you ! — and there was 
 Fennessy doing up the horses. He said he believed 
 that there'd been a wake down at Enniscar last 
 night. I thought it was rather decent of him doing 
 their work for them.' 
 
 "You'll sack 'em, I suppose?" remarked Mr. 
 Taylour, with martial severity. 
 
 " Oh well, I don't know," said Mr, Alexander 
 evasively, " I'll see. Anyhow, don't say anything 
 to my mother about it ; a drunken man is like a 
 red rag to a bull to her."
 
 The Tinkers Dog. 19 
 
 Taking this peculiarity of Mrs. Alexander into 
 consideration, it was perhaps as well that she left 
 Craffroe a few days afterwards to stay with her 
 brother. The evening before she left both the 
 Fairy Pig and the Ghost Woman were seen again 
 on the avenue, this time by the coachman, who 
 came into the kitchen considerably the worse for 
 liquor and announced the fact, and that night the 
 household duties were performed by the maids in 
 pairs, and even, when possible, in trios. 
 
 As Mrs. Alexander said at dinner to Sir George, 
 on the evening of her arrival, she was thankful to 
 have abandoned the office of Ghostly Comforter to 
 her domestics. Only for Barnet she couldn't have 
 left poor Freddy to the mercy of that pack of fools ; 
 in fact, even with Barnet to look after them, it was 
 impossible to tell what imbecility they were not 
 capable of 
 
 " Well, if you like," said Sir George, " I might 
 run you over there on the motor car some day to 
 see how they're all getting on. If Freddy is going 
 to hunt on Friday, we might go on to Craffroe after 
 seeing the fun." 
 
 The topic of Barnet was here shelved in favour 
 of automobiles. Mrs. Alexander's brother was also 
 a person of enthusiasms. 
 
 But what were these enthusiasms compared to 
 the deep-seated ecstasy of Freddy Alexander as in
 
 20 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 his new pink coat he rode down the main street of 
 Enniscar, Patsey in equal splendour bringing up 
 the rear, unspeakably conscious of the jibes of his 
 relatives and friends. There was a select field, 
 consisting of Mr. Taylour, four farmers, some young 
 ladies on bicycles, and about two dozen young men 
 and boys on foot, who, in order to be prepared for 
 all contingencies, had provided themselves with 
 five dogs, two horns, and a ferret. It is, after all, 
 impossible to please everybody, and from the 
 cyclists' and foot people's point of view the weather 
 left nothing to be desired. The sun shone like a 
 glistering shield in the light blue November sky, 
 the roads were like iron, the wind, what there was 
 of it, like steel. There was a line of white on the 
 northerly side of the fences, that yielded grudgingly 
 and inch by inch before the march of the pale sun- 
 shine : the new pack could hardly have had a more 
 unfavourable day for their debut. 
 
 The new Master was, however, wholly undaunted 
 by such crumples in the rose-leaf. He was riding 
 Mayboy, a big trustworthy horse, whose love of 
 jumping had survived a month of incessant and 
 arbitrary schooling, and he left the road as soon 
 as was decently possible, and made a line across 
 country for the covert that involved as much jump- 
 ing as could reasonably be hoped for in half a mile. 
 At the second fence Patsey Crimmeen's black mare 
 
 If 
 i'
 
 The Tinkers Dog. 21 
 
 put her nose in the air and swung round ; Patsey's 
 hands seemed to be at their worst this morning, 
 and what their worst felt like the black mare alone 
 knew. Mr. Taylour, as Deputy Whip, waltzed 
 erratically round the nine couple on a very flippant 
 polo pony ; and the four farmers, who had wisely 
 adhered to the road, reached the covert sufficiently 
 in advance of the hunt to frustrate Lily's project of 
 running sheep in a neighbouring field. 
 
 The covert was a large, circular enclosure, 
 crammed to the very top of its girdling bank 
 with furze-bushes, bracken, low hazel, and stunted 
 Scotch firs. Its primary idea was woodcock, its 
 second rabbits ; beaters were in the habit of getting 
 through it somehow, but a ride feasible for fox 
 hunters had never so much as occurred to it. Into 
 this, with practical assistance from the country boys, 
 the deeply reluctant hounds were pitched and 
 flogged ; Freddy very nervously uplifted his voice 
 in falsetto encouragement, feeling much as if he 
 were starting the solo of an anthem ; and Mr. 
 Taylour and Patsey, the latter having made it up 
 with the black mare, galloped away with profes- 
 sional ardour to watch different sides of the covert. 
 This, during the next hour, they had ample op- 
 portunities for doing. After the first outburst of 
 joy from the hounds on discovering that there were 
 rabbits in the covert, and after the retirement of the
 
 22 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 rabbits to their "burrows on the companion dis- 
 covery that there were hounds in it, a silence, 
 broken only by the far-away prattle of the lady 
 bicyclists on the road, fell round Freddy Alexander. 
 He bore it as long as he could, cheering with falter- 
 ing whoops the invisible and unresponsive pack, 
 and wondering what on earth huntsmen were ex- 
 pected to do on such occasions ; then, filled with 
 that horrid conviction which assails the lonely 
 watcher, that the hounds have slipped away at the 
 far side, he put spurs to Mayboy, and cantered 
 down the long flank of the covert to find some one 
 or something. Nothing had happened on the north 
 side, at all events, for there was the faithful Taylour, 
 pirouetting on his hilltop in the eye of the wind. 
 Two fields more (in one of which he caught his first 
 sight of any of the hounds, in the shape of Ruby, 
 carefully rolling on a dead crow), and then, under 
 the lee of a high bank, he came upon Patsey Crim- 
 meen, the farmers, and the country boys, absorbed 
 in the contemplation of a fight between Tiger, the 
 butcher's brindled cur, and Watty, the kennel terrier. 
 The manner in which Mr. Alexander dispersed 
 this entertainment showed that he was already 
 equipped with one important qualification of a 
 Master of Hounds — a temper laid on like gas, 
 ready to blaze at a moment's notice. He pitched 
 himself off his horse and scrambled over the bank
 
 The 'Tinker s Dog. 23 
 
 into the covert in search of his hounds. He 
 pushed his way through briars and furze-bushes, 
 and suddenly, near the middle of the wood, he 
 caught sight of them. They were in a small 
 group, they were very quiet and very busy. As 
 a matter of fact they were engaged in eating a 
 dead sheep. 
 
 After this episode, there ensued a long and dis- 
 consolate period of wandering from one bleak 
 hillside to another, at the bidding of various in- 
 formants, in search of apocryphal foxes, slaughterers 
 of flocks of equally apocryphal geese and turkeys 
 — such a day as is discreetly ignored in all hunting 
 annals, and, like the easterly wind that is its parent, 
 is neither good for man nor beast. 
 
 By half-past three hope had died, even in the 
 sanguine bosoms of the Master and Mr. Taylour. 
 Two of the farmers had disappeared, and the lady 
 bicyclists, with faces lavender blue from waiting at 
 various windy cross roads, had long since fled away 
 to lunch. Two of the hounds were limping ; all, 
 judging by their expressions, were on the verge of 
 tears. Patsey's black mare had lost two shoes ; 
 Mr. Taylour's pony had ceased to pull, and was 
 too dispirited even to try to kick the hounds, and 
 the country boys had dwindled to four. There 
 had come a time when Mr. Taylour had sunk so 
 low as to suggest that a drag should be run with
 
 24 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 the assistance of the ferret's bag, a scheme only 
 frustrated by the regrettable fact that the ferret 
 and its owner had gone home. 
 
 " Well we had a nice bit of schooling, anyhow, 
 and it's been a real educational day for the hounds," 
 said Freddy, turning in his saddle to look at the 
 fires of the frosty sunset. " I'm glad they had it. 
 I think we're in for a go of hard weather. I don't 
 know what I should have done only for you, old chap. 
 Patsey's gone all to pieces : it's my belief he's been on 
 the drink this whole week, and where he gets it " 
 
 " Hullo ! Hold hard 1 " interrupted Mr. Taylour. 
 " What's Governor after ? " 
 
 They were riding along a grass-grown farm road 
 outside the Craffroe demesne ; the grey wall made 
 a sharp bend to the right, and just at the corner 
 Governor had begun to gallop, with his nose to the 
 ground and his stern up. The rest of the pack 
 joined him in an instant, and all swung round the 
 corner and were lost to sight, 
 
 " It's a fox !" exclaimed Freddy, snatching up 
 his reins ; " they always cross into the demesne 
 just here !" 
 
 By the time he and Mr. Taylour were round the 
 corner the hounds had checked fifty yards ahead, 
 and were eagerly hunting to and fro for the lost 
 scent, and a little further down the old road they 
 saw a woman running away from them.
 
 The 'Tinker s Dog. 25 
 
 " Hi, ma'am ! " bellowed Freddy, " did you see 
 the fox ? " 
 
 The woman made no answer. 
 
 " Did you see the fox ? " reiterated Freddy in 
 still more stentorian tones. " Can't you answer 
 me? 
 
 The woman continued to run without even 
 looking behind her. 
 
 The laughter of Mr. Taylour added fuel to the fire 
 of Freddy's wrath : he put the spurs into Mayboy, 
 dashed after the woman, pulled his horse across the 
 road in front of her, and shouted his question point- 
 blank at her, coupled with a warm inquiry as to 
 whether she had a tongue in her head. 
 
 The woman jumped backwards as if she were 
 shot, staring in horror at Freddy's furious little face, 
 then touched her mouth and ears and began to 
 jabber inarticulately and talk on her fingers. 
 
 The laughter of Mr. Taylour was again plainly 
 audible. 
 
 " Sure that's a dummy woman, sir," explained the 
 butcher's nephew, hurrying up. " I think she's one 
 of them tinkers that's outside the town." Then 
 with a long screech, " Look ! Look over ! Tiger, 
 have it ! Hulla, bulla, bulla ! " 
 
 Tiger was already over the wall and into the 
 demesne, neck and neck with Fly, the smith's half- 
 bred greyhound ; and in the wake of these champions
 
 26 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 clambered the Craffroe Pack, with strangled yelps 
 of ardour, striving and squealing and fighting 
 horribly in the endeavour to scramble up the tall 
 smooth face of the wall. 
 
 " The gate ! The gate further on ! " yelled 
 Freddy, thundering down the turfy road, with the 
 earth flying up in lumps from his horse's hoofs. 
 
 Mr, Taylour's pony gave two most uncomfortable 
 bucks and ran away ; even Patsey Crimmeen and 
 the black mare shared an unequal thrill of enthusi- 
 asm, as the latter, wholly out of hand, bucketed after 
 the pony. 
 
 . • « • • . • • • 
 
 The afternoon was very cold, a fact thoroughly 
 realised by Mrs. Alexander, on the front seat of Sir 
 George's motor-car, in spite of enveloping furs, and 
 of Bismarck, curled like a fried whiting, in her lap. 
 The grey road rushed smoothly backwards under 
 the broad tyres ; golden and green plover whistled 
 in the quiet fields, starlings and huge missel thrushes 
 burst from the wayside trees as the " Bollee," uttering 
 that hungry whine that indicates the desire of such 
 creatures to devour space, tore past. Mrs. Alexander 
 wondered if birds' beaks felt as cold as her nose 
 after they had been cleaving the air for an after- 
 noon ; at all events, she reflected, they had not the 
 consolation of tea to look forward to. Barnet was 
 sure to have some of her best hot cakes ready for
 
 The Tinkers Dog. 27 
 
 Freddy when he came home from hunting. Mrs. 
 Alexander and Sir George had been scouring the 
 roads since a very early lunch in search of the 
 hounds, and her mind reposed on the thought of the 
 hot cakes. 
 
 The front lodge gates stood wide open, the motor- 
 car curved its flight and skimmed through. Half-way 
 up the avenue they whizzed past three policemen, 
 one of whom was carrying on his back a strange 
 and wormlike thing. 
 
 "Janet," called out Sir George, "you've been 
 caught making potheen ! They've got the worm of 
 a still there." 
 
 "They're only making a short cut through the 
 place from the bog ; I'm delighted they've found 
 it ! " screamed back Mrs. Alexander. 
 
 The " Bollee " was at the hall door in another 
 minute, and the mistress of the house pulled the 
 bell with numbed fingers. There was no response. 
 
 " Better go round to the kitchen," suggested her 
 brother. " You'll find they're talking too hard to 
 hear the bell." 
 
 His sister took the advice, and a few minutes 
 afterwards she opened the hall door with an ex- 
 tremely perturbed countenance. 
 
 " 1 can't find a creature anywhere," she said, 
 "either upstairs or down — I can't understand Barnet 
 leaving the house empty "
 
 28 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 " Listen ! " interrupted Sir George, " isn't that the 
 hounds?" 
 
 They listened. 
 
 "They're hunting down by the back avenue! 
 come on, Janet ! " 
 
 The motor-car took to flight again ; it sped, soft- 
 footed, through the twilight gloom of the back 
 avenue, while a disjointed, travelling clamour of 
 hounds came nearer and nearer through the woods. 
 The motor-car was within a hundred yards of the 
 back lodge, when out of the rhododendron-bush 
 burst a spectral black-and-white dog, with floating 
 fringes of ragged wool and hideous bald patches on 
 its back. 
 
 " Fennessy's dog ! " ejaculated Mrs. Alexander, 
 falling back in her seat. 
 
 Probably Bismarck never enjoyed anything in 
 his life as much as the all too brief moment in which, 
 leaning from his mistress's lap in the prow of the 
 flying " Bollee," he barked hysterically in the wake 
 of the piebald dog, who, in all its dolorous career 
 had never before had the awful experience of being 
 chased by a motor-car. It darted in at the open 
 door of the lodge; the pursuers pulled up outside. 
 There were paraffin lamps in the windows, the open 
 door was garlanded with evergreens ; from it pro- 
 ceeded loud and hilarious voices and the jerky 
 strains of a concertina. Mrs, Alexander, with all,
 
 *The Tinkers Dog. 29. 
 
 her most cherished convictions toppling on their 
 pedestals, stood in the open doorway and stared, 
 unable to believe the testimony of her own eyes. 
 Was that the immaculate Barnet seated at the head 
 of a crowded table, in her — Mrs. Alexander's — very 
 best bonnet and velvet cape, with a glass of steaming 
 potheen punch in her hand, and Willy Fennessy's 
 arm round her waist ? 
 
 The glass sank from the paragon's lips, the arm 
 of Mr. Fennessy fell from her waist ; the circle of 
 servants, tinkers, and country people vainly tried 
 to efface themselves behind each other. 
 
 " Barnet ! " said Mrs. Alexander in an awful 
 voice, and even in that moment she appreciated 
 with an added pang the feathery beauty of a slice 
 of Barnet's sponge-cake in the grimy fist of a 
 tinker. 
 
 " Mrs. Fennessy, m'm, if you please," replied 
 Barnet, with a dignity that, considering the bonnet 
 and cape, was highly creditable to her strength of 
 character. 
 
 At this point a hand dragged Mrs. Alexander 
 backwards from the doorway, a barefooted woman 
 hustled past her into the house, slammed the door 
 in her face, and Mrs. Alexander found herself in 
 the middle of the hounds. 
 
 " We'd give you the brush, Mrs. Alexander," said 
 Mr. Taylour, as he flogged solidly all round him in
 
 30 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 the dusk, " but as the other lady seems to have 
 gone to ground with the fox I suppose she'll take 
 it!" 
 
 Mrs. Fennessy paid out of her own ample savings 
 the fines inflicted upon her husband for potheen- 
 making and selling drink in the Craffroe gate lodge 
 without a licence, and she shortly afterwards took 
 him to America. 
 
 Mrs. Alexander's friends professed themselves as 
 being not in the least surprised to hear that she 
 had installed the afflicted Miss Fennessy (sister to 
 the late occupant) and her scarcely less afflicted 
 companion, the Fairy Pig, in her back lodge. Miss 
 Fennessy, being deaf and dumb, is not perhaps a 
 paragon lodge-keeper, but having, like her brother, 
 been brought up in a work-house kitchen, she has 
 taught Patsey Crimmeen how to boil stirabout d 
 merveille.
 
 FANNY FITZ'S GAMBLE. 
 
 "Where's Fanny Fitz?" said Captain Spicer to 
 his wife. 
 
 They were leaning over the sea-wall in front of 
 a little fishing hotel in Connemara, idling away the 
 interval usually vouchsafed by the Irish car-driver 
 between the hour at which he is ordered to be ready 
 and that at which he appears. It was a misty 
 morning in early June, the time of all times for 
 Connemara, did the tourist only know it. The 
 mountains towered green and grey above the palely 
 shining sea in which they stood ; the air was full of 
 the sound of streams and the scent of wild flowers ; 
 the thin mist had in it something of the dazzle of 
 the sunlight that was close behind it. Little Mrs. 
 Spicer pulled down her veil : even after a fortnight's 
 fly-fishing she still retained some regard for her 
 complexion. 
 
 " She says she can't come," she responded ; " she 
 has letters to write or something — and this is our 
 last day ! " 
 
 Mrs. Spicer evidently found the fact provoking. 
 
 " On this information the favourite receded 23 
 
 31
 
 32 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 to I," remarked Captain Spicer. " I think you may 
 as well chuck it, my dear." 
 
 " I should like to beat them both ! " said his wife, 
 flinging a pebble into the rising tide that was very 
 softly mouthing the seaweedy rocks below them. 
 
 " Well, here's Rupert ; you can begin on him." 
 
 " Nothing would give me greater pleasure ! " said 
 Rupert's sister vindictively, " A great teasing, 
 squabbling baby ! Oh, how I hate fools ! and they 
 are bolh fools ! — Oh, there you are, Rupert," a well- 
 simulated blandness invading her voice ; " and 
 what's Fanny Fitz doing ? " 
 
 " She's trying to do a Mayo man over a horse- 
 deal," replied Mr. Rupert Gunning. 
 
 "A horse-deal!" repeated Mrs. Spicer incredu- 
 lously. " Fanny buying a horse ! Oh, impossible ! " 
 
 " Well, I don't know about that," said Mr. Gun- 
 ning, "she's trying pretty hard. I gave her my 
 opinion " 
 
 " I'll take my oath you did," observed Captain 
 Spicer. 
 
 " And as she didn't seem to want it, I came 
 
 away," continued Mr. Gunning imperturbably. " Be 
 calm, Maudie ; it takes two days and two nights to 
 buy a horse in these parts ; you'll be home in plenty 
 of time to interfere, and here's the car. Don't waste 
 the morning." 
 
 " I never know if you're speaking the truth or 
 
 I
 
 ■a silence that was the outcome partly of stupidity, 
 
 PARTLY OF CAUTION, AND PARTLY OF LACK OF ENGLISH 
 SPEECH."
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 35 
 
 no," complained Mrs. Spicer ; nevertheless, she 
 scrambled on to the car without delay. She and 
 her brother had at least one point in common — 
 the fanatic enthusiasm of the angler. 
 
 In the meantime, Miss Fanny Fitzroy's negotia- 
 tions were proceeding in the hotel yard. Fanny 
 herself was standing in a stable doorway, with her 
 hands in the pockets of her bicycle skirt. She had 
 no hat on, and the mild breeze blew her hair about ; 
 it was light brown, with a brightness in it ; her eyes 
 also were light brown, with gleams in them like 
 the shallow places in a Connemara trout stream. 
 At this moment they were scanning with approval, 
 tempered by anxiety, the muddy legs of a lean and 
 lengthy grey filly, who was fearfully returning her 
 gaze from between the strands of a touzled forelock. 
 The owner of the filly, a small man, with a face 
 like a serious elderly monkey, stood at her head in 
 a silence that was the outcome partly of stupidity, 
 partly of caution, and partly of lack of English 
 speech. The conduct of the matter was in the 
 hands of a friend, a tall young man with a black 
 beard, nimble of tongue and gesture, profuse in 
 courtesies. 
 
 "Well, indeed, yes, your ladyship," he was 
 saying glibly, "the breed of horses is greatly 
 improving in these parts, and them hackney 
 horses "
 
 36 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 " Oh," interrupted Miss Fitzroy hastily, " I won't 
 have her if she's a hackney." 
 
 The eyes of the owner sought those of the friend 
 in a gaze that clearly indicated the question. 
 
 " VVhat'll ye say to her now ? " 
 
 The position of the vendors was becoming a little 
 complicated. They had come over through the 
 mountains, from the borders of Mayo, to sell the 
 filly to the hotel-keeper for posting, and were primed 
 to the lips with the tale of her hackney lineage. 
 The hotel-keeper had unconditionally refused to 
 trade, and here, when a heaven-sent alternative was 
 delivered into their hands, they found themselves 
 hampered by the coils of a cast-off lie. No shade, 
 however, of hesitancy appeared on the open coun- 
 tenance of the friend. He approached Miss Fitzroy 
 with a mincing step, a deprecating wave of the hand, 
 and a deeply respectful ogle. He was going to 
 adopt the desperate resource of telling the truth, 
 but to tell the truth profitably was a part that 
 required rather more playing than any other. 
 
 "Well, your honour's ladyship," he began, with 
 a glance at the hotel ostler, who was standing near 
 cleaning a bit in industrious and sarcastic silence, 
 " it is a fact, no doubt, that I mentioned here this 
 morning that this young mare was of the Govern- 
 ment hackney stock. But, according as I under- 
 stand from this poor man that owns her, he bought
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 37 
 
 her in a small fair over the Tuam side, and the man 
 that sold her could take his oath she was by the 
 Grey Dawn — sure you'd know it out of her colour." 
 
 "Why didn't you say so before?" asked Miss 
 Fitzroy, bending her straight brows in righteous 
 severity. 
 
 " Well, that's true indeed, your ladyship ; but, 
 afther all — I declare a man couldn't hardly live 
 without he'd tell a lie sometimes ! " 
 
 Fanny Fitz stooped, rather hurriedly, and entered 
 upon a renewed examination of the filly's legs. 
 Even Rupert Gunning, after his brief and unsym- 
 pathetic survey, had said she had good legs ; in fact, 
 he had only been able to crab her for the length of 
 her back, and he, as Fanny Fitz reflected with a 
 heat that took no heed of metaphor, was the greatest 
 crabber that ever croaked. 
 
 " What are you asking for her ? " she demanded 
 with a sudden access of decision. 
 
 There was a pause. The owner of the filly and 
 his friend withdrew a step or two and conferred 
 together in Irish at lightning speed. The filly held 
 up her head and regarded her surroundings with 
 guileless wonderment. Fanny Fitz made a mental 
 dive into her bankbook, and arrived at the varied 
 conclusions that she was £^,0 to the good, that on 
 that sum she had to weather out the summer and 
 autumn, besides pacifying various cormorants (thus
 
 38 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 she designated her long-suffering tradespeople), 
 and that every one had told her that if she only 
 kept her eyes open in Connemara she might be 
 able to buy something cheap and make a pot of 
 money on it. 
 
 " This poor honest man," said the friend, returning 
 to the charge, " says he couldn't part her without 
 he'd get twenty-eight pounds for her ; and, thank 
 God, it's little your ladyship would think of giving 
 that ! " 
 
 Fanny Fitz's face fell. 
 
 " Twenty -eight pounds ! " she echoed. " Oh, 
 that's ridiculous ! " 
 
 The friend turned to the owner, and, with a 
 majestic wave of the hand, signalled to him to 
 retire. The owner, without a change of expression, 
 coiled up the rope halter and started slowly and 
 implacably for the gate ; the friend took off his hat 
 with wounded dignity. Every gesture implied that 
 the whole transaction was buried in an irrevocable 
 past. 
 
 Fanny Fitz's eyes followed the party as they 
 silently left the yard, the filly stalking dutifully 
 with a long and springy step beside her master. 
 It was a moment full of bitterness, and of a quite 
 irrational indignation against Rupert Gunning. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, miss," said the ostler, at her 
 elbow, " would ye be willing to give twenty pounds 

 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 39 
 
 for the mare, and he to give back a pound luck- 
 penny?" 
 
 " I would ! " said the impulsive Fanny Fitz, after 
 the manner of her nation. 
 
 When the fishing party returned that afternoon 
 Miss Fitzroy met them at the hall door. 
 
 " Well, my dear," she said airily to Mrs. Spicer, 
 "what sort of sport have you had? I've enjoyed 
 myself immensely. I've bought a horse ! " 
 
 Mrs. Spicer sat, paralysed, on the seat of the 
 outside car, disregarding her brother's outstretched 
 hands. 
 
 " Fanny ! " she exclaimed, in tones fraught with 
 knowledge of her friend's resources and liabilities. 
 
 " Yes, I have ! " went on Fanny Fitz, undaunted. 
 " Mr. Gunning saw her. He said she was a long- 
 backed brute. Didn't you, Mr. Gunning?" 
 
 Rupert Gunning lifted his small sister bodily off 
 the car. He was a tall sallow man, with a big 
 nose and a small, much-bitten, fair moustache. 
 
 " Yes, I believe I did," he said shortly. 
 
 Mrs. Spicer's blue eyes grew round with conster- 
 nation. 
 
 " Then you really have bought the thing ! " she 
 cried. "Oh, Fanny, you idiot! And what on 
 earth are you going to do with it?" 
 
 " It can sleep on the foot of my bed to-night," 
 returned Fanny Fitz, " and I'll ride it into Galway
 
 40 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 to-morrow ! Mr. Gunning, you can ride half-way if 
 you like ! " 
 
 But Mr. Gunning had already gone into the hotel 
 with his rod and fishing basket. He had a gift, 
 that he rarely lost a chance of exercising, of pro- 
 voking Fanny Fitz to wrath, and the fact that he 
 now declined her challenge may or may not be 
 accounted for by the gloom consequent upon an 
 empty fishing basket. 
 
 Next morning the various hangers-on in the hotel 
 yard were provided with occupation and entertain- 
 ment of the most satiating description. Fanny 
 Fitz's new purchase was being despatched to the 
 nearest railway station, some fourteen miles off. It 
 had been arranged that the ostler was to drive her 
 there in one of the hotel cars, which should then 
 return with a horse that was coming from Galway 
 for the hotel owner ; nothing could have fitted in 
 better. Unfortunately the only part of the arrange- 
 ment that refused to fit in was the filly. Even 
 while Fanny Fitz was finishing her toilet, high- 
 pitched howls of objurgation were rising, alarmingly, 
 from the stable-yard, and on reaching the scene ot 
 action she was confronted by the spectacle of the 
 ostler being hurtled across the yard by the filly, to 
 whose head he was clinging, while two helpers 
 upheld the shafts of the outside car from which she 
 had fled. All were shouting directions and warnings
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 41 
 
 at the tops of their voices, the hotel dog was barking, 
 the filly alone was silent, but her opinions were 
 unmistakable. 
 
 A waiter in shirt-sleeves was leaning comfortably 
 out of a window, watching the fray and offering airy 
 suggestion and comment. 
 
 " It's what I'm telling them, miss," he said easily, 
 including Fanny Fitz in the conversation ; " if they 
 get that one into Recess to-night it'll not be under 
 a side-car." 
 
 " But the man I bought her from/' said Fanny Fitz, 
 lamentably addressing the company, " told me that 
 he drove his mother to chapel with her last Sunday." 
 
 " Musha then, may the divil sweep hell with him 
 and burn the broom afther ! " panted the ostler in 
 bitter wrath, as he slewed the filly to a standstill. 
 " I wish himself and his mother was behind her 
 when I went putting the crupper on her ! B'leeve 
 me, they'd drop their chat ! " 
 
 " Sure I knew that young Geogheghan back in 
 Westport," remarked the waiter, " and all the good 
 there is about him was a little handy talk. Take 
 the harness off her, Mick, and throw a saddle on 
 her. It's little I'd think meself of canthering her 
 into Recess ! " 
 
 " How handy ye are yerself with your talk I " 
 retorted the ostler ; " it's canthering round the table 
 ye'll be doing, and it's what'll suit ye betther ! "
 
 42 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Fanny Fitz began to laugh. " He might ride the 
 saddle of mutton ! " she said, with a levity that, 
 under the circumstances, did her credit. " You'd 
 better take the harness off, and you'll have to get 
 her to Recess for me somehow." 
 
 The ostler took no notice of this suggestion ; he 
 was repeating to himself: "Ride the saddle o' 
 mutton ! By dam, I never heard the like o' that ! 
 
 Ride the saddle o' mutton ! " He suddenly 
 
 gave a yell of laughing, and in the next moment 
 the startled filly dragged the reins from his hand 
 with a tremendous plunge, and in half a dozen 
 bounds was out of the yard gate and clattering 
 down the road. 
 
 There was an instant of petrifaction. "Diddlety 
 — iddlety — idlety ! " chanted the waiter with far- 
 away sweetness. 
 
 Fanny Fitz and the ostler were outside the gate 
 simultaneously : the filly was already rounding the 
 first turn of the road ; two strides more, and she 
 was gone as though she had never been, and " Oh, 
 my nineteen pounds ! " thought poor Fanny Fitz, 
 
 As the ostler was wont to say in subsequent 
 repetitions of the story : " Thanks be to God, the 
 reins was rotten ! " But for this it is highly prob- 
 able that Miss Fitzroy's speculation would have 
 collapsed abruptly with broken knees, possibly with 
 a broken neck. Having galloped into them in the 
 
 I
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 43 
 
 course of the first hundred yards, they fell from her 
 as the green withes fell from Samson, one long 
 streamer alone remaining to lash her flanks as she 
 fled. Some five miles from the hotel she met a 
 wedding, and therewith leaped the bog-drain by 
 the side of the road and " took to the mountains," 
 as the bridegroom poetically described it to Fanny 
 Fitz, who, with the ostler, was pursuing the fugitive 
 on an outside car. 
 
 " If that's the way," said the ostler, " ye mightn't 
 get her again before the winther." 
 
 Fanny Fitz left the matter, together with a 
 further instalment of the thirty pounds, in the 
 hands of the sergeant of police, and went home, 
 and, improbable as it may appear, in the course of 
 something less than ten days she received an 
 invoice from the local railway station, Enniscar, 
 briefly stating : " i horse arrd. Please remove." 
 
 Many people, most of her friends indeed, were 
 quite unaware that Fanny Fitz possessed a home. 
 Beyond the fact that it supplied her with a per- 
 manent address, and a place at which she was able 
 periodically to deposit consignments of half-worn- 
 out clothes, Fanny herself was not prone to rate 
 the privilege very highly. Possibly, two very 
 elderly maiden step-aunts are discouraging to the 
 homing instinct ; the fact remained that as long 
 as the youngest Miss Fitzroy possessed the where-
 
 44 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 withal to tip a housemaid she was but rarely seen 
 within the decorous precincts of Craffroe Lodge. 
 
 Let it not for a moment be imagined that the 
 Connemara filly was to become a member of this 
 household. Even Fanny Fitz, with all her opti- 
 mism, knew better than to expect that William 
 O'Loughlin, who divided his attentions between 
 the ancient cob and the garden, and ruled the elder 
 Misses Fitzroy with a rod of iron, would undertake 
 the education of anything more skittish than early 
 potatoes. It was to the stable, or rather cow-house, 
 of one Johnny Connolly, that the new purchase was 
 ultimately conveyed, and it was thither that Fanny 
 Fitz, with apples in one pocket and sugar in the 
 other, conducted her ally, Mr. Freddy Alexander, 
 the master of the Craffroe Hounds. Fanny Fitz's 
 friendship with Freddy was one of long standing, 
 and was soundly based on the fact that when she 
 had been eighteen he had been fourteen ; and 
 though it may be admitted that this is a discre- 
 pancy that somewhat fades with time, even Freddy's 
 mother acquitted Fanny Fitz of any ulterior motive; 
 and Freddy was an only son. 
 
 " She was very rejected last night afther she 
 coming in," said Johnny Connolly, manipulating 
 as he spoke the length of rusty chain and bit of 
 stick that fastened the door. " I think it was lone- 
 some she was on the thrain."
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 45 
 
 Fanny Fitz and Mr. Alexander peered into the 
 dark and vasty interior of the cow-house ; from a 
 remote corner they heard a heavy breath and the 
 jingle of a training bit, but they saw nothing. 
 
 " 1 have the cavesson and all on her ready for ye, 
 and I was thinking we'd take her south into Mr. 
 Gunning's land. His finces is very good," continued 
 Johnny, going cautiously in ; " wait till I pull her 
 out." 
 
 Johnny Connolly was a horse trainer who did a 
 little farming, or a farmer who did a little horse 
 training, and his management of young horses fol- 
 lowed no known rules, and indeed knew none, but 
 it was generally successful. He fed them by rule 
 of thumb ; he herded them in hustling, squabbling 
 parties in pitch-dark sheds ; he ploughed them at 
 eighteen months ; he beat them with a stick like 
 dogs when they transgressed, and like dogs they 
 loved him. He had what gardeners call " a lucky 
 hand " with them, and they throve with him, and 
 he had, moreover, that gift of winning their way- 
 ward hearts that comes neither by cultivation nor 
 by knowledge, but is innate and unconscious. 
 Already, after two days, he and the Connemara 
 filly understood each other ; she sniffed distantly 
 and with profound suspicion at Fanny and her 
 offerings, and entirely declined to permit Mr. 
 Alexander to estimate her height on the question-
 
 46 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 able assumption that the point of his chin repre- 
 sented 15*2, but she allowed Johnny to tighten or 
 slacken ev^ery buckle in her new and unfamiliar 
 costume without protest. 
 
 " I think she'll make a ripping good mare," said 
 the enthusiastic Freddy, as he and Fanny Fitz 
 followed her out of the yard ; " I don't care what 
 Rupert Gunning says, she's any amount of quality, 
 and I bet you'll do well over her." 
 
 " She'll make a real nice fashionable mare," re- 
 marked Johnny, opening the gate of a field and 
 leading the filly in, "and she's a sweet galloper, 
 but she's very frightful in herself. Faith, I thought 
 she'd run up the wall from me the first time I went 
 to feed her ! Ah ha ! none o' yer thricks ! " as the 
 filly, becoming enjoyably aware of the large space 
 of grass round her, let fling a kick of malevolent 
 exuberance at the two fox-terriers who were trotting 
 decorously in her rear. 
 
 It was soon found that, in the matter of " stone 
 gaps," the A B C of Irish jumping, Connemara had 
 taught the grey filly all there was to learn. 
 
 " Begor, Miss Fanny, she's as crabbed as a mule! " 
 said her teacher approvingly. "D'ye mind the 
 way she soaks the hind legs up into her! We'll 
 give her a bank now." 
 
 At the bank, however, the trouble began. De- 
 spite the ministrations of Mr. Alexander and a long
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 4-7 
 
 whip, despite the precept and example of Mr. 
 Connolly, who performed prodigies of activity in 
 running his pupil in at the bank and leaping on to 
 it himself the filly time after time either ran her 
 chest against it or swerved from it at the last instant 
 with a vigour that plucked her preceptor from off 
 it and scattered Fanny Fitz and the fox-terriers 
 like leaves before the wind. These latter were 
 divided between sycophantic and shrieking indig- 
 nation with the filly for declining to jump, and a 
 most wary attention to the sphere of influence of 
 the whip. They were a mother and daughter, as 
 conceited, as craven, and as wholly attractive as 
 only the judiciously spoiled ladies of their race can 
 be. Their hearts were divided between Fanny 
 Fitz and the cook, the rest of them appertained to 
 the Misses Harriet and Rachael Fitzroy, whom 
 they regarded with toleration tinged with boredom. 
 
 " I tell ye now, Masther Freddy, 'tis no good 
 for us to be goin' on sourin' the mare this way. 
 'Tis what the fince is too steep for her. Maybe 
 she never seen the like in that backwards counthry 
 she came from. We'll give her the bank below 
 with the ditch in front of it. 'Tisn't very big at all, 
 and she'll be bound to lep with the sup of wather 
 that's in it." 
 
 Thus Johnny Connolly, wiping a very heated 
 brow.
 
 48 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 The bank below was a broad and solid structure, 
 well padded with grass and bracken, and it had a 
 sufficiently obvious ditch, of some three feet wide, 
 on the nearer side. The grand effort was duly pre- 
 pared for. The bank was solemnly exhibited to 
 the filly ; the dogs, who had with unerring instinct 
 seated themselves on its most jumpable portion, 
 were scattered with one threat of the whip to the 
 horizon. Fanny tore away the last bit of bracken 
 that might prove a discouragement, and Johnny 
 issued his final order. 
 
 " Come inside me with the whip, sir, and give her 
 one good belt at the last." 
 
 No one knows exactly how it happened. There 
 was a rush, a scramble, a backward sliding, a great 
 deal of shouting, and the Connemara filly was 
 couched in the narrow ditch at right angles to the 
 fence, with the water oozing up through the weeds 
 round her, like a wild duck on its nest ; and at this 
 moment Mr. Rupert Gunning appeared suddenly 
 on the top of the bank and inspected the scene with 
 an amusement that he made little attempt to con- 
 ceal. 
 
 It took half an hour, and ropes, and a number of 
 Rupert Gunning's haymakers, to get Fanny Fitz's 
 speculation on to its legs again, and Mr. Gunning's 
 comments during the process successfully sapped 
 Fanny Fitz's control of her usually equable temper.
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 49 
 
 " He's a beast ! " she said wrathfully to Freddy, 
 as the party moved soberly homewards in the burn- 
 ing June afternoon, with the horseflies clustering 
 round them, and the smell of new-mown grass 
 wafting to them from where, a field or two away, 
 came the rattle of Rupert Gunning's mowing- 
 machine. " A crabbing beast ! It was just like 
 my luck that he should come up at that moment 
 and have the supreme joy of seeing Gamble — " 
 Gamble was the filly's rarely-used name — " wallow- 
 ing in the ditch ! That's the second time he's 
 scored off me. I pity poor little Maudie Spicer for 
 having such a brother ! " 
 
 In spite of this discouraging debut, the filly's 
 education went on and prospered. She marched 
 discreetly along the roads in long reins ; she 
 champed detested mouthfuls of rusty mouthing bit 
 in the process described by Johnny Connolly as 
 "getting her neck broke " ; she trotted for treadmill 
 half-hours in the lunge ; and during and in spite of 
 all these penances, she fattened up and thickened 
 out until that great authority, Mr. Alexander, pro- 
 nounced it would be a sin not to send her up to the 
 Dublin Horse Show, as she was just the mare to 
 catch an English dealer's eye. 
 
 " But sure ye wouldn't sell her, miss ? " said her 
 faithful nurse, " and Masther Freddy afther starting 
 the hounds and all ! " 
 
 4
 
 50 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Fanny Fitz scratched the filly softly under the 
 jawbone, and thought of the document in her pocket 
 — long, and blue, and inscribed with the too familiar 
 notice in red ink : " An early settlement -will 
 oblige ". 
 
 " I must, Johnny," she said, "worse luck !" 
 " Well, indeed, that's too bad, miss," said Johnny 
 comprehendingly. " There was a mare I had one 
 time, and I sold her before I went to America. 
 God knows, afther she went from me, whenever I'd 
 look at her winkers hanging on the wall I'd have to 
 cry. I never seen a sight of her till three years 
 afther that, afther I coming home. I was coming 
 out o' the fair at Enniscar, an' I was talking to a 
 man an' we coming down Dangan Hill, and what 
 was in it but herself coming up in a cart ! " An' I 
 didn't look at her, good nor bad, nor know her, but 
 sorra bit but she knew me talking, an' she turned 
 in to me with the cart ! ' Ho, ho, ho ! ' says she, 
 and she stuck her nose into me like she'd be kissing 
 me. Be dam, but I had to cry. An' the world 
 wouldn't stir her out o' that till I'd lead her on 
 meself. As for cow nor dog nor any other thing, 
 there's nothing would rise your heart like a horse!" 
 
 It was early in July, a hot and sunny morning, 
 and Fanny Fitz, seated on the flawless grassplot in 
 front of Craffroe Lodge hall-door, was engaged in
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble, 51 
 
 washing the dogs. The mother, who had been the 
 first victim, was morosely licking herself, shudder- 
 ing effectively, and coldly ignoring her oppressor's 
 apologies. The daughter, trembling in every limb, 
 was standing knee-deep in the bath ; one paw, 
 placed on its rim, was ready for flight if flight be- 
 came practicable ; her tail, rigid with anguish would 
 have hummed like a violin-string if it were touched. 
 Fanny, with her shirtsleeves rolled up to her elbows, 
 scrubbed in the soap. A clipped fuchsia hedge, the 
 pride of William O'Loughlin's heart, screened the 
 little lawn and garden from the high road. 
 
 " Good morning. Miss Fanny," said a voice over 
 the hedge. 
 
 Fanny Fitz raised a flushed face and wiped a 
 fleck of Naldyre off her nose with her arm. 
 
 " I've just been looking at your mare," went on 
 the voice. 
 
 " Well, I hope you liked her ! " said Fanny Fitz 
 defiantly, for the voice was the voice of Rupert 
 Gunning, and there was that in it that in this con- 
 nection acted on Miss Fitzroy as a slogan. 
 
 " Well, ' like ' is a strong word, you know ! " said 
 Mr. Gunning, moving on and standing with his 
 arms on the top of the white gate and meeting 
 Fanny's glance with provoking eyes. Then, as an 
 after-thought, " Do you think you give her enough 
 to eat ? "
 
 52 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 " She gets a feed of oats every Sunday, and 
 strong tea and thistles through the week," replied 
 Fanny Fitz in furious sarcasm. 
 
 " Yes, that's what she looks like," said Rupert 
 Gunning thoughtfully. " Connolly tells me you 
 want to send her to the show — Barnum's, I sup- 
 pose — as the skeleton dude?" 
 
 " I believe you want to buy her yourself," re- 
 torted Fanny, with a vicious dab of the soap in the 
 daughter's eye. 
 
 " Yes, she's just about up to my weight, isn't 
 she ? By-the-bye, you haven't had her backed yet, 
 I believe?" 
 
 " I'm going to try her to-day ! " said Fanny with 
 sudden resolve. 
 
 " Ride her yourself!" said Mr. Gunning, his eye- 
 brows going up into the roots of his hair. 
 
 "Yes ! " said Fanny, with calm as icy as a sudden 
 burst of struggles on the part of the daughter would 
 admit of. 
 
 Rupert Gunning hesitated ; then he said, " Well, 
 she ought to carry a side-saddle well. Decent 
 
 shoulders, and a nice long " Perhaps he caught 
 
 Fanny Fitz's eye ; at all events, he left the com- 
 mendation unfinished, and went on, " I should like 
 to look in and see the performance, if I may? I 
 suppose you wouldn't let me try her first ? No ? " 
 
 He walked on.
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 53 
 
 " Puppy, tvill you stay quiet ! " said Fanny Fitz 
 very crossly. She even slapped the daughter's 
 soap-sud muffled person, for no reason that the 
 daughter could see. 
 
 " Begorra, miss, I dunno," said Johnny Connolly 
 dubiously when the suggestion that the filly should 
 be ridden there and then was made to him a few 
 minutes later ; " wouldn't ye wait till I put her a 
 few turns under the cart, or maybe threw a sack o' 
 oats on her back ? " 
 
 But Fanny would brook no delay. Her saddle 
 was in the harness-room : William O'Loughlin could 
 help to put it on ; she would try the filly at once. 
 
 Miss Fitzroy's riding was of the sort that makes 
 up in pluck what it wants in knowledge. She stuck 
 on by sheer force of character ; that she sat fairly 
 straight, and let a horse's head alone were gifts of 
 Providence of which she was wholly unconscious. 
 Riding, in her opinion, was just getting on to a 
 saddle and staying there, and making the thing 
 under it go as fast as possible. She had always 
 ridden other people's horses, and had ridden them 
 so straight, and looked so pretty, that — other people 
 in this connection being usually men — such trifles 
 as riding out a hard run minus both fore shoes, or 
 watering her mount generously during a check, 
 were endured with a forbearance not frequent in 
 horse owners. Hunting people, however, do not
 
 54 ^il on the Irish Shore. 
 
 generally mount their friends, no matter how at- 
 tractive, on young and valuable horses. Fanny 
 Fitz's riding had been matured on well-seasoned 
 screws, and she sallied forth to the subjugation of 
 the Connemara filly with a self-confidence formed 
 on experience only of the old, and the kind, and 
 the cunning. 
 
 The filly trembled and sidled away from the 
 garden-seat up to which Johnny Connolly had 
 manoeuvred her. Johnny's supreme familiarity with 
 young horses had brought him to the same point 
 of recklessness that Fanny had arrived at from the 
 opposite extreme, but some lingering remnant of 
 prudence had induced him to put on the cavesson 
 headstall, with the long rope attached to it, over 
 the filly's bridle. The latter bore with surprising 
 nerve Fanny's depositing of herself in the saddle. 
 
 " I'll keep a holt o' the rope, Miss Fanny," said 
 Johnny, assiduously fondling his pupil ; " it might 
 be she'd be strange in herself for the first offer. 
 I'll lead her on a small piece. Come on, gerr'l ! 
 Come on now ! " 
 
 The pupil, thus adjured, made a hesitating 
 movement, and Fanny settled herself down into 
 the saddle. It was the shifting of the weight that 
 seemed to bring home to the grey filly the true 
 facts of the case, and with the discovery she shot 
 straight up into the air as if she had been fired from
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 55 
 
 a mortar. The rope whistled through Johnny- 
 Connolly's fingers, and the point of the filly's 
 shoulder laid him out on the ground with the 
 precision of a prize-fighter. 
 
 " I felt, my dear," as Fanny Fitz remarked in a 
 letter to a friend, " as if I were in something be- 
 tween an earthquake and a bad dream and a churn, 
 I just clamped my legs round the crutches, and she 
 whirled the rest of me round her like the lash of a 
 whip. In one of her flights she nearly went in 
 at the hall door, and I was aware of William 
 O'Loughlin's snow-white face somewhere behind 
 the geraniums in the porch. I think I was clean 
 out of the saddle then. I remember looking up 
 at my knees, and my left foot was nearly on 
 the ground. Then she gave another flourish, 
 and swung me up on top again. I was hanging 
 on to the reins hard ; in fact, I think they must 
 have pulled me back on to the saddle, as I know 
 at one time I was sitting in a bunch on the stirrup ! 
 Then I heard most heart-rending yells from the 
 poor old Aunts : ' Oh, the begonias ! O Fanny, 
 get off the grass ! ' and then, suddenly, the filly 
 and I were perfectly still, and the house and the 
 trees were spinning round me, black, edged with 
 green and yellow dazzles. Then I discovered 
 that some one had got hold of the cavesson rope 
 and had hauled us in, as if we were salmon ;
 
 56 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Johnny had grabbed me by the left leg, and was 
 trying to drag me off the filly's back ; William 
 Q'Loughlin had broken two pots of geraniums, 
 and was praying loudly among the fragments ; 
 and Aunt Harriet and Aunt Rachel, who don't to 
 this hour realise that anything unusual had hap- 
 pened, were reproachfully collecting the trampled 
 remnants of the begonias." 
 
 It was, perhaps unworthy on Fanny Fitz's part 
 to conceal the painful fact that it was that dis- 
 tinguished fisherman, Mr. Rupert Gunning, who 
 had landed her and the Connemara filly. Freddy 
 Alexander, however, heard the story in its integrity, 
 and commented on it with his usual candour. " I 
 don't know which was the bigger fool, you or 
 Johnny," he said ; " I think you ought to be jolly 
 grateful to old Rupert ! " 
 
 "Well, I'm not!" returned Fanny Fitz. 
 
 After this episode the training of the filly pro- 
 ceeded with more system and with entire success. 
 Her nerves having been steadied by an hour in 
 the lunge with a sack of oats strapped, Mazeppa- 
 like, on to her back, she was mounted without 
 difficulty, and was thereafter ridden daily. By 
 the time Fanny's muscles and joints had recovered 
 from their first attempt at rough-riding, the filly 
 was taking her place as a reasonable member of 
 society, and her nerves, which had been as much
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 57 
 
 en evidence as her bones, were, like the latter, 
 finding their proper level, and becoming clothed 
 with tranquillity and fat. The Dublin Horse Show 
 drew near, and, abetted by Mr. Alexander, Fanny 
 Fitz filled the entry forms and drew the necessary 
 cheque, and then fell back in her chair and gazed 
 at the attentive dogs with fateful eyes. 
 
 " Dogs ! " she said, " if I don't sell the filly I am 
 done for ! " 
 
 The mother scratched languidly behind her ear 
 till she yawned musically, but said nothing. The 
 daughter, who was an enthusiast, gave a sudden 
 bound on to Miss Fitzroy's lap, and thus it was 
 that the cheque was countersigned with two blots 
 and a paw mark. 
 
 None the less, the bank honoured it, being a 
 kind bank, and not desirous to emphasise too 
 abruptly the fact that Fanny Fitz was over- 
 drawn. 
 
 In spite of, or rather, perhaps, in consequence of 
 this fact, it would have been hard to find a smarter 
 and more prosperous-looking young woman than 
 the owner of No. 548, as she signed her name at 
 the season-ticket turnstile and entered the wide 
 soft aisles of the cathedral of horses at Ballsbridge. 
 It was the first day of the show, and in token of 
 Fanny Fitz's enthusiasm be it recorded, it was 
 little more than 9.30 A.M. Fanny knew the show
 
 5 8 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 well, but hitherto only in its more worldly and 
 social aspects. Never before had she been of the 
 elect who have a horse " up," and as she hurried 
 along, attended by Captain Spicer, at whose house 
 she was staying, and Mr. Alexander, she felt 
 magnificently conscious of the importance of the 
 position. 
 
 The filly had preceded her from Craffroe by a 
 couple of days, under the charge of Patsey 
 Crimmeen, lent by Freddy for the occasion. 
 
 " I don't expect a prize, you know," Fanny had 
 said loftily to Mr. Gunning, "but she has improved 
 so tremendously, every one says she ought to be 
 an easy mare to sell." 
 
 The sun came filtering through the high root 
 down on to the long rows of stalls, striking electric 
 sparks out of the stirrup-irons and bits, and adding 
 a fresh gloss to the polish that the grooms were 
 giving to their charges. The judging had begun in 
 several of the rings, and every now and then a 
 glittering exemplification of all that horse and 
 groom could be would come with soft thunder up 
 the tan behind Fanny and her squires. 
 
 "We've come up through the heavy weights," 
 said Captain Spicer ; " the twelve-stone horses will 
 look like rats " He stopped. 
 
 They had arrived at the section in which figured 
 "No. 548. Miss F. Fitzroy's 'Gamble,' grey mare;
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 59 
 
 4 years, by Grey Dawn," and opposite them was 
 stall No. 548. In it stood the Connemara filly, or 
 rather something that might have been her astral 
 body. A more spectral, deplorable object could 
 hardly be imagined. Her hind quarters had fallen 
 in, her hips were standing out ; her ribs were like 
 the bars of a grate ; her head, hung low before her, 
 was turned so that one frightened eye scanned the 
 passers-by, and she propped her fragile form against 
 the partition of her stall, as though she were too 
 weak to stand up. 
 
 To say that Fanny Fitz's face fell is to put it 
 mildly. As she described it to Mrs. Spicer, it fell 
 till it was about an inch wide and five miles long. 
 Captain Spicer was speechless. Freddy alone was 
 equal to demanding of Patsey Crimmeen what had 
 happened to the mare. 
 
 " Begor, Masther Freddy, it's a wonder she's alive 
 at all ! " replied Patsey, who was now perceived to 
 be looking but little better than the filly. " She 
 was middlin' quiet in the thrain, though she went 
 to lep out o' the box with the first screech the 
 engine give, but I quietened her some way, and it 
 wasn't till we got into the sthreets here that she 
 went mad altogether. Faith, I thought she was 
 into the river with me three times ! 'Twas hardly 
 I got her down the quays ; and the first o' thim 
 alecthric thrams she seen ! Look at me hands, sir !
 
 6o All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 She had me swingin' on the rope the way ye'd 
 swing a flail. I tell you, Masther Freddy, them 
 was the ecstasies ! " 
 
 Patsey paused and gazed with a gloomy pride 
 into the stricken faces of his audience. 
 
 " An' as for her food," he resumed, " she didn't 
 use a bit, hay, nor oats, nor bran, bad nor good, 
 since she left Johnny Connolly's, No, nor drink. 
 The divil dang the bit she put in her mouth for 
 two days, first and last. Why wouldn't she eat is 
 it, miss ? From the fright sure ! She'll do nothing, 
 only standing that way, and bushtin' out sweatin', 
 and watching out all the time the way I wouldn't 
 lave her. I declare to God I'm heart-scalded with 
 her!" 
 
 At this harrowing juncture came the order to 
 No. 548 to go forth to Ring 3 to be judged, and 
 further details were reserved. But Fanny Fitz had 
 heard enough. 
 
 " Captain Spicer," she said, as the party paced in 
 deepest depression towards Ring 3, " if I hadn't on 
 a new veil I should cry ! " 
 
 "Well, I haven't," replied Captain Spicer ; "shall 
 I do it for you ? Upon my soul, I think the 
 occasion demands it ! " 
 
 " I just want to know one thing," continued Miss 
 Fitzroy. " When does your brother-in-law arrive ? " 
 
 " Not till to-night."
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 6i 
 
 " That's the only nice thing I've heard to-day," 
 sighed Fanny Fitz. 
 
 The judging went no better for the grey filly 
 than might have been expected, even though she 
 cheered up a little in the ring, and found herself 
 equal to an invalidish but well-aimed kick at a 
 fellow-competitor. She was ushered forth with the 
 second batch of the rejected, her spirits sank to 
 their former level, and Fanny's accompanied them. 
 
 Perhaps the most trying feature of the affair was 
 the reproving sympathy of her friends, a sympathy 
 that was apt to break down into almost irre- 
 pressible laughter at the sight of the broken-down 
 skeleton of whose prowess poor Fanny Fitz had so 
 incautiously boasted. 
 
 "V know, my dear child," said one elderly 
 M.F.H., "you had no business to send up an 
 animal without the condition of a wire fence to the 
 Dublin Show. Look at my horses ! Fat as butter, 
 every one of 'em ! " 
 
 "So was mine, but it all melted away in the 
 train," protested Fanny Fitz in vain. Those of her 
 friends who had only seen the mare in the catalogue 
 sent dealers to buy her, and those who had seen 
 her in the flesh — or what was left of it — sent 
 amateurs ; but all, dealers and the greenest of 
 amateurs alike, entirelj^ declined to think of buying 
 her.
 
 62 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 The weather was perfect ; every one declared 
 there never was a better show, and Fanny Fitz, in 
 her newest and least-paid-for clothes, looked brilli- 
 antly successful, and declared to Mr. Rupert 
 Gunning that nothing made a show so interesting 
 as having something up for it. She even en- 
 couraged him to his accustomed jibes at her 
 Connemara speculation, and personally conducted 
 him to stall No. 548, and made merry over its 
 melancholy occupant in a way that scandalised 
 Patsey, and convinced Mrs. Spicer that Fanny's 
 pocket was even harder hit than she had feared. 
 
 On the second day, however, things looked a little 
 more hopeful. 
 
 " She ate her grub last night and this morning 
 middlin' well, miss," said Patsey, " and " — here he 
 looked round stealthily and began to whisper — 
 " when I had her in the ring, exercisin', this 
 morning, there was one that called me in to the 
 rails ; like a dealer he was. ' Hi ! grey mare !' says 
 he. I went in. 'What's your price?' says he. 
 ' Sixty guineas, sir,' says I. ' Begin at the 
 shillings and leave out the pounds ! ' says he. He 
 went away then, but 1 think he's not done with 
 me." 
 
 " I'm sure the ring is our best chance, Patsey," 
 said P'anny, her voice thrilling with the ardour of 
 conspiracy and of reawakened hope. " She doesn't
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 6^ 
 
 look so thin when she's moving. I'll go and stand 
 by the rails, and I'll call you in now and then just 
 to make people look at her ! " 
 
 " Sure I had Masther Freddy doing that to 
 me yestherday," said Patsey; but hope dies hard 
 in an Irishman, and he saddled up with all 
 speed. 
 
 For two long burning hours did the Connemara 
 filly circle in Ring 3, and during all that time not 
 once did her owner's ears hear the longed-for 
 summons, " Hi ! grey mare ! " It seemed to her 
 that every other horse in the ring was called in to 
 the rails, "and she doesn't look so very thin to- 
 day ! " said Fanny indignantly to Captain Spicer, 
 who, with Mr. Gunning, had come to take her away 
 for lunch. 
 
 " Oh, you'll see, you'll sell her on the last day ; 
 she's getting fitter every minute," responded Captain 
 Spicer. " What would you take for her ? " 
 
 " I'm asking sixty," said Fanny dubiously. 
 "What -would you take for her, Mr. Gunning — on 
 the last day, you know ? " 
 
 " I'd take a ticket for her," said Rupert Gunning, 
 " back to Craffroe — if you haven't a return." 
 
 The second and third days crawled by unmarked 
 by any incident of cheer, but on the morning of 
 the fourth, when Fanny arrived at the stall, she 
 found that Patsey had already gone out to exercise.
 
 64 ^/^ on the Irish Shore. 
 
 She hurried to the ring and signalled to him to 
 come to her. 
 
 " There's a fella' afther her, miss ! " said Patsey, 
 bending very low and whispering at close and 
 tobacco-scented range. "He came last night to 
 buy her ; a jock he was, from the Curragh, and he 
 said for me to be in the ring this morning. He's 
 not come yet. He had a straw hat on him." 
 
 Fanny sat down under the trees and waited for 
 the jockey in the straw hat. All around were pre- 
 occupied knots of bargainers, of owners making 
 their final arrangements, of would-be-buyers hurry- 
 ing from ring to ring in search of the paragon that 
 they had now so little time to find. But the man 
 from the Curragh came not. Fanny sent the mare 
 in, and sat on under the trees, sunk in depression. 
 It seemed to her she was the only person in the 
 show who had nothing to do, who was not clinking 
 handfuls of money, or smoothing out banknotes, or 
 folding up cheques and interring them in fat and 
 greasy pocket-books. She had never known this 
 aspect of the Horse Show before, and — so much is 
 in the point of view — it seemed to her sordid and 
 detestable. Prize-winners with their coloured ro- 
 settes were swaggering about everywhere. Every 
 horse in the show seemed to have got a prize except 
 hers, thought Fanny. And not a man in a straw 
 hat came near Ring 3.
 
 Fanny Fitzs Gamble. 65 
 
 She went home to lunch, dead tired. The others 
 were going to see the polo in the park. 
 
 " I must go back and sell the mare," said Fanny- 
 valiantly, " or else take that ticket to Craffroe, Mr. 
 Gunning!" 
 
 " Well, we'll come down and pick you up there 
 after the first match, you poor, miserable thing," 
 said Mrs. Spicer, " and I hope you'll find that beast 
 of a horse dead when you get there ! You look 
 half dead yourself!" 
 
 How sick Fanny was of signing her name at that 
 turnstile ! The pen was more atrocious every time. 
 How tired her feet were ! How sick she was of the 
 whole thing, and how incredibly big a fool she had 
 been ! She was almost too tired to know what she 
 was doing, and she had actually walked past stall 
 No. 548 without noticing it, when she heard Patsey's 
 voice calling her. 
 
 " Miss Fanny ! Miss Fanny ! I have her sold ! 
 The mare's sold, miss ! See here ! I have the 
 money in me pocket ! " 
 
 The colour flooded Fanny Fitz's face. She stared 
 at Patsey with eyes that more than ever suggested 
 the Connemara trout-stream with the sun playing 
 in it ; so bright were they, so changing, and so wet. 
 So at least thought a man, much addicted to fishing, 
 who was regarding the scene from a little way off. 
 
 " He was a dealer, miss," went on Patsey ; " a 
 
 5
 
 66 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Dublin fella'. Sixty-three sovereigns I asked him, 
 and he offered me fifty-five, and a man that was 
 there said we should shplit the differ, and in the 
 latther end he gave me the sixty pounds. He 
 wasn't very stiff at all. I'm thinking he wasn't 
 buying for himself." 
 
 The man who had noticed Fanny Fitz's eyes 
 moved away unostentatiously. He had seen in 
 them as much as he wanted ; for that time at 
 least.
 
 THE CONNEMARA MARE. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 The grey mare who had been one of the last, if not 
 the very last, of the sales at the Dublin Horse Show, 
 was not at all happy in her mind. 
 
 Still less so was the dealer's under-strapper, to 
 whom fell the task of escorting her through the 
 streets of Dublin. Her late owner's groom had 
 assured him that she would "folly him out of his 
 hand, and that whatever she'd see she wouldn't care 
 for it nor ask to look at it ! " 
 
 It cannot be denied, however, that when an 
 
 electric tram swept past her like a terrace under 
 
 weigh, closely followed by a cart laden with a 
 
 clanking and horrific reaping-machine, she showed 
 
 that she possessed powers of observation. The 
 
 incident passed off with credit to the under-strapper, 
 
 but when an animal has to be played like a salmon 
 
 down the length of Lower Mount Street, and when 
 
 it barn-dances obliquely along the north side of 
 
 Merrion Square, the worst may be looked for in 
 
 Nassau Street. 
 
 And it was indeed in Nassau Street, and, more- 
 
 67
 
 68 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 over, in full view of the bow window of Kildare 
 Street Club, that the cup of the under-strapper's 
 misfortunes brimmed over. To be sure he could 
 not know that the new owner of the grey mare was 
 in that window ; it was enough for him that a 
 quiescent and unsuspected piano-organ broke with 
 three majestic chords into Mascagni's " Intermezzo " 
 at his very ear, and that, without any apparent 
 interval of time, he was surmounting a heap com- 
 posed of a newspaper boy, a sandwich man, and a 
 hospital nurse, while his hands held nothing save 
 a red-hot memory of where the rope had been. 
 The smashing of glass and the clatter of hoofs on 
 the pavement filled in what space was left in his 
 mind for other impressions. 
 
 "She's into the hat shop!" said Mr. Rupert 
 Gunning to himself in the window of the club, 
 recognising his recent purchase and the full measure 
 of the calamity in one and the same moment. 
 
 He also recognised in its perfection the fact, 
 already suspected by him, that he had been a fool. 
 
 Upheld by this soothing reflection he went out 
 into the street, where awaited him the privileges of 
 proprietorship. These began with the despatching 
 of the mare, badly cut, and apparently lame on 
 every leg, in charge of the remains of the under- 
 strapper, to her destination. They continued with 
 the consolation of the hospital nurse, and embraced
 
 The Connemara Mare. 69 
 
 in varying pecuniary degrees the compensation of 
 the sandwich man, the newspaper boy, and the 
 proprietor of the hat shop. During all this time he 
 enjoyed the unfaltering attention of a fair-sized 
 crowd, liberal in comment, prolific of imbecile 
 suggestion. And all these things were only the 
 beginning of the trouble. 
 
 Mr. Gunning proceeded to his room and to the 
 packing of his portmanteau for that evening's mail- 
 boat to Holyhead in a mood of considerable sour- 
 ness. It may be conceded to him that circumstances 
 had been of a souring character. He had bought 
 Miss Fanny Fitzroy's grey mare at the Horse 
 Show for reasons of an undeniably sentimental 
 sort. Therefore, having no good cause to show for 
 the purchase, he had made it secretly, the sum of 
 sixty pounds, for an animal that he had consis- 
 tently crabbed, amounting in the eyes of the world 
 in general to a rather advanced love-token, if not a 
 formal declaration. He had planned no future for 
 the grey mare, but he had cherished a trembling 
 hope that some day he might be in a position to 
 restore her to her late owner without considering 
 the expression in any eyes save those which, a 
 couple of hours ago, had recalled to him the play 
 of lights in a Connemara trout stream. 
 
 Now, it appeared, this pleasing vision must go 
 the way of many others.
 
 yo All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 The August sunlight illumined Mr. Gunning's 
 folly, and his bulging portmanteau, packed as 
 brutally as only a man in a passion can pack ; 
 when he reached the hall, it also with equal in- 
 appropriateness irradiated the short figure and seedy 
 tidiness of the dealer who had been his confederate 
 in the purchase of the mare. 
 
 "What did the vet say, Brennan?" said Mr. 
 Gunning, with the brevity of ill humour. 
 
 Mr. Brennan paused before replying, a pause 
 laden with the promise of evil tidings. His short 
 silvery hair glistened respectably in the sunshine ; 
 he had preserved unblemished from some earlier 
 phase of his career the air of a family coach- 
 man out of place. It veiled, though it could not 
 conceal, the dissolute twinkle in his eye as he 
 replied : — 
 
 " He said sir, if it wasn't that she was something 
 out of condition, he'd recommend you to send her 
 out to the lions at the Zoo ! " 
 
 The specimen of veterinary humour had hardly 
 the success that had been hoped for it. Rupert 
 Gunning's face was so remarkably void of apprecia- 
 tion that Mr. Brennan abruptly relapsed into gloom. 
 
 " He said he'd only be wasting his time with her, 
 sir ; he might as well go stitch a bog-hole as them 
 wounds the window gave her ; the tendon of the 
 rean fore is the same as in two halves with it, let
 
 'The Connemara Mare. 71 
 
 alone the shoulder, that's worse again with her 
 pitching out on the point of it." 
 
 " Was that all he had to say ? " demanded the 
 mare's owner. 
 
 "Well, beyond those remarks he passed about 
 the Zoo, I should say it was, sir," admitted Mr. 
 Brennan. 
 
 There was another pause, during which Rupert 
 asked himself what the devil he was to do with the 
 mare, and Mr. Brennan, thoroughly aware that he 
 was doing so, decorously thumbed the brim of his hat. 
 
 " Maybe we might let her get the night, sir," 
 he said, after a respectful interval, "and you might 
 see her yourself in the morning " 
 
 " I don't want to see her. I know well enough 
 what she looks like," interrupted his client irritably. 
 " Anyhow, I'm crossing to England to-night, and I 
 don't choose to miss the boat for the fun of looking 
 at an unfortunate brute that's cut half to pieces I " 
 
 Mr. Brennan cleared his throat. " If you were 
 thinking to leave her in my stables, sir," he said 
 firmly, " I'd sooner be quit of her. I've only a 
 small place, and I'd lose too much time with her if 
 I had to keep her the way she is. She might be 
 on my hands three months and die at the end of it." 
 
 The clock here struck the quarter, at which Mr. 
 Gunning ought to start for his train at Westland 
 Row.
 
 72 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 " You see, sir " recommenced Brennan, It was 
 
 precisely at this point that Mr. Gunning lost his 
 temper. 
 
 " I suppose you can find time to shoot her," he 
 said, with a very red face. " Kindly do so to-night ! " 
 
 Mr. Brennan's arid countenance revealed no 
 emotion. He was accustomed to understanding 
 his clients a trifle better than they understood 
 themselves, and inscrutable though Mr. Gunning's 
 original motive in buying the mare had been, he 
 had during this interview yielded to treatment and 
 followed a prepared path. 
 
 That night, in the domestic circle, he went so far 
 as to lay the matter before Mrs. Brennan. 
 
 " He picked out a mare that was as poor as a 
 raven — though she's a good enough stamp if she 
 was in condition — and tells me to buy her. * What 
 price will I give, sir?' says I. 'Ye'll give what 
 they're askin',' says he, ' and that's sixty sove- 
 reigns ! ' I'm thirty years buying horses, and such 
 a disgrace was never put on me, to be made a fool 
 of before all Dublin ! Going giving the first price 
 for a mare that wasn't value for the half of it ! 
 Well ; he .sees the mare then, cut into garters below 
 in Nassau Street. Devil a hair he cares ! Nor 
 never came down to the stable to put an eye on 
 her ! ' Shoot her ! ' says he, leppin' up on a car. 
 ' Westland Row ! ' says he to the fella'. ' Drive
 
 The Connemara Mare. 73 
 
 like blazes ! ' and away with him ! Well, no 
 matter ; I earned my money easy, an' I got the 
 mare cheap ! " 
 
 Mrs. Brennan added another spoonful of brown 
 sugar to the porter that she was mulling in a sauce- 
 pan on the range, 
 
 " Didn't ye say it was a young lady that owned 
 the mare, James ? " she asked in a colourless voice. 
 
 '*Well, you're the devil, Mary!" replied Mr. 
 Brennan in sincere admiration. 
 
 The mail-boat was as crowded as is usual on the 
 last night of the Horse Show week. Overhead 
 flowed the smoke river from the funnels, behind 
 flowed the foam river of wake ; the Hill of Howth 
 receded apace into the west, and its lighthouse 
 glowed like a planet in the twilight. Men with 
 cigars, aggressively fit and dinner-full, strode the 
 deck in couples, and thrashed out the Horse Show 
 and Leopardstown to their uttermost husks. 
 
 Rupert Gunning was also, but with excessive 
 reluctance, discussing the Horse Show. As he had 
 given himself a good deal of trouble in order to 
 cross on this particular evening, and as any one 
 who was even slightly acquainted with Miss Fitzroy 
 must have been aware that she would decline to 
 talk of anything else, sympathy for him is not 
 altogether deserved. The boat swung softly in a 
 trance of speed, and Miss Fitzroy, better known
 
 74 ^ii on the Irish Shore. 
 
 to a large circle of intimates as Fanny Fitz, tried 
 to think the motion was pleasant. She had made 
 a good many migrations to England, by various 
 routes and classes. There had indeed been times 
 of stress when she had crossed unostentatiously, 
 third class, trusting that luck and a thick veil might 
 save her from her friends, but the day after she had 
 sold a horse for sixty pounds was not the day for 
 a daughter of Ireland to study economics. The 
 breeze brought warm and subtle wafts from the 
 machinery ; it also blew wisps of hair into Fanny 
 Fitz's eyes and over her nose, in a manner much 
 revered in fiction, but in real life usually unbecom- 
 ing and always exasperating. She leaned back on 
 the bench and wondered whether the satisfaction of 
 crowing over Mr. Gunning compensated her for 
 abandoning the tranquil security of the ladies' 
 cabin. 
 
 Mr. Gunning, though less contradictious than his 
 wont, was certainly one of the most deliberately 
 unsympathetic men she knew. None the less he 
 was a man, and some one to talk to, both points in 
 his favour, and she stayed on. 
 
 " I just missed meeting the man who bought my 
 mare," she said, recurring to the subject for the 
 fourth time; "apparently he didn't think her 'a 
 leggy, long-backed brute,' as other people did, or 
 said they did ! "
 
 The Connemara Mare. 75 
 
 "Did many people say it?" asked Mr. Gunning, 
 beginning to make a cigarette. 
 
 " Oh, no one whose opinion signified ! " retorted 
 Fanny Fitz, with a glance from her charming, 
 changeful eyes that suggested that she did not 
 always mean quite what she said. " I believe the 
 dealer bought her for a Leicestershire man. What 
 she really wants is a big country where she can 
 extend herself." 
 
 Mr. Gunning reflected that by this time the grey 
 mare had extended herself once for all in Brennan's 
 back-yard : he had done nothing to be ashamed of, 
 but he felt abjectly guilty. 
 
 " If I go with Maudie to Connemara again next 
 year," continued Fanny, "I must look out for 
 another. You'll come too, I hope? A little 
 opposition is such a help in making up one's mind ! 
 I don't know what I should have done without you 
 at Leenane last June ! " 
 
 Perhaps it was the vision of early summer that 
 the words called up ; perhaps it was the smile, half- 
 seen in the semi-dark, that curved her provoking 
 lips ; perhaps it was compunction for his share in 
 the tragedy of the Connemara mare ; but possibly 
 without any of these explanations Rupert would 
 have done as he did, which was to place his hand 
 on Fanny Fitz's as it lay on the bench beside him. 
 
 She was so amazed that for a moment she wildly
 
 76 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 thought he had mistaken it in the darkness for his 
 tobacco pouch. Then, jumping with a shock to 
 the conckision that even the unsympathetic Mr. 
 Gunning shared most men's views about not 
 wasting an opportunity, she removed her hand with 
 a jerk. 
 
 " Oh ! I beg your pardon ! " said Rupert pusil- 
 lanimously. Miss Fitzroy fell back again on the 
 tobacco pouch theory. 
 
 At this moment the glowing end of a cigar 
 deviated from its orbit on the deck and approached 
 them. 
 
 " Is that you, Gunning ? I thought it was your 
 voice," said the owner of the cigar. 
 
 " Yes, it is," said Mr. Gunning, in a tone singu- 
 larly lacking in encouragement. " Thought I saw 
 you at dinner, but couldn't be sure." 
 
 As a matter of fact, no one could have been 
 more thoroughly aware than he of Captain Carteret's 
 presence in the saloon. 
 
 " I thought so too ! " said Fanny Fitz, from the 
 darkness, " Captain Carteret wouldn't look my 
 way I " 
 
 Captain Carteret gave a somewhat exaggerated 
 start of discovery, and threw his cigar over the 
 side. He had evidently come to stay. 
 
 " How was it I didn't see you at the Horse 
 Show?" he said.
 
 The Connemara Mare. "j"] 
 
 " The only people one ever sees there are the 
 people one doesn't want to see," said Fanny. " I 
 could meet no one except the auctioneer from 
 Craffroe, and he always said the same thing. 
 ' Fearful sultry, Miss Fitzroy ! Have ye a pur- 
 chaser yet for your animal, Miss Fitzroy ? Ye 
 have not ! Oh, fie, fie ! ' It was rather funny at 
 first, but it palled." 
 
 " I was only there one day," said Captain 
 Carteret ; " I wish I'd known you had a horse up, 
 I might have helped you to sell." 
 
 " Thanks ! I sold all right," said Fanny Fitz 
 magnificently. " Did rather well too ! " 
 
 " Capital ! " said Captain Carteret vaguely. His 
 acquaintance with Fanny extended over a three- 
 day shooting party in Kildare, and a dance given 
 by the detachment of his regiment at Enniscar, for 
 which he had come down from the depot. It was not 
 sufficient to enlighten him as to what it meant to her 
 to own and sell a horse for the first time in her life. 
 
 " By-the-bye, Gunning," he went on, "you seemed 
 to be having a lively time in Nassau Street yester- 
 day ! My wife and I were driving in from the polo, 
 and we saw you in the thick of what looked like a 
 street row. Some one in the club afterwards told 
 me it was a horse you had only just bought at the 
 Show that had come to grief. I hope it wasn't 
 much hurt ? "
 
 78 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 There was a moment of silence — astonished, 
 inquisitive silence on the part of Miss Fitzroy ; 
 temporary cessation of the faculty of speech on 
 that of Mr. Gunning. It was the moment, as he 
 reflected afterwards, for a clean, decisive lie, a denial 
 of all ownership ; either that, or the instant flinging 
 of Captain Carteret overboard. 
 
 Unfortunately for him, he did neither ; he lied 
 partially, timorously, and with that clinging to the 
 skirts of the truth that marks the novice. 
 
 " Oh, she was all right," he said, his face purpling 
 heavily in the kindly darkness. " What was the 
 polo like, Carteret?" 
 
 " But I had no idea that you had bought a 
 horse ! " broke in Fanny Fitz, in high excitement. 
 "Why didn't you tell Maudie and me? What is 
 it like?" 
 
 " Oh, it's — she's just a cob — a grey cob — I just 
 picked her up at the end of the show." 
 
 "What sort of a cob? Can she jump? Are 
 you going to ride her with Freddy's hounds ? " 
 continued the implacably interested Fanny. 
 
 " I bought her as — as a trapper, and to do a bit 
 of carting," replied Rupert, beginning suddenly to 
 feel his powers of invention awakening ; " she's quite 
 a common brute. She doesn't jump." 
 
 " She seems to have jumped pretty well in Nassau 
 Street," remarked Captain Carteret ; " as well as I
 
 The Connemara Mare. 79 
 
 could see in the crowd, she didn't strike me as if 
 she'd take kindly to carting. 
 
 " Well, I do think you might have told us about 
 it ! " reiterated Fanny Fitz. " Men are so ridicu- 
 lously mysterious about buying or selling horses. 
 I simply named my price and got it. /see nothing 
 to make a mystery about in a deal ; do you, Captain 
 Carteret ? " 
 
 " Well, that depends on whether you are buying 
 or selling," replied Captain Carteret. 
 
 But Fate, in the shape of a turning tide and a 
 consequent roll, played for once into the hands of 
 Rupert Gunning. The boat swayed slowly, but 
 deeply, and a waft of steam blew across Miss 
 Fitzroy's face. It was not mere steam ; it had 
 been among hot oily things, stealing and giving 
 odour. Fanny Fitz was not ill, but she knew that 
 she had her limits, and that conversation, save of 
 the usual rudimentary kind with the stewardess, 
 were best abandoned. 
 
 Miss Fitzroy's movements during the next two 
 and a half months need not be particularly recorded. 
 They included — 
 
 I. A week in London, during which the sixty 
 pounds, or a great part of it, acquired by the sale of the 
 Connemara mare, passed imperceptibly into items, 
 none of which, on a strict survey of expenditure, 
 appeared to exceed three shillings and nine pence.
 
 8o All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 2. A month at Southsea, with Rupert Gunning's 
 sister, Maudie Spicer, where she again encountered 
 Captain Carteret, and entered aimlessly upon a 
 semi-platonic and wholly unprofitable flirtation with 
 him. During this epoch she wore out the remnant 
 of her summer clothes and laid in substitutes ; 
 rather encouraged than otherwise by the fact that 
 she had long since lost touch with the amount of 
 her balance at the bank. 
 
 3. An expiatory and age-long sojourn of three 
 weeks with relatives at an Essex vicarage, mitigated 
 only by persistent bicycling with her uncle's curate. 
 The result, as might have been predicted by any one 
 acquainted with Miss Fitzroy, was that the curate's 
 affections were diverted from the bourne long ap- 
 pointed for them, namely, the eldest daughter of 
 the house, and that Fanny departed in blackest 
 disgrace, with the single consolation of knowing 
 that she would never be asked to the vicarage again. 
 
 Finally she returned, third-class, to her home in 
 Ireland, with nothing to show for the expedition 
 except a new and very smart habit, and a vague 
 assurance that Captain Carteret would give her a 
 mount now and then with Freddy Alexander's 
 hounds. Captain Carteret was to be on detach- 
 ment at Enniscar.
 
 The Connemara Mare. 8 1 
 
 PART II. 
 
 Mr. William Fennessy, lately returned from 
 America, at present publican in Enniscar and pro- 
 prietor of a small farm on its outskirts, had taken a 
 grey mare to the forge. 
 
 It was now November, and the mare had been 
 out at grass for nearly three months, somewhat to 
 the detriment of her figure, but very much to her 
 general advantage. Even in the south-west of 
 Ireland it is not usual to keep horses out quite so 
 late in the year, but Mr. Fennessy, having begun 
 his varied career as a travelling tinker, was not the 
 man to be bound by convention. He had provided 
 the mare with the society of a donkey and two 
 sheep, and with the shelter of a filthy and ruinous 
 cowshed. Taking into consideration the fact that 
 he had only paid seven pounds ten shillings for her, 
 he thought this accommodation was as much as 
 she was entitled to. 
 
 She was now drooping and dozing in a dark 
 corner of the forge, waiting her turn to be shod, 
 while the broken spring of a car was being patched, 
 as shaggy and as dirty a creature as had ever stood 
 there. 
 
 " Where did you get that one ? " inquired the 
 owner of the car of Mr. Fennessy, in the course of 
 much lengthy conversation.
 
 82 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 " I got her from a cousin of my own that died 
 down in the County Limerick," said Mr. Fennessy 
 in his most agreeable manner. " 'Twas himself 
 bred her, and she was near deshtroyed fallin' back 
 on a harra' with him. It's for postin' I have her." 
 
 " She's shlack enough yet," said the carman. 
 
 " Ah, wait awhile ! " said Mr. Fennessy easily, 
 "in a week's time when I'll have her clipped out, 
 she'll be as clean as amber." 
 
 The conversation flowed on to other themes. 
 
 It was nearly dark when the carman took his 
 departure, and the smith, a silent youth with sore 
 eyes, caught hold of one of the grey mare's fetlocks 
 and told her to " lift 1 " He examined each hoof in 
 succession by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, 
 raked his fire together, and then, turning to Mr. 
 Fennessy, remarked : — 
 
 " Ye'd laugh if ye were here the day I put a 
 slipper on this one, an' she afther comin' out o' the 
 thrain — last June it was. 'Twas one Connolly back 
 from Craffroe side was taking her from the station ; 
 him that thrained her for Miss Fitzroy. She gave 
 him the two heels in the face." The glow from 
 the fire illumined the smith's sardonic grin of re- 
 membrance. " She had a sandcrack in the near 
 fore that time, and there's the sign of it yet." 
 
 The Cinderella-like episode of the slipper had 
 naturally not entered into Mr. Fennessy's calcula-
 
 The Connemara Mare. 83 
 
 tions, but he took the unforeseen without a change 
 of countenance. 
 
 " Well, now," he said deliberately, " I was sayin' 
 to nieself on the road a while ago, if there was one 
 this side o' the counthry would know her it'd be 
 yerself." 
 
 The smith took the compliment with a blink of 
 his sore eyes. 
 
 " Annyone'd be hard set to know her now," he 
 said. 
 
 There was a pause, during which a leap of sparks 
 answered each thump of the hammer on the white 
 hot iron, and Mr. Fennessy arranged his course of 
 action. 
 
 " Well, Larry," he said, " I'll tell ye now what no 
 one in this counthry knows but meself and Patsey 
 Crimmeen. Sure I know it's as good to tell a 
 thing to the ground as to tell it to yerself ! " 
 
 He lowered his voice. 
 
 " 'Twas Mr. Gunning of Streamstown bought that 
 one from Miss Fitzroy at the Dublin Show, and a 
 hundhred pound he gave for her ! " 
 
 The smith mentally docked this sum by seventy 
 pounds, but said, " By dam ! " in polite convention. 
 
 *' 'Twasn't a week afther that I got her for twinty- 
 five pounds ! " 
 
 The smith made a further mental deduction 
 equally justified by the facts ; the long snore and
 
 84 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 wheeze of the bellows filled the silence, and the 
 dirty walls flushed and glowed with the steady 
 crescendo and diminuendo of the glow. 
 
 The ex-tinker picked up the bottle with the 
 candle. " Look at that I " he said, lowering the 
 light and displaying a long transverse scar begin- 
 ning at the mare's knee and ending in an enlarged 
 fetlock. 
 
 " I seen that," said the smith. 
 
 " And look at that ! " continued Mr. Fennessy, 
 putting back the shaggy hair on her shoulder. A 
 wide and shiny patch of black skin showed where 
 the hatter's plate glass had flayed the shoulder. 
 "She played the divil goin' through the streets, 
 and made flitthers of herself this way, in a shop 
 window. Gunning give the word to shoot her. 
 The dealer's boy told Patsey Crimmeen. 'Twas 
 Patsey was caring her at the show for Miss Fitzroy. 
 Shtan' will ye ! " — this to the mare, whose eyes 
 glinted white as she flung away her head from the 
 light of the candle. 
 
 " Whatever fright she got she didn't forget it," 
 said the smith. 
 
 '* I was up in Dublin meself the same time," 
 pursued Mr. Fennessy. " Afther I seein' Patsey 
 I took a sthroll down to Brennan's yard. The leg 
 was in two halves, barrin' the shkin, and the 
 showldher swoll up as big as a sack o' meal. I
 
 "MR. GUNNING WAS LOOKIN' OUT FOR A COB."
 
 The Connemara Mare. 87 
 
 was three or four days goin' down to look at her 
 this way, and I seen she wasn't as bad as what 
 they thought. I come in one morning, and the 
 boy says to me, ' The boss has three horses comin' 
 in to-day, an' I dunno where'll we put this one.' 
 I goes to Brennan, and he sitting down to his 
 breakfast, and the wife with him. 'Sir,' says I, 
 ' for the honour of God sell me that mare ! ' We 
 had hard strugglin' then. In the latther end the 
 wife says, ' It's as good for ye to part her, James,' 
 says she, 'and Mr. Gunning '11 never know what 
 way she went. This honest man '11 never say 
 where he got her.' ' I will not, ma'am,' says I. ' I 
 have a brother in the postin' line in Belfast, and it's 
 for him I'm buyin' her.' " 
 
 The process of making nail-holes in the shoe 
 seemed to engross the taciturn young smith's atten- 
 tion for the next minute or two. 
 
 " There was a man over from Crafifroe in town 
 yesterday," he observed presently, "that said Mr. 
 Gunning was lookin' out for a cob, and he'd fancy 
 one that would lep," 
 
 He eyed his work sedulously as he spoke. 
 
 Something, it might have been the light of the 
 candle, woke a flicker in Mr. Fennessy's eye. He 
 passed his hand gently down the mare's quarter, 
 
 " Supposing now that the mane was off her, and 
 something about six inches of a dock took off her
 
 88 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 tail, what sort of a cob d'ye think she'd make, 
 Larry ? " 
 
 The smith, with a sudden falsetto cackle of 
 laughter, plunged the shoe into a tub of water, in 
 which it gurgled and spluttered as if in appreciation 
 of the jest. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 Dotted at intervals throughout society are the 
 people endowed with the faculty for "getting up 
 things ". They are dauntless people, filled with the 
 power of driving lesser and deeper reluctant spirits 
 before them ; remorseless to the timid, carneying to 
 the stubborn. 
 
 Of such was Mrs. Carteret, with powers matured in 
 hill-stations in India, mellowed by much voyaging 
 in P. and O. steamers. Not even an environment as 
 unpromising as that of Enniscar in its winter torpor 
 had power to dismay her. A public whose artistic 
 tastes had hitherto been nourished upon travelling 
 circuses, Nationalist meetings, and missionary magic 
 lanterns in the Wesleyan schoolhouse, was, she 
 argued, practically virgin soil, and would ecstatically 
 respond to any form of cultivation. 
 
 " I know there's not much talent to be had," she 
 said combatively to her husband, "but we'll just 
 black our faces, and call ourselves the Green Coons 
 or something, and it will be all right ! "
 
 'T'he Connemara Mare. 89 
 
 " Dashed if I'll black my face again," said Captain 
 Carteret ; " I call it rot trying to get up anything 
 here. There's no one to do anything." 
 
 "Well, there's ourselves and little Taylour" 
 ("little Taylour," it maybe explained, was Captain 
 Carteret's subaltern), " that's two banjoes and a 
 bones anyhow ; and Freddy Alexander, and there's 
 your dear friend Fanny Fitz — she'll be home in a 
 few days, and these two big Hamilton girls " 
 
 " Oh, Lord ! " ejaculated Captain Carteret. 
 
 " Oh, yes!" continued Mrs. Carteret, unheedingly, 
 " and there's Mr. Gunning ; he'll come if Fanny 
 Fitz does." 
 
 " He'll not be much advantage when he does 
 come," said Captain Carteret spitefully. 
 
 "Oh, he sings," said Mrs. Carteret, arranging 
 her neat small fringe at the glass — " rather a 
 good voice. You needn't be afraid, my dear, 
 I'll arrange that the fascinating Fanny shall sit 
 next you ! " 
 
 Upon this somewhat unstable basis the formation 
 of the troupe of Green Coons was undertaken. Mrs. 
 Carteret took off her coat to the work, or rather, to 
 be accurate, she put on a fur-lined one, and attended 
 a Nationalist meeting in the Town Hall to judge 
 for herself how the voices carried. She returned 
 rejoicing — she had sat at the back of the hall, and 
 had not lost a syllable of the oratory, even during
 
 90 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 sundry heated episodes, discreetly summarised by 
 the local paper as " interruption ". The Town Hall 
 was chartered, superficially cleansed, and in the 
 space of a week the posters had gone forth. 
 
 By what means it was accomplished that Rupert 
 Gunning should attend the first rehearsal he did not 
 exactly understand ; he found himself enmeshed in 
 a promise to meet every one else at the Town Hall 
 with tea at the Carterets' afterwards. Up to this 
 point the fact that he was to appear before the 
 public with a blackened face had been diplomatic- 
 ally withheld from him, and an equal diplomacy 
 was shown on his arrival in the deputing of Miss 
 Fitzroy to break the news to him. 
 
 " Mrs. Carteret says it's really awfully becoming," 
 said Fanny, breathless and brilliant from assiduous 
 practice of a hornpipe under Captain Carteret's 
 tuition, " and as for trouble ! We might as well 
 make a virtue of necessity in this incredibly dirty 
 place ; my hands are black already, and I've only 
 swept the stage ! " 
 
 She was standing at the edge of the platform 
 that was to serve as the stage, looking down at him, 
 and it may be taken as a sufficient guide to his 
 mental condition that his abhorrence of the prospect 
 for himself was swallowed up by fury at the thought 
 of it for her. 
 
 " Are you — do you mean to tell me you are going
 
 The Connemara Mare. 91 
 
 to dance with a black face P" he demanded in bitter 
 and incongruous wrath. 
 
 " No, I'm going to dance with Captain Carteret ! " 
 replied Fanny frivolously, " and so can you if you 
 like!" 
 
 She was maddeningly pretty as she smiled down 
 at him, with her bright hair roughened, and the 
 afterglow of the dance alight in her eyes and cheeks. 
 Nevertheless, for one whirling moment, the old 
 Adam, an Adam blissfully unaware of the existence 
 of Eve, asserted himself in Rupert. He picked up 
 his cap and stick without a word, and turned to- 
 wards the door. There, however, he was confronted 
 by Mrs. Carteret, tugging at a line of chairs attached 
 to a plank, like a very small bird with a very large 
 twig. To refuse the aid that she immediately de- 
 manded was impossible, and even before the future 
 back row of the sixpennies had been towed to its 
 moorings, he realised that hateful as it would be to 
 stay and join in these distasteful revels, it would be 
 better than going home and thinking about them. 
 
 From this the intelligent observer may gather 
 that absence had had its traditional, but by no 
 means invariable, effect upon the heart of Mr. 
 Gunning, and, had any further stimulant been 
 needed, it had been supplied in the last few minutes 
 by the aggressive and possessive manner of Captain 
 Carteret.
 
 92 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 The rehearsal progressed after the manner of 
 amateur rehearsals. The troupe, with the exception 
 of Mr. Gunning, who remained wrapped in silence, 
 talked irrepressibly, and quite inappropriately to 
 their role as Green Coons, Freddy Alexander and 
 Mr, Taylour bear-fought untiringly for possession 
 of the bones and the position of Corner Man ; Mrs. 
 Carteret alone had a copy of the music that was to 
 be practised, and in consequence, the company hung 
 heavily over her at the piano in a deafening and 
 discordant swarm. The two tall Hamiltons, hitherto 
 speechless by nature and by practice, became sud- 
 denly exhilarated at finding themselves in the inner 
 circle of the soldiery, and bubbled with impotent sug- 
 gestions and reverential laughter at the witticisms 
 of Mr. Taylour. Fanny Fitz and Captain Carteret 
 finally removed themselves to a grimy corner behind 
 the proscenium, and there practised, sotto voce, the 
 song with banjo accompaniment that was to cul- 
 minate in the hornpipe. Freddy Alexander had 
 gone forth to purchase a pack of cards, in the futile 
 hope that he could prevail upon Mrs. Carteret to 
 allow him to inflict conjuring tricks upon the 
 audience. 
 
 " As if there were anything on earth that bored 
 people as much as card tricks ! " said that experi- 
 enced lady to Rupert Gunning. " Look here, zvould 
 you mind reading over these riddles, to see which
 
 'The Connemara Mare. 93 
 
 you'd like to have to answer. Now, here's a local 
 one. I'll ask it — ' Why am dis room like de 
 Enniscar Demesne ? ' — and then yoiCll say, ' Be- 
 cause dere am so many pretty little deers in it ' ! " 
 
 " Oh, I couldn't possibly do that ! " said Rupert 
 hastily, alarmed as well as indignant ; " I'm afraid 
 I really must go now " 
 
 He had to pass by Fanny Fitz on his way out 
 of the hall. There was something vexed and 
 forlorn about him, and, being sympathetic, she 
 perceived it, though not its cause, 
 
 " You're deserting us ! " she said, looking up at 
 him. 
 
 " I have an appointment," he said stiffly, his 
 glance evading hers, and resting on Captain 
 Carteret's well-clipped little black head. 
 
 Some of Fanny's worst scrapes had been brought 
 about by her incapacity to allow any one to part 
 from her on bad terms, and, moreover, she liked 
 Rupert Gunning. She cast about in her mind for 
 something conciliatory to say to him. 
 
 " When are you going to show me the cob that 
 you bought at the Horse Show ? " 
 
 The olive branch thus confidently tendered had a 
 somewhat withering reception. 
 
 "The cob I bought at the Horse Show?" Mr. 
 Gunning repeated with an increase of rigidity, " Oh, 
 yes — I got rid of it."
 
 94 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 He paused ; the twanging of Captain Carteret's 
 banjo bridged the interval imperturbably. 
 
 " Why had you to get rid of it ? " asked Fanny 
 still sympathetic. 
 
 " She was a failure ! " said Rupert vindictively ; 
 " I made a fool of myself in buying her ! " 
 
 Fanny looked at him sideways from under her 
 lashes. 
 
 " And I had counted on your giving me a mount 
 on her now and then ! " 
 
 Rupert forgot his wrath, forgot even the twanging 
 banjo. 
 
 " I've just got another cob," he said quickly ; " she 
 jumps very well, and if you'd like to hunt her next 
 Tuesday " 
 
 " Oh, thanks awfully, but Captain Carteret has 
 promised me a mount for next Tuesday ! " said the 
 perfidious Fanny. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret, on her knees by a refractory foot- 
 light, watched with anxiety Mr. Gunning's abrupt 
 departure from the room. 
 
 " Fanny ! " she said severely, " what have you 
 been doing to that man ? '"■ 
 
 " Oh, nothing ! " said Fanny. 
 
 " If you've put him off singing I'll never forgive 
 you ! " continued Mrs. Carteret, advancing on her 
 knees to the next footlight.
 
 'The Connemara Mare. 95 
 
 " I tell you I've done nothing to him," said Fanny 
 Fitz guiltily. 
 
 Give me the hammer ! " said Mrs. Carteret. 
 " Have I eyes, or have I not ? " 
 
 " He's awfully keen about her ! " Mrs. Carteret 
 said that evening to her husband, " Bad temper 
 is one of the worst signs. Men in love are always 
 cross." 
 
 " Oh, he's a rotter ! " said Captain Carteret con- 
 clusively. 
 
 In the meantime the object of this condemna- 
 tion was driving his ten Irish miles home, by the 
 light of a frosty full moon. Between the shafts of 
 his cart a trim-looking mare of about fifteen hands 
 trotted lazily, forging, shying, and generally com- 
 porting herself in a way only possible to a grass-fed 
 animal who has been in the hands of such as Mr. 
 William Fennessy. The thick and dingy mane 
 that had hung impartially on each side of her neck, 
 now, together with the major portion of her volu- 
 minous tail, adorned the manure heap in the rear 
 of the Fennessy public-house. The pallid fleece 
 in which she had been muffled had given place to 
 a polished coat of iron-grey, that looked black in 
 the moonlight. A week of over-abundant oats 
 had made her opinionated, but had not, so far, 
 restored to her the fine lady nervousness that had 
 landed her in the window of the hat shop.
 
 96 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Rupert laid the whip along her fat sides with 
 bitter disfavour. She was a brute in harness, he 
 said to himself, her blemished fetlock was uglier 
 than he had at first thought, and even though she 
 had yesterday schooled over two miles of country 
 like an old stager, she was too small to carry him, 
 and she was not, apparently, wanted to carry any 
 one else. Here the purchase received a very 
 disagreeable cut on the neck that interrupted her 
 speculations as to the nature of the shadows of 
 telegraph-posts. To have bought two useless horses 
 in four months was pretty average bad luck. It 
 was also pretty bad luck to have been born a fool. 
 Reflection here became merged in the shapeless 
 and futile fumings of a man badly in love and 
 preposterously jealous. 
 
 Known only to the elect among entertainment 
 promoters are the methods employed by Mrs. 
 Carteret to float the company of The Green Coons. 
 The fact remains that on the appointed night the 
 chosen troupe, approximately word-perfect, and 
 with spirits something chastened by stage fright, 
 were assembled in the clerk's room of the Enniscar 
 Town Hall, round a large basin filled horribly with 
 a compound of burnt cork and water. 
 
 " It's not as bad as it looks ! " said Mrs. Carteret, 
 plunging in her hands and heroically smearing her 
 face with a mass of black oozy matter believed to
 
 The Connemara Mare. 97 
 
 be a sponge. " It's quite becoming if you do it 
 thoroughly. Mind, all of you, get it well into your 
 ears and the roots of your hair ! " 
 
 The Hamiltons, giggling wildly, submitted them- 
 selves to the ministrations of Freddy Alexander, 
 and Mrs. Carteret, appallingly transformed into a 
 little West Indian coolie woman, applied the sponge 
 to the shrinking Fanny Fitz. 
 
 "Will you do Mr. Gunning, Fanny?" she whis- 
 pered into one of the ears that she had conscien- 
 tiously blackened. " I think he'd bear it better 
 from you ! " 
 
 " I shall do nothing of the kind ! " replied Fanny, 
 with a dignity somewhat impaired by her ebon 
 countenance and monstrous green turban. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 Mrs. Carteret's small neat features seemed un- 
 naturally sharpened, and her eyes and teeth glit- 
 tered in her excitement. 
 
 " For goodness' sake, take your awful little black 
 face away, Mabel ! " exclaimed Fanny hysterically. 
 " It quite frightens me ! I'm very angry with 
 Mr. Gunning ! I'll tell you why some other 
 time.** 
 
 " Well, don't forget you've got to say ' Buck up, 
 Sambo ! ' to him after he's sung his song, and you 
 may fight with him as much as you like afterwards," 
 said Mrs. Carteret, hurrying off to paint glaring 
 
 7
 
 98 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 vermilion mouths upon the loudly protesting 
 Hamiltons. 
 
 During these vicissitudes, Rupert Gunning, ar- 
 rayed in a green swallow-tailed calico coat, short 
 white cotton trousers, and a skimpy nigger wig, 
 presented a pitiful example of the humiliations 
 which the allied forces of love and jealousy can 
 bring upon the just, Fanny Fitz has since ad- 
 mitted that, in spite of the wrath that burned within 
 her, the sight of Mr. Gunning morosely dabbing 
 his long nose with the repulsive sponge that was 
 shared by the troupe, almost moved her to com- 
 passion. 
 
 A pleasing impatience was already betraying 
 itself in cat-calls and stampings from the sixpenny 
 places, and Mrs. Carteret, flitting like a sheep dog 
 round her flock, arranged them in couples and 
 drove them before her on to the stage, singing in 
 chorus, with a fair assumption of hilarity, " As we 
 go marching through Georgia ". 
 
 For Fanny Fitz the subsequent proceedings 
 became merged in a nightmare of blinding heat and 
 glare, made actual only by poignant anxiety as to 
 the length of her green skirt. The hope that she 
 might be unrecognisable was shattered by the yell 
 of " More power, Miss Fanny ! " that crested the 
 thunderous encore evoked by her hornpipe with 
 Captain Carteret, and the question of the skirt was
 
 The Connemara Mare. 99 
 
 decided by the fact that her aunts, in the front row, 
 firmly perused their programmes from the beginning 
 of her dance to its conclusion. 
 
 The entertainment went with varying success 
 after the manner of its kind. The local hits and 
 personal allusions, toilfully compiled and ardently 
 believed in, were received in damping silence, while 
 Rupert Gunning's song, of the truculent order 
 dedicated to basses, and sung by him with a face 
 that would have done credit to Othello, received 
 an ovation that confirmed Captain Carteret in his 
 contempt for country audiences. The performance 
 raged to its close in a "Cake Walk," to the in- 
 spiring strains of " Razors a-flying through the 
 air," and the curtain fell on what the Enniscar 
 Independent described cryptically as " a tout en- 
 semble a la conversazione that was refreshingly 
 unique ". 
 
 " Five minutes more and I should have had heat 
 apoplexy ! " said Mrs. Carteret, hurling her turban 
 across the clerk's room, " but it all went splendidly ! 
 Empty that basin out of the window, somebody, 
 and give me the vaseline. The last time I 
 blacked my face it was covered with red spots 
 for a week afterwards because I used soap instead 
 of vaseline ! " 
 
 Rupert Gunning approached Fanny with an open 
 note in his hand.
 
 lOO All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 « T', 
 
 I've had this from your aunt," he said, handing 
 it to her ; it was decorated with sooty thumb marks, 
 to which Fanny's black claw contributed a fresh 
 batch as she took it, but she read it without a smile. 
 
 It was to the effect that the heat of the room 
 had been too much for the elder Misses Fitzroy, 
 and they had therefore gone home, but as Mr. 
 Gunning had to pass their gate perhaps he would 
 be kind enough to drive their niece home. 
 
 " Oh " said Fanny, in tones from which dismay 
 
 was by no means eliminated. " How stupid of Aunt 
 Rachel ! " 
 
 " I'm afraid there seems no way out of it for 
 you," said Rupert offendedly. 
 
 A glimpse of their two wrathful black faces in 
 the glass abruptly checked Fanny's desire to say 
 something crushing. At this juncture she would 
 rather have died than laughed. 
 
 Burnt cork is not lightly to be removed at the 
 first essay, and when, half an hour later, Fanny 
 Fitz, with a pale and dirty face, stood under the 
 dismal light of the lamp outside the Town Hall, 
 waiting for Mr. Gunning's trap, she had the pleasure 
 of hearing a woman among the loiterers say com- 
 passionately : — 
 
 " God help her, the crayture ! She looks like a 
 servant that'd be bate out with work ! " 
 
 Mr. Gunning's new cob stood hearkening with
 
 The Connemara Mare. loi 
 
 flickering ears to the various commotions of the 
 street — she understood them all perfectly well, but 
 her soul being unlifted by reason of oats, she chose 
 to resent them as impertinences. Having tolerated 
 with difficulty the instalment of Miss Fitzroy in the 
 trap, she started with a flourish, and pulled hard 
 until clear of the town and its flaring public-houses. 
 On the open road, with nothing more enlivening 
 than the dark hills, half-seen in the light of the 
 rising moon, she settled down. Rupert turned 
 to his silent companion. He had become aware 
 during the evening that something was wrong, 
 and his own sense of injury was frightened into 
 the background, 
 
 " What do you think of my new buy ? " he said 
 pacifically, " she's a good goer, isn't she ? " 
 
 " Very," replied Fanny, 
 
 Silence again reigned. One or two further at- 
 tempts at conversation met with equal discourage- 
 ment. The miles passed by. At length, as the 
 mare slackened to walk up a long hill, Rupert 
 said with a voice that had the shake of pent-up 
 injury : — 
 
 " I've been wondering what I've done to be put 
 into Coventry like this ! " 
 
 " I thought you probably wouldn't care to speak 
 to me ! " was Fanny's astonishing reply, delivered 
 in tones of ice.
 
 102 Ail on the Irish Shore. 
 
 " I ! " he stammered, " not care to speak to you ! 
 You ought to know " 
 
 " Yes, indeed, I do know ! " broke in Fann}'', 
 passing from the frigid to the torrid zone with 
 characteristic speed, " I know what a failure your 
 horse-dealing at the Dublin Show was ! I've heard 
 how you bought my mare, and had her shot the 
 same night, because you wouldn't take the trouble 
 even to go and look at her after the poor little thing 
 was hurt ! Oh ! I can't bear even to think of it ! " 
 
 Rupert Gunning remained abjectly and dum- 
 foundedly silent. 
 
 " And then," continued Fanny, whirling on to 
 the final point of her indictment, "you pretended 
 to Captain Carteret and me that the horse you 
 had bought was ' a common brute,' a cob for 
 carting, and you said the other night that you 
 had made a fool of yourself over it ! I didn't 
 know then all about it, but I do now. Captain 
 Carteret heard about it from the dealer in Dublin. 
 Even the dealer said it was a pity you hadn't given 
 the mare a chance ! " 
 
 '•It's all perfectly true," said Rupert, in a low 
 voice. 
 
 A soft answer, so far from turning away wrath, 
 frequently inflames it. 
 
 " Then I think there's no more to be said ! " said 
 Fanny hotly.
 
 'The Connemara Mare. 103 
 
 There was silence. They had reached the top of 
 the hill, and the grey mare began to trot. 
 
 " Well, there's just one thing I should like to 
 say," said Rupert awkwardly, his breath coming 
 very short, " I couldn't help everything going wrong 
 about the mare. It was just my bad luck. I only 
 bought her to please you. They told me she 
 couldn't get right after the accident. What was 
 the good of my going to look at her ? I wanted to 
 cross in the boat with you. Whatever I did I did 
 for you. I would do anything in the world for 
 you " 
 
 It was at this crucial moment that there arose 
 suddenly from the dim grey road in front of them 
 a slightly greyer shadow, a shadow that limped 
 amid the clanking of chains. The Connemara 
 mare, now masquerading as a County Cork cob, 
 asked for nothing better. If it were a ghost, she 
 was legitimately entitled to flee from it ; if, as was 
 indeed the case, it was a donkey, she made a point 
 of shying at donkeys. She realised that, by a 
 singular stroke of good fortune, the reins were 
 lying in loops on her back. 
 
 A snort, a sideways bound, a couple of gleeful 
 kicks on the dashboard, and she was away at full 
 gallop, with one rein under her tail, and a pleasant 
 open road before her. 
 
 " It's all right ! " said Rupert, recovering his
 
 104 ^^^ 0^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ Shore. 
 
 balance by a hair-breadth, and feeHng in his heart 
 that it was all wrong, " the Craffroe Hill will stop 
 her. Hold on to the rail." 
 
 Fanny said nothing. It was, indeed, all that she 
 could do to keep her seat in the trap, with which 
 the rushing road was playing cup and ball ; she 
 was, besides, not one of the people who are con- 
 versational in emergencies. When an animal, as 
 active and artful as the Connemara mare, is going 
 at some twenty miles an hour, with one of the reins 
 under its tail, endeavours to detach the rein are not 
 much avail, and when the tail is still tender from 
 recent docking, they are a good deal worse than 
 useless. Having twice nearly fallen on his head, 
 Rupert abandoned the attempt an<l prayed for the 
 long stiff ascent of the Craffroe Hill. 
 
 It came swiftly out of the grey moonlight. At 
 its foot another road forked to the right ; instead 
 of facing the hill that led to home and stable, the 
 mare swung into the side road, with one wheel up 
 on the grass, and the cushions slipping from the seat, 
 and Rupert, just saving the situation with the left 
 rein that remained to him, said to himself that they 
 were in for a bad business. 
 
 For a mile they swung and clattered along it, 
 with the wind striking and splitting against their 
 faces like a cold and tearing stream of water ; a 
 light wavered and disappeared across the pallid
 
 The Connemara Mare. 105 
 
 fields to the left, a group of starveling trees on a 
 hill slid up into the skyline behind them, and at 
 last it seemed as if some touch of self-control, some 
 suggestion of having had enough of the joke, was 
 shortening the mare's grasping stride. The trap 
 pitched more than ever as she came up into the 
 shafts and back into her harness ; she twisted sud- 
 denly to the left into a narrow lane, cleared the 
 corner by an impossible fluke, and Fanny Fitz was 
 hurled ignominiously on to Rupert Gunning's lap. 
 Long briars and twigs struck them from either side, 
 the trap bumped in craggy ruts and slashed through 
 wide puddles, then reeled irretrievably over a heap 
 of stones and tilted against the low bank to the 
 right. 
 
 Without any exact knowledge of how she got 
 there, Fanny found herself on her hands and knees 
 in a clump of bracken on top of the bank ; Rupert 
 was already picking himself out of rugs and other 
 jetsam in the field below her, and the mare was 
 proceeding up the lane at a disorderly trot, having 
 jerked the trap on to its legs again from its reclin- 
 ing position. 
 
 Fanny was lifted down into the lane ; she told 
 him that she was not hurt, but her knees shook, 
 her hands trembled, and the arm that was round 
 her tightened its clasp in silence. When a man is 
 strongly moved by tenderness and anxiety and
 
 io6 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 relief, he can say little to make it known ; he need 
 not — it is known beyond all telling by the one 
 other person whom it concerns. She felt suddenly 
 that she was safe, that his heart was torn for her 
 sake, and that the tension of the last ten minutes 
 had been great. It went through her with a pang, 
 and her head swayed against his arm. In a moment 
 she felt his lips on her hair, on her temple, and the 
 oldest, the most familiar of all words of endearment 
 was spoken at her ear. She recovered herself, but 
 in a new world. She tried to walk on up the lane, 
 but stumbled in the deep ruts and found the sup- 
 porting arm again ready at need. She did not 
 resist it. 
 
 A shrill neigh arose in front of them. The mare 
 had pulled up at a closed gate, and was apparently 
 apostrophising some low farm buildings beyond it. 
 A dog barked hysterically, the door of a cowshed 
 burst open, and a man came out with a lantern. 
 
 " Oh, I know now where we are ! " cried Fanny 
 wildly, " it's Johnny Connolly's ! Oh, Johnny, 
 Johnny Connolly, we've been run away with ! " 
 
 " For God's sake ! " responded Johnny Connolly, 
 standing stock still in his amazement, "is that Miss 
 Fanny?" 
 
 "Get hold of the mare," shouted Rupert, "or 
 she'll jump the gate ! " 
 
 Johnny Connolly advanced, still calling upon his
 
 'The Connemara Mare. 107 
 
 God, and the mare uttered a low but vehement 
 neigh. 
 
 " Ye're deshtroyed, Miss Fanny ! And Mr. 
 Gunning, the Lord save us ! Ye're killed the two 
 o' ye ! What happened ye at all ? Woa, gerr'l, 
 woa, gerrlie ! Ye'd say she knew me, the crayture." 
 
 The mare was rubbing her dripping face and 
 neck against the farmer's shoulder, with hoarse 
 whispering snorts of recognition and pleasure. He 
 held his lantern high to look at her. 
 
 " Musha, why wouldn't she know me ! " he roared, 
 " sure it's yer own mare, Miss Fanny ! 'Tis the 
 Connemara mare I thrained for ye ! And may the 
 divil sweep and roast thim that has it told through 
 all the counthry that she was killed ! "
 
 A GRAND FILLY. 
 
 I AM an Englishman. I say this without either 
 truculence or vainglorying, rather with humility — 
 a mere Englishman, who submits his Plain Tale 
 from the Western Hills with the conviction that 
 the Kelt who may read it will think him more mere 
 than ever. 
 
 I was in Yorkshire last season when what is 
 trivially called " the cold snap " came upon us. I 
 had five horses eating themselves silly all the time, 
 and I am not going to speak of it. I don't con- 
 sider it a subject to be treated lightly. It was in 
 about the thickest of it that I heard from a man I 
 know in Ireland. He is a little old horse-coping 
 sportsman with a red face and iron-grey whiskers, 
 who has kept hounds all his life ; or, rather, he has 
 always had hounds about, on much the same con- 
 ditions that other men have rats. The rats are 
 indubitably there, and feed themselves variously, 
 and so do old Robert Trinder's " Rioters," which is 
 their 7iom de guerre in the County Corkerry (the 
 few who know anything of the map of Ireland may 
 possibly identify the two counties buried in this 
 
 cryptogram). 
 
 io8
 
 A Grand Filly. 109 
 
 I meet old Robert most years at the Dublin 
 Horse Show, and every now and then he has sold 
 me a pretty good horse, so when he wrote and re- 
 newed a standing invitation, assuring me that there 
 was open weather, and that he had a grand four- 
 year-old filly to sell, I took him at his word, and 
 started at once. The journey lasted for twenty- 
 eight hours, going hard all the time, and during 
 the last three of them there were no foot-warmers 
 and the cushions became like stones enveloped in 
 mustard plasters. Old Trinder had not sent to the 
 station for me, and it was pelting rain, so I had to 
 drive seven miles in a thing that only exists south 
 of the Limerick Junction, and is called a "jingle". 
 A jingle is a square box of painted canvas with no 
 back to it, because, as was luminously explained to 
 me, you must have some way to get into it, and I 
 had to sit sideways in it, with my portmanteau 
 bucking like a three-year-old on the seat opposite 
 to me. It fell out on the road twice going uphill. 
 After the second fall my hair tonic slowly oozed 
 forth from the seams, and added a fresh ingredient 
 to the smells of the grimy cushions and the damp 
 hay that furnished the machine. My hair tonic 
 costs eight-and-sixpence a bottle. 
 
 There is probably not in the United Kingdom a 
 worse-planned entrance gate than Robert Trinder's. 
 You come at it obliquely on the side of a crooked
 
 no All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 hill, squeeze between its low pillars with an inch to 
 spare each side, and immediately drop down a yet 
 steeper hill, which lasts for the best part of a quarter 
 of a mile. The jingle went swooping and jerking 
 down into the unknown, till, through the portholes 
 on either side of the driver's legs, I saw Lisangle 
 House. It had looked decidedly better in large 
 red letters at the top of old Robert's notepaper than 
 it did at the top of his lawn, being no more than a 
 square yellow box of a house, that had been made 
 a fool of by being promiscuously trimmed with 
 battlements. Just as my jingle tilted me in back- 
 wards against the flight of steps, I heard through 
 the open door a loud and piercing yell ; following 
 on it camie the thunder of many feet, and the next 
 instant a hound bolted down the steps with a large 
 plucked turkey in its mouth. Close in its wake 
 fled a brace of puppies, and behind them, variously 
 armed, pursued what appeared to be the staff of 
 Lisangle House. They went past me in full cry, 
 leaving a general impression of dirty aprons, flying 
 hair, and onions, and I feel sure that there were 
 bare feet somewhere in it. My carman leaped 
 from his perch and joined in the chase, and the 
 whole party swept from my astonished gaze round 
 or into a clump of bushes. At this juncture I was 
 not sorry to hear Robert Trinder's voice greeting 
 me as if nothing unusual were occurring.
 
 ^: 
 
 ROBERT S AUNT.
 
 A Grand Filly. 113 
 
 " Upon me honour, it's the Captain ! You're 
 welcome, sir, you're welcome ! Come in, come in, 
 don't mind the horse at all ; he'll eat the grass there 
 as he's done many a time before ! When the gerr'ls 
 have old Amazon cot they'll bring in your things." 
 
 (Perhaps I ought to mention at once that Mr. 
 Trinder belongs to the class who are known in 
 Ireland as "Half-sirs". You couldn't say he was 
 a gentleman, and he himself wouldn't have tried 
 to say so. But, as a matter of fact, I have seen 
 worse imitations.) 
 
 Robert was delighted to see me, and I had had 
 
 a whisky-and-soda and been shown two or three 
 
 more hound puppies before it occurred to him to 
 
 introduce me to his aunt. I had not expected an 
 
 aunt, as Robert is well on the heavenward side of 
 
 sixty; but there she was: she made me think of 
 
 a badly preserved Egyptian mummy with a brogue. 
 
 I am always a little afraid of my hostess, but there 
 
 was something about Robert's aunt that made me 
 
 know I was a worm. She came down to dinner in 
 
 a bonnet and black kid gloves — a circumstance 
 
 that alone was awe-inspiring. She sat entrenched 
 
 at the head of the table behind an enormous dish 
 
 of thickly jacketed potatoes, and, though she 
 
 scorned to speak to Robert or me, she kept up a 
 
 sort of whispered wrangle with the parlour-maid all 
 
 the time. The latter's red hair hung down over 
 
 8
 
 114 ^^^ ^^ ^^^ 7mA Shore. 
 
 her shoulders — and at intervals over mine also — in 
 horrible luxuriance, and recalled the leading figure 
 in the pursuit of Amazon ; there was, moreover, 
 something about the heavy boots in which she 
 tramped round the table that suggested that 
 Amazon had sought sanctuary in the cowhouse. I 
 have done some roughing it in my time, and I am 
 not over-particular, but I admit that it was rather 
 a shock to meet the turkey itself again, more 
 especially as it was the sole item of the menu. 
 There was no doubt of its identity, as it was short 
 of a leg, and half the breast had been shaved away. 
 The aunt must have read my thoughts in my face. 
 She fixed her small implacable eyes on mine for 
 one quelling instant, then she looked at Robert. 
 Her nephew was obviously afraid to meet her eye; he 
 coughed uneasily, and handed a surreptitious potato 
 to the puppy who was sitting under his chair. 
 
 " This place is rotten with dogs," said the aunt ; 
 with which announcement she retired from the 
 conversation, and fell again to the slaughter of the 
 parlour-maid. I timidly ate my portion of turkey 
 and tried not to think about the cowhouse. 
 
 It rained all night. I could hear the water ham- 
 mering into something that rang like a gong ; and 
 each time I rolled over in the musty trough of 
 my feather-bed I fractiously asked myself why the 
 mischief they had left the tap running all night.
 
 A Grand Filly. 115 
 
 Next morning the matter was explained when, on 
 demanding a bath, I was told that " there wasn't but 
 one in the house, and 'twas undher the rain-down. 
 But sure ye can have it," with which it was dragged 
 in full of dirty water and flakes of whitewash, and 
 when I got out of it I felt as if I had been through 
 the Bankruptcy Court. 
 
 The day was windy and misty — a combination 
 of weather possible only in Ireland — but there was 
 no snow, and Robert Trinder, seated at breakfast 
 in a purple-red hunting coat, dingy drab breeches, 
 and woollen socks, assured me that it was turning 
 out a grand morning. 
 
 I distinctly liked the looks of my mount when 
 Jerry the Whip pulled her out of the stable for me. 
 She was big and brown, with hindquarters that 
 looked like jumping ; she was also very dirty and 
 obviously underfed. None the less she was lively 
 enough, and justified Jerry's prediction that "she'd 
 be apt to shake a couple or three bucks out of her- 
 self when she'd see the hounds ". Old Robert was 
 on an ugly brute of a yellow horse, rather like a big 
 mule, who began the day by bucking out of the 
 yard gate as if he had been trained by Buffalo Bill. 
 It was at this juncture that I first really respected 
 Robert Trinder ; his retention of his seat was so 
 unstudied, and his command of appropriate epithets 
 so complete.
 
 ii6 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Jerry and the hounds awaited us on the road, 
 the latter as mixed a party as I have ever come 
 across. There were about fourteen couple in all, 
 and they ranged in style from a short-legged black- 
 and-tan harrier, who had undoubtedly had an uncle 
 who was a dachshund, to a thing with a head like 
 a greyhound, a snow-white body, and a feathered 
 stern that would have been a credit to a setter. In 
 between these extremes came several broken-haired 
 Welshmen, some dilapidated 24-inch foxhounds, 
 and a lot of pale-coloured hounds, whose general 
 effect was that of the table-cloth on which we had 
 eaten our breakfast that morning, being dirty white, 
 covered with stains that looked like either tea or 
 Ggg, or both. 
 
 " Them's the old Irish breed," said Robert, as the 
 yellow horse voluntarily stopped short to avoid 
 stepping on one of them ; " there's no better. That 
 Gaylass there would take a line up Patrick Street 
 on a fair day, and you'd live and die seeing her kill 
 rats," 
 
 I am bound to say I thought it more likely that 
 I should live to see her and some of her relations 
 killing sheep, judging by their manners along the 
 road ; but we got to Letter crossroads at last with 
 no more than an old hen and a wandering cur dog 
 on our collective consciences. The road and its 
 adjacent fences were thronged with foot people,
 
 A Grand Filly. 1 1 7 
 
 mostly strapping young men and boys, in the white 
 flannel coats and slouched felt hats that strike a 
 stranger with their unusualness and picturesqueness. 
 
 " Do you ever have a row with Land Leaguers ? " 
 I asked, noting their sticks, while the warnings of 
 a sentimental Radical friend as to the danger of 
 encountering an infuriated Irish peasantry suddenly 
 assumed plausibility. 
 
 " Land League ? The dear help ye ! Who'd be 
 bothered with the Land League here ? " said Robert, 
 shoving the yellow horse into the crowd ; " let the 
 hounds through, boys, can't ye ? No, Captain, but 
 'tis Saint November's Day, as they call it, a great 
 holiday, and there isn't a ruffian in the country but 
 has come out with his blagyard dog to head the fox ! " 
 
 A grin of guilt passed over the faces of the 
 audience. 
 
 " There's plinty foxes in the hill, Mr. Thrinder," 
 shouted one of them ; " Dan Murphy says there 
 isn't a morning but he'd see six or eight o' them 
 hoppin' there." 
 
 " Faith, 'tis thrue for you," corroborated Dan 
 Murphy. "If ye had thim gethered in a quarther 
 of ground and dhropped a pin from th' elements, 
 'twould reach one o' thim ! " 
 
 (As a matter of fact, I haven't a notion what Mr. 
 Murphy meant, but that is what he said, so I faith- 
 fully record it.)
 
 1 1 8 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 The riders were farmers and men of Robert's own 
 undetermined class, and there was hardly a horse 
 out who was more than four years old, saving two 
 or three who were nineteen. Robert pushed through 
 them and turned up a bohireen — i.e., a narrow and 
 incredibly badly made lane — and I presently heard 
 him cheering the hounds into covert. As to that 
 covert, imagine a hill that in any civilised country 
 would be called a mountain : its nearer side a cliff, 
 with just enough slope to give root-hold to giant 
 furze bushes, its summit a series of rocky and boggy 
 terraces, trending down at one end into a ravine, 
 and at the other becoming merged in the depths of 
 an aboriginal wood of low scrubby oak trees. It 
 seemed as feasible to ride a horse over it as over 
 the roof of York Minster. I hadn't the vaguest 
 idea what to do or where to go, and I clave to Jerry 
 the Whip. 
 
 The hounds were scrambling like monkeys along 
 the side of the hill ; so were the country boys with 
 their curs ; old Trinder moved parallel with them 
 along its base. Jerry galloped away to the ravine, 
 and there dismounting, struggled up by zigzag 
 cattle paths to the comparative levels of the summit. 
 I did the same, and was pretty well blown by the 
 time I got to the top, as the filly scorned the zigzags, 
 and hauled me up as straight as she could go over 
 the rocks and furze bushes. A itvf other fellows
 
 A Grand Filly, 119 
 
 had followed us, and we all pursued on along the 
 top of the hill. 
 
 Suddenly Jerry stopped short and held up his 
 hand, A hound spoke below us, then another, and 
 then came a halloa from Jerry that made the filly 
 quiver all over. The fox had come up over the 
 low fence that edged the cliff, and was running 
 along the terrace in front of us. Old Robert below 
 us — I could almost have chucked a stone on to him 
 — gave an answering screech, and one by one the 
 hounds fought their way up over the fence and 
 went away on the line, throwing their tongues in 
 a style that did one good to hear. Our only way 
 ahead lay along a species of trench between the 
 hill, on whose steep side we were standing, and the 
 cliff fence. Jerry kicked the spurs into his good 
 ugly little horse, and making him jump down into 
 the trench, squeezed along it after the hounds. 
 But the delay of waiting for them had got the filly's 
 temper up. When I faced her at the trench she 
 reared, and whirled round, and pranced backwards 
 in, considering the circumstances, a highly discom- 
 posing way. The rest of the field crowded through 
 the furze past me and down into the trench, and 
 twice I thought the mare would land herself and 
 me on top of one of them, I don't wonder she was 
 frightened, I know I was. There was nothing 
 between us and a hundred-foot drop but this narrow
 
 I20 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 trench and a low, rotten fence, and the fool behaved 
 as though she wanted to jump it all. I hope no 
 one will ever erect an equestrian statue in my 
 honour ; now that I have experienced the sensa- 
 tion of ramping over nothing, I find I dishke it. I 
 believe I might have been there now, but just then 
 a couple of hounds came up, and before I knew 
 what she was at, the filly had jumped down after 
 them into the trench as if she had been doing it all 
 her life. I was not long about picking the others 
 up ; the filly could gallop anyhow, and we thundered 
 on over ground where, had I been on foot, I should 
 have liked a guide and an alpenstock. At intervals 
 we jumped things made of sharp stones, and slates, 
 and mud ; I don't know whether they were banks 
 or walls. Sometimes the horses changed feet on 
 them, sometimes they flew the whole affair, accord- 
 ing to their individual judgment. Sometimes we 
 were splashing over sedgy patches that looked and 
 felt like buttered toast, sometimes floundering 
 through stuff resembling an ill-made chocolate 
 souffle, whether intended for a ploughed field or 
 a partially drained bog-hole I could not determine, 
 and all was fenced as carefully as cricket-pitches. 
 Presently the hounds took a swing to the left and 
 over the edge of the hill again, and our leader Jerry 
 turned sharp off after them, down a track that 
 seemed to have been dug out of the face of the hill.
 
 A Grand Filly. 121 
 
 I should have liked to get off and lead, but they 
 did not give me time, and we suddenly found our- 
 selves joined to Robert Trinder and his company 
 of infantry, all going hard for the oak wood that I 
 mentioned before. 
 
 It was pretty to see the yellow horse jump. 
 Nothing came amiss to him, and he didn't seem 
 able to make a mistake. There was a stone stile 
 out of a bohireen that stopped every one, and he 
 changed feet on the flag on top and went down by 
 the steps on the other side. No one need believe 
 this unless they like, but I saw him do it. The 
 country boys were most exhilarating. How they 
 got there I don't know, but they seemed to spring 
 up before us wherever we went. They cheered 
 every jump, they pulled away the astounding 
 obstacles that served as gates (such as the end of 
 an iron bedstead, a broken harrow, or a couple of 
 cartwheels), and their power of seeing the fox 
 through a stone wall or a hill could only be equalled 
 by the Rontgen rays. We fought our way through 
 the oak wood, and out over a boggy bounds ditch 
 into open country at last. The Rioters had come 
 out of the wood on a screaming scent, and big and 
 little were running together in a compact body, 
 followed, like the tail of a kite, by a string of yap- 
 ping country curs. The country was all grass, 
 enchantingly green and springy ; the jumps were
 
 122 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 big, yet not too big, and there were no two alike ; 
 the filly pulled hard, but not too hard, and she was 
 jumping like a deer ; I felt that all I had heard of 
 Irish hunting had not been overstated. 
 
 We had been running for half an hour when we 
 checked at a farmhouse ; the yellow horse had been 
 leading the hunt all the time, making a noise like a 
 steam-engine, but perfectly undefeated, and our 
 numbers were reduced to five. An old woman and 
 a girl rushed out of the yard to meet us, screaming 
 like sea-gulls. 
 
 " He's gone south this five minutes ! I was out 
 spreadin' clothes, and I seen him circling round the 
 Kerry cow, and he as big as a man ! " screamed the 
 girl. 
 
 " He was, the thief! " yelled the old woman. " I 
 seen him firsht on the hill, cringeing behind a rock, 
 and he hardly able to thrail the tail afther him ! " 
 
 " Run now, like a good girl, and show me where 
 did he cross the fence," said old Robert, pufifing 
 and blowing, as with a purple face he hurried into 
 the yard to collect the hounds, who, like practised 
 foragers, had already overrun the farmhouse as was 
 evidenced by an indignant and shrieking flight of 
 fowls through the open door. 
 
 The girl ran, snatching off her red plaid shawl 
 as she went. 
 
 " Here's the shpot now ! " she called out, flinging
 
 A Grand Filly. 123 
 
 the shawl down on the fence ; " here's the very 
 way just that he wint ! Go south to the gap ; I'll 
 pull the pole out for ye — this is a cross place." 
 
 The hunt gratefully accepted her good offices. 
 She tore the monstrous shaft of a cart out of a 
 place that with it was impossible, and without it 
 was a boggy scramble, and as we began to gallop 
 again, I began to think there was a good deal to 
 be said in favour of the New Woman. 
 
 I suppose we had had another quarter of an hour, 
 when the mist, that had been hanging about all 
 day, came down on us, and it was difficult to see 
 more than a field ahead. We had got down on to 
 lower ground, and we were in a sort of marshy 
 hollow when we were confronted by the most serious 
 obstacle of the day : a tall and obviously rotten 
 bank clothed in briars, with sharp stones along its 
 top, a wide ditch in front of it, and a disgustingly 
 squashy take-off. Robert Trinder and the yellow 
 horse held their course undaunted : the rest of the 
 field turned as one man, and went for another way 
 round — I, in my arrogance, followed the Master. 
 The yellow horse rose out of the soft ground with 
 quiet, indescribable ease, got a foothold on the side 
 of the bank for his hind legs, and was away into 
 the next field without pause or mistake, 
 
 " Go round. Captain ! " shouted Trinder ; " it's a 
 bad place ! "
 
 124 -^^^ ^^ ^^^^ Irish Shore. 
 
 I hardly heard him ; I was already putting the 
 filly at it for the second time. It took about three 
 minutes for her to convince me that she and Robert 
 were right, and I was wrong, and by that time 
 everybody was out of sight, swallowed up in the 
 mist. I tried round after the others, and found 
 their footmarks up a lane and across a field ; a 
 loose stone wall confronted me, and I rode at it 
 confidently ; but the filly, soured by our recent 
 encounter, reared and would have none of it. I 
 tried yet another way round, and put her at a 
 moderate and seemingly innocuous bank, at which, 
 with the contrariety of her sex, she rushed at a 
 thousand miles an hour. It looked somehow as if 
 there might be a bit of a drop, but the filly had got 
 her beastly blood up, and I have been in a better 
 temper myself. 
 
 She rose to the jump when she was a good six 
 feet from it. I knew she would not put an iron on 
 it, and I sat down for the drop. It came with a 
 vengeance. I had a glimpse of a thatched roof 
 below me, and the next instant we were on it or in 
 it — I don't know which. It gave way with a crash 
 of rafters, the mare's forelegs went in, and I was shot 
 over her head, rolled over the edge of the roof, and 
 fell on my face into a manure heap. A yell and a 
 pig burst simultaneously from the door, a calf 
 followed, and while I struggled up out of my oozy
 
 A Grand Filly. 125 
 
 resting-place, I was aware of the filly's wild face 
 staring from the door of the shed in which she 
 so unexpectedly found herself. The broken reins 
 trailed round her legs, she was panting and shiver- 
 ing, and blood was trickling down the white blaze 
 on her nose. I got her out through the low door- 
 way with a little coaxing, and for a moment hardly 
 dared to examine as to the amount of damage 
 done. She was covered with cobwebs and dirt out 
 of the roof, and, as I led her forward, she went lame 
 on one foreleg ; but beyond this, and a good many 
 scratches, there was nothing wrong. My own 
 appearance need not here be dilated upon. I was 
 cleaning off what they call in Ireland "the biggest 
 of the filth" with a bunch of heather, when from a 
 cottage a little bit down the lane in which I was 
 standing a small . barelegged child emerged. It 
 saw me, uttered one desperate howl, and fled back 
 into the house. I abandoned my toilet and led 
 the mare to the cottage door. 
 
 " Is any one in ? " I said to the house at large. 
 
 A fresh outburst of yells was the sole response ; 
 there was a pattering of bare feet, and somewhere 
 in the smoky gloom a door slammed. It was clearly 
 a case of " Not at Home " in its conventional sense. 
 I scribbled Robert Trinder's name on one of my 
 visiting cards, laid it and half a sovereign on a table 
 by the door, and started to make my way home.
 
 126 Ail on the Irish Shore, 
 
 The south of Ireland is singularly full of people. 
 I do not believe you can go a quarter of a mile on 
 any given road without meeting some one, and that 
 some one is sure to be conversationally disposed and 
 ghd of the chance of answering questions. By 
 dint of asking a good many, I eventually found 
 myself on the high road, with five miles between 
 me and Lisangle. The mare's lameness had nearly 
 worn off, and she walked beside me like a dog. 
 After all, I thought, I had had the best of the day, 
 had come safely out of what might have been a 
 nasty business, and was supplied with a story on 
 which to dine out for the rest of my life. My only 
 anxiety was as to whether I could hope for a bath 
 when I got in — a luxury that had been hideously 
 converted by the locale of my fall into a necessity. 
 I led the filly in the twilight down the dark Lisangle 
 drive, feeling all the complacency of a man who 
 knows he has gone well in a strange country, and 
 was just at the turn to the yard when I came upon 
 an extraordinary group. All the women of the 
 household were there, gathered in a tight circle 
 round some absorbing central fact ; all were shriek- 
 ing at the tops of their voices, and the turkey cock 
 in the yard gobbled in response to each shriek. 
 " Ma'am, ma'am ! " I heard, "ye'll pull the tail off 
 
 him!" 
 
 «' Twisht the tink-an now, Bridgie ! Twisht it ! "
 
 A Grand Filly. 127 
 
 " Holy Biddy ! the masther'll kill us ! " 
 
 What the deuce were they at ? and what was a 
 " tink-an " ? I dragged the filly nearer, and dis- 
 covered that a hound puppy was the central point 
 of the tumult, and was being contended for, like the 
 body of Moses, by Miss Trinder and Bridgie the 
 parlour-maid. Both were seated on the ground 
 pulling at the puppy for all they were worth ; Miss 
 Trinder had him by the back of his neck and his 
 tail, while Bridgie was dragging — what was she 
 dragging at ? Then I saw that the puppy's head 
 was jammed in a narrow-necked tin milk-can, and 
 that, as things were going, he would wear it, like 
 the Man in the Iron Mask, for the rest of his life. 
 
 The small, grim face of Robert's aunt was scarlet 
 with exertion ; her black bonnet had slipped off 
 her head, and the thin grey hair that was ordinarily 
 wound round her little skull as tightly as cotton on 
 a reel, was hanging in scanty wisps from its central 
 knot ; nevertheless, she was, metaphorically speak- 
 ing, pulling Bridgie across the line every time. I 
 gave the filly to one of the audience, and took 
 Bridgie's place at the " tink-an ", Miss Trinder 
 and I put our backs into it, and suddenly I found 
 myself flat on mine, with the " tink-an " grasped 
 in both hands above my head. 
 
 A composite whoop of triumph rose from the 
 spectators, and the filly rose with it. She went
 
 128 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 straight up on her hind legs, and the next instant 
 she was away across the drive and into the adjoin- 
 ing field, and, considering all things, I don't blame 
 her. We all ran after her. I led, and the various 
 female retainers strung out after me like a flight of 
 wild-duck, uttering cries of various encouragement 
 and consternation. Miss Trinder followed, silent 
 and indomitable, at the heel of the hunt, and the 
 released puppy, who had also harked in, could be 
 heard throwing his tongue in the dusky shrubbery 
 ahead of us. It was all exasperatingly absurd, as 
 things seem to have a habit of being in Ireland. 
 I never felt more like a fool in my life, and the 
 bitterest part of it was that it was all I could do to 
 keep ahead of Bridgie. As for the filly, she waited 
 till we got near her, and then she jumped a five- 
 foot coped wall into the road, fell, picked herself 
 up, and clattered away into darkness. At this 
 point I heard Robert's horn, and sundry confused 
 shouts and sounds informed me that the filly had 
 run into the hounds. 
 
 She was found next day on the farm where she 
 was bred, fifteen miles away. The farmer brought 
 her back to Lisangle. She had injured three 
 hounds, upset two old women and a donkey-cart, 
 broken a gate, and finally, on arriving at the place 
 of her birth, had, according to the farmer, " fired the 
 divil's pelt of a kick into her own mother's stomach ".
 
 A Grand Filly. 129 
 
 Moreover, she " hadn't as much sound skin on her 
 as would bait a rat-trap " — I here quote Mr. Trinder 
 — and she had fever in all her feet. 
 
 Of course I bought her. I could hardly do less. 
 I told Robert he might give her to the hounds, but 
 he sent her over to me in a couple of months as 
 good as new, and I won the regimental steeple- 
 chase cup with her last April.
 
 A NINETEENTH-CENTURY MIRACLE. 
 
 Captain " Pat " Naylor, of the — th Dragoons, 
 had the influenza. For three days he had lain 
 prostrate, a sodden and aching victim to the 
 universal leveller, and an intolerable nuisance to 
 his wife. This last is perhaps an over-statement ; 
 Mrs. Naylor was in the habit of bearing other 
 people's burdens with excellent fortitude, but she 
 felt justly annoyed that Captain Pat should knock 
 up before they had fairly settled down in their new 
 quarters, and while yet three of the horses were out 
 of sorts after the crossing from England. 
 
 Pilot, however, was quite fit, a very tranquilHsing 
 fact, and one that Mrs. Pat felt was due to her own 
 good sense in summering him on her father's broad 
 pastures in Meath, instead of " lugging him to 
 Aldershot with the rest of the string, as Pat wanted 
 to do," as she explained to Major Booth. Major 
 Booth shed a friendly grin upon his fallen comrade, 
 who lay, a deplorable object, on the horrid velvet- 
 covered sofa peculiar to indifferent lodgings, and said 
 vaguely that one of his brutes was right anyhow, and 
 he was going to ride him at Carnfother the next day. 
 
 " You'd better come too, Mrs. Pat," he added ; 
 
 130
 
 A Nineteenth-Century Miracle. 131 
 
 " and if you'll drive me I'll send my chap on with 
 the horses. It's too far to ride. It's fourteen Irish 
 miles off, and fourteen Irish miles is just about the 
 longest distance I know." 
 
 Carnfother is a village in a remote part of the Co. 
 Cork ; it possesses a small hotel — in Ireland no 
 hostelry, however abject, would demean itself by 
 accepting the title of inn — a police barrack, a few 
 minor public-houses, a good many dirty cottages, 
 and an unrivalled collection of loafers. The stretch 
 of salmon river that gleamed away to the distant 
 heathery hills afforded the raison d'etre of both hotel 
 and loafers, but the fishing season had not begun, 
 and the attention of both was therefore undividedly 
 bestowed on Mrs. Naylor and Major Booth. The 
 former's cigarette and the somewhat Paradisaic 
 dimensions of her apron skirt would indeed at any 
 time have rivalled in interest the landing of a 20-lb. 
 fish, and as she strode into the hotel the bystanders' 
 ejaculatory piety would have done credit to a revival 
 meeting. 
 
 " Well, well, I'll say nothing for her but that she's 
 quare ! " said the old landlady, hurrying in from her 
 hens to attend to these rarer birds whom fortune 
 had sent to her net. 
 
 Mrs. Pat's roan cob had attacked and defeated 
 the fourteen Irish miles with superfluous zeal, and 
 there were still several minutes before the hounds
 
 132 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 could be reasonably expected on the scene. The 
 soda was bad, the whisky was worse. The sound 
 of a fiddle came in with the sunshine through the 
 open door, and our friends strolled out into the 
 street to see what was going on. In the centre of 
 a ring of onlookers an old man was playing, and was, 
 moreover, dancing to his own music, and dancing 
 with serious, incongruous elegance. Round and 
 round the circle he footed it, his long thin legs 
 twinkling in absolute accord with the complicated 
 jig that his long thin fingers were ripping out of the 
 cracked and raucous fiddle. A very plain, stout 
 young woman, with a heavy red face and discord- 
 antly golden hair, shuffled round after him in a 
 clumsy pretence of dancing, and as the couple faced 
 Mrs. Pat she saw that the old man was blind. 
 Steam was rising from his domed bald head, and his 
 lone black hair danced on his shoulders. His face 
 was pale and strange and entirely self-absorbed. 
 Had Mrs. Pat been in the habit of instituting 
 romantic parallels between the past and the present 
 she might have thought of the priests of Baal who 
 danced in probably just such measures round the 
 cromlechs in the hills above Carnfother ; as she 
 wasn't, she remarked merely that this was all very 
 well, but that the old maniac would have to clear 
 out of that before they brought Pilot round, or 
 there'd be trouble.
 
 A Nineteenth-Century Miracle. 133 
 
 There was trouble, but it did not arise from Pilot, 
 but from the yellow-haired woman's pertinacious 
 demands for money from Mrs. Naylor. She had 
 the offensive fluency that comes of long practice in 
 alternate wheedling and bullying, and although 
 Major Booth had given her a shilling she continued 
 to pester Mrs. Pat for a further largesse. But, as it 
 happened, Mrs. Pat's purse was in her covert coat in 
 the dog-cart, and Mrs. Pat's temper was ever within 
 easy reach, and on being too closely pressed for 
 the one she exhibited the other with a decision that 
 contracted the ring of bystanders to hear the fun, 
 and loosened the yellow-haired woman's language, 
 till unfortunate Major Booth felt that if he could 
 get her off the field of battle for a sovereign it would 
 be cheap at the price. The old man continued to 
 walk round and round, fingering a dumb tune on 
 his fiddle that he did not bow, while the sunlight 
 glistened hot and bright in his unwinking eyes ; 
 there was a faint smile on his lips, he heard as little 
 as he saw ; it was evident that he was away where 
 " beyond these voices there is peace," in the fairy 
 country that his forefathers called the Tir na'n Oge. 
 
 At this juncture the note of the horn sounded 
 very sweetly from across the shining ford of the 
 river. Hounds and riders came splashing up into 
 the village street, the old man and his daughter 
 were hustled to one side, and Mrs. Pat's affability
 
 134 -^^i on the Irish Shore. 
 
 returned as she settled her extremely smart little 
 person on Pilot's curveting back, and was instantly 
 aware that there was nothing present that could 
 touch either of them in looks or quality. Carnfother 
 
 was at the extreme verge of the D Hounds' 
 
 country ; there were not more than about thirty 
 riders out, and Mrs. Pat was not far wTong when 
 she observed to Major Booth that there was not 
 much class about them. Of the four or five women 
 who were of the field, but one wore a habit with 
 any pretensions to conformity with the sacred laws 
 of fashion, and its colour was a blue that, taken in 
 connection with a red, brass-buttoned waistcoat, 
 reminded the severe critic from Royal Meath of the 
 head porter at the Shelburne Hotel. So she in- 
 formed Major Booth in one of the rare intervals 
 permitted to her by Pilot for conversation, 
 
 " All right," responded that gentleman, " you wait 
 until you and that ramping brute of yours get up 
 among the stone walls, and you'll be jolly glad if 
 she'll call a cab for you and see you taken safe 
 home. I tell you what — you won't be able to see 
 the way she goes." 
 
 " Rubbish ! " said Mrs. Pat, and, whether from 
 sympathy or from a petulant touch of her heel. Pilot 
 at this moment involved himself in so intricate a 
 series of plunges and bucks as to preclude further 
 discussion.
 
 A Nineteenth-Century Miracle. 135 
 
 The first covert — a small wood on the flank of a 
 hill — was blank, and the hounds moved on across 
 country to the next draw. It was a land of pasture, 
 and in every fence was a deep muddy passage, 
 through which the field splashed in single file with 
 the grave stolidity of the cows by whom the gaps 
 had been made. Mrs, Pat was feeling horribly 
 bored. Her escort had joined himself to two of 
 the ladies of the hunt, and though it was gratifying 
 to observe that one wore a paste brooch in her tie 
 and the other had an imitation cavalry bit and 
 bridle, with a leather tassel hanging from her pony's 
 throat, these things lost their savour when she had 
 no one with whom to make merry over them. She 
 had left her sandwiches in the dog-cart, her servant 
 had mistaken whisky for sherry when he was filling 
 her flask ; the day had clouded over, and already 
 one brief but furious shower had scourged the curl 
 out of her dark fringe and made the reins slippery. 
 
 At last, however, a nice-looking gorse covert was 
 reached, and the hounds threw themselves into it 
 with promising alacrity. Pilot steadied himself, 
 and stood with pricked ears, giving an occasional 
 snatch at his bit, and looking, as no one knew better 
 than his rider, the very picture of a hunter, while 
 he listened for the first note that should tell of a 
 find. He had not long to wait. There came a 
 thin little squeal from the middle of the covert, and
 
 136 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 a hound flung up out of the thicker gorse and began 
 to run along a ridge of rock, with head down, and 
 feathering stern. 
 
 " They've got him, my lady," said a young farmer 
 on a rough three-year-old to Mrs. Pat, as he stuffed 
 his pipe in his pocket. " That's Patience ; we'll 
 have a hunt out o' this." 
 
 Then came another and longer squeal as Patience 
 plunged out of sight again, and then, as the glowing 
 chorus rose from the half-seen pack, a whip, posted 
 on a hillside beyond the covert, raised his cap 
 high in the air, and a wild screech that set Pilot 
 dancing from leg to leg broke from a country 
 boy who was driving a harrow in the next field : 
 " Ga — aane awa — ay ! " 
 
 Mrs. Pat forgot her annoyances. Her time had 
 come. She would show that idiot Booth that Pilot 
 
 was not to be insulted with impunity, and But 
 
 here retrospect and intention became alike merged 
 in the present, and in the single resolve to get ahead 
 and stay there. Half a dozen of Pilot's great 
 reaching strides, and she was in the next field and 
 over the low bank without putting an iron on it. 
 The horse with the harrow, deserted by his driver, 
 was following the hunt with the best of them, and, 
 combining business with pleasure, was, as he went, 
 harrowing the field with absurd energy. The Paste 
 Brooch and the Shelburne Porter — so Mrs. Pat
 
 A Nineteenth-Century Miracle. 137 
 
 mentally distinguished them — were sailing along 
 with a good start, and Major Booth was close at 
 their heels. The light soil of the tilled field flew in 
 every direction as thirty or more horses raced across 
 it, and the usual retinue of foot runners raised an 
 ecstatic yell as Mrs. Pat forged ahead and sent her 
 big horse over the fence at the end of the field in 
 a style that happily combined swagger with know- 
 ledge. 
 
 The hounds were streaking along over a succes- 
 sion of pasture fields, and the cattle gaps which 
 were to be found in every fence vexed the proud 
 soul of Mrs. Pat. She was too good a sportswoman 
 to school her horse over needless jumps when hounds 
 were running, but it infuriated her to have to hustle 
 with these outsiders for her place at a gap. So she 
 complained to Major Booth, with a vehemence of 
 adjective that, though it may be forgiven to her, 
 need not be set down here. 
 
 "Is all the wretched country like this?" she 
 inquired indignantly, as the Shelburne Porter's 
 pony splashed ahead of her through a muddy ford, 
 just beyond which the hounds had momentarily 
 checked; "you told me to bring out a big-jumped 
 horse, and I might have gone the whole hunt on 
 a bicycle ! " 
 
 Major Booth's reply was to point to the hounds. 
 They had cast back to the line that they had flashed
 
 138 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 over, and had begun to run again at right angles 
 from the grassy valley down which they had come, 
 up towards the heather-clad hills that lay back of 
 Carnfother. 
 
 " Say your prayers, Mrs. Pat ! " he said, in what 
 Mrs. Pat felt to be a gratuitously offensive manner, 
 " and I'll ask the lady in the pretty blue habit to 
 have an eye to you. This is a hill fox and he's 
 going to make you and Pilot sit up ! " 
 
 Mrs. Pat was not in a mood to be trifled with, 
 and I again think it better to omit her response to 
 this inconvenient jesting. What she did was to 
 give Pilot his head, and she presently found herself 
 as near the hounds as was necessary, galloping in 
 a line with the huntsman straight for a three-foot 
 wall, lightly built of round stones. That her horse 
 could refuse to jump it was a possibility that did 
 not so much as enter her head ; but that he did so 
 was a fact whose stern logic could not be gainsaid. 
 She had too firm a seat to be discomposed by the 
 swinging plunge with which he turned from it, but 
 her mental balance sustained a serious shake. That 
 Pilot, at the head of the hunt should refuse, was a 
 thing that struck at the root of her dearest beliefs. 
 She stopped him and turned him at the wall 
 again ; again he refused, and at the same instant 
 Major Booth and the blue habit jumped it side 
 by side.
 
 A Nineteenth-Century Miracle. 139 
 
 " What did I tell you ! " the former called back, 
 with a laugh that grated on Mrs. Pat's ear with a 
 truly fiendish rasp ; " do you want a lead ? " 
 
 The incensed Mrs. Pat once more replied in for- 
 cible phraseology, as she drove her horse again at 
 the wall. The average Meath horse likes stones 
 just about as much as the average Co. Cork horse 
 enjoys water, and the train of running men and 
 boys were given the exquisite gratification of a 
 contest between Pilot and his rider. 
 
 " Howld on, miss, till I knock a few shtones for 
 ye ! " volunteered one, trying to interpose between 
 Pilot and the wall. 
 
 " Get out of the way ! " was Mrs. Pat's response 
 to this civility, as she crammed her steed at the 
 jump again. The volunteer, amid roars of laughter 
 from his friends, saved his life only by dint of un- 
 dignified agility, as the big horse whirled round, 
 rearing and plunging. 
 
 " Isn't he the divil painted ? " exclaimed another 
 in highest admiration ; " wait till I give him a couple 
 of slaps of my bawneen, miss ! " He dragged off 
 his white flannel coat and attacked Pilot in the 
 rear with it, while another of the party flung clods 
 of mud vaguely into the battle, and another per- 
 sistently implored the maddened Mrs. Pat to get off 
 and let him lead the horse over " before she'd lose 
 her life : " a suggestion that has perhaps a more
 
 1 40 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 thoroughly exasperating effect than any other on 
 occasions such as this. 
 
 By the time that Pilot had pawed down half the 
 wall and been induced to buck over, or into, what 
 remained of it, Mrs. Pat's temper was irretrievably 
 gone, and she was at the heel instead of the head 
 of the hunt. Thanks to this position there was 
 bestowed on her the abhorred, but not to be de- 
 clined, advantage of availing herself of the gaps 
 made in the next couple of jumps by the other 
 riders ; but the stones they had kicked down were 
 almost as agitating to Pilot's ruffled nerves as those 
 that still remained in position. She found it the 
 last straw that she should have to wait for the 
 obsequious runners to tear these out of her way, 
 while the galloping backs in front of her grew 
 smaller and smaller, and the adulatory condolences 
 of her assistants became more and more hard to en- 
 dure. She literally hurled the shilling at them as she 
 set off once more to try to recover her lost ground, 
 and by sheer force of passion hustled Pilot over 
 the next broken-down wall without a refusal. For 
 she had now got into that stony country whereof 
 Major Booth had spoken. Rough heathery fields, 
 ribbed with rocks and sown with grey boulders, were 
 all round. The broad salmon river swept sleekly 
 through the valley below, among the bland green 
 fields which were as far away for all practical pur-
 
 A Nineteenth-Century Miracle. 141 
 
 poses as the plains of Paradise. No one who has 
 not ridden a stern chase over rough ground on a 
 well-bred horse with his temper a bit out of hand 
 will be able at all fitly to sympathise with the trials 
 of Mrs. Naylor. The hunt and all that appertained 
 to it had sunk out of sight over a rugged hill-side, 
 and she had nothing by which to steer her course 
 save the hoof-marks in the occasional black and 
 boggy intervals between the heathery knolls. No 
 one had ever accused her of being short of pluck, 
 and she pressed on her difficult way with the 
 utmost gallantry ; but short of temper she cer- 
 tainly was, and at each succeeding obstacle there 
 ensued a more bitter battle between her and her 
 horse. Every here and there a band of crisp up- 
 land meadow would give the latter a chance, but 
 each such advantage would be squandered in the 
 war dance that he indulged in at every wall. 
 
 At last the summit of the interminable series of 
 hills was gained, and Mrs. Pat scanned the soli- 
 tudes that surrounded her with wrathful eyes. The 
 hounds were lost, as completely swallowed up as ever 
 were Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Not the most 
 despised of the habits or the feeblest of the three- 
 year-olds had been left behind to give a hint of their 
 course ; but the hoof-marks showed black on a 
 marshy down-grade of grass, and with an angry 
 clout of her crop on Pilot's unaccustomed ribs, she
 
 142 ^11 on the Irish Shore. 
 
 set off again. A narrow road cut across the hills at 
 the end of the field. The latter was divided from 
 it by a low, thin wall of sharp slaty stones, and on 
 the further side there was a wide and boggy drain. 
 It was not a nice place, and Pilot thundered down 
 towards it at a pace that suited his rider's temper 
 better than her judgment It was evident, at all 
 events, that he did not mean to refuse. Nor did 
 he ; he rose out of the heavy ground at the wall 
 like a rocketing pheasant, and cleared it by more 
 than twice its height ; but though he jumped high 
 he did not jump wide, and he landed half in and out 
 of the drain, with his forefeet clawing at its greasy 
 edge, and his hind legs deep in the black mud. 
 
 Mrs. Pat scrambled out of the saddle with the 
 speed of light, and after a few momentous seconds, 
 during which it seemed horribly likely that the horse 
 would relapse bodily into the drain, his and Mrs. 
 Pat's efforts prevailed, and he was standing, 
 trembling, and dripping, on the narrow road. 
 She led him on for a few steps ; he went sound, and 
 for one delusive instant she thought he had escaped 
 damage ; then, through the black slime on one of 
 his hind legs the red blood began to flow. It came 
 from high up inside the off hind leg, above the 
 hock, and it welled ever faster and faster, a plaited 
 crimson stream that made his owner's heart sink. 
 She dipped her handkerchief in the ditch and
 
 A Nineteenth-Century Miracle. 143 
 
 cleaned the cut. It was deep in the fleshy part of 
 the leg, a gaping wound, inflicted by one of those 
 razor slates that hide like sentient enemies in such 
 boggy places. It was large enough for her to put 
 her hand in ; she held the edges together, and the 
 bleeding ceased for an instant ; then, as she re- 
 leased them, it began again worse than ever. Her 
 handkerchief was as inadequate for any practical 
 purpose as ladies' handkerchiefs generally are, but 
 an inspiration came to her. She tore off her gloves, 
 and in a few seconds the long linen hunting-scarf 
 that had been pinned and tied with such skilled 
 labour in the morning was being used as a bandage 
 for the wound. But though Mrs. Pat could tie a 
 tie with any man in the regiment, she failed badly 
 as a bandager of a less ornamental character. The 
 hateful stream continued to pump forth from the 
 cut, incarnadining the muddy road, and in despair 
 she took Pilot by the head and began to lead him 
 down the hill towards the valley. 
 
 Another gusty shower flung itself at her. It 
 struck her bare white neck with whips of ice, and 
 though she turned up the collar of her coat, the 
 rain ran down under the neckband of her shirt and 
 chilled her through and through. It was evident 
 that an artery had been cut in Pilot's leg ; the flow, 
 from the wound never ceased ; the hunting-scarf 
 drenched with blood, had slipped down to the hock.
 
 144 -^^^ ^^ ^^^^ /r/j/z Shore. 
 
 It seemed to Mrs. Pat that her horse must bleed to 
 death, and, tough and unemotional though she was, 
 Pilot was very near her heart ; tears gathered in 
 her eyes as she led him slowly on through the rain 
 and the loneliness, in the forlorn hope of finding 
 help. She progressed in this lamentable manner 
 for perhaps half a mile ; the rain ceased, and she 
 stopped to try once more to readjust the scarf, when, 
 in the stillness that had followed the cessation of 
 the rain, she heard a faint and distant sound of 
 music. It drew nearer, a thin, shrill twittering, and 
 as Mrs. Pat turned quickly from her task to see 
 what this could portend, she heard a woman's voice 
 say harshly : — 
 
 " Ah, have done with that thrash of music ; sure, 
 it'll be dark night itself before we're in to Lismore." 
 
 There was something familiar in the coarse tones. 
 The weirdness fell from the wail of the music as 
 Mrs. Pat remembered the woman who had bothered 
 her for money that morning in Carnfother. She 
 and the blind old man were tramping slowly up 
 the road, seemingly as useless a couple to any one 
 in Mrs. Pat's plight as could well be imagined. 
 
 " How far am I from Carnfother?" she asked, as 
 they drew near to her. " Is there any house near 
 here ? " 
 
 " There is not," said the yellow-haired woman ; 
 " and ye're four miles from Carnfother yet."
 
 A Nineteenth- Century Miracle. 145 
 
 " I'll pay you well if you will take a message 
 there for me " began Mrs. Pat. 
 
 " Are ye sure have ye yer purse in yer pocket ? " 
 interrupted the yellow-haired woman with a laugh 
 that succeeded in being as nasty as she wished ; 
 " or will I go dancin' down to Carnfother " 
 
 " Have done, Joanna ! " said the old man sud- 
 denly ; " what trouble is on the lady ? What lamed 
 the horse ? " 
 
 He turned his bright blind eyes full on Mrs. Pat. 
 They were of the curious green blue that is some- 
 times seen in the eyes of a grey collie, and with all 
 Mrs. Pat's dislike and suspicion of the couple, she 
 knew that he was blind. 
 
 " He was cut in a ditch," she said shortly. 
 
 The old man had placed his fiddle in his 
 daughter's hands ; his own hands were twitching 
 and trembling. 
 
 " I feel the blood flowing," he said in a very low 
 voice, and he walked up to Pilot. 
 
 His hands went unguided to the wound, from 
 which the steady flow of blood had never ceased. 
 With one he closed the lips of the cut, while with 
 the other he crossed himself three times. His 
 daughter watched him stolidly ; Mrs. Pat, with a 
 certain alarm, having, after the manner of her kind, 
 explained to herself the incomprehensible with the 
 all-embracing formula of madness. Yes, she 
 
 10
 
 146 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 thought, he was undoubtedly mad, and as soon 
 as the paroxysm was past she would have another 
 try at bribing the woman. 
 
 The old man was muttering to himself, still 
 holding the wound in one hand. Mrs. Pat could 
 distinguish no words, but it seemed to her that he 
 repeated three times what he was saying. Then 
 he straightened himself and stroked Pilot's quarter 
 with a light, pitying hand, Mrs. Pat stared. The 
 bleeding had ceased. The hunting-scarf lay on 
 the road at the horse's empurpled hoof. There 
 was nothing to explain the mystery, but the fact 
 remained. 
 
 "He'll do now," said the blind man. "Take 
 him on to Carnfother ; but ye'll want to get five 
 stitches in that to make a good job of it." 
 
 " But — I don't understand " stammered Mrs. 
 
 Pat, shaken for once out of her self-possession by 
 this sudden extension of her spiritual horizon. 
 "What have you done? Won't it begin again?" 
 She turned to the woman in her bewilderment : 
 "Is— is he mad?" 
 
 "For as mad as he is, it's him you may thank 
 for yer horse," answered the yellow-haired woman. 
 " Why, Holy Mother ! did ye never hear of Kane 
 the Blood-Healer?" 
 
 The road round them was suddenly thronged 
 with hounds, snuffing at Pilot, and pushing between
 
 THE BLOOD-HEALER.
 
 A Nineteenth-Century Miracle. 149 
 
 Mrs. Pat and the fence. The cheerful familiar 
 sound of the huntsman's voice rating them made 
 her feel her feet on solid ground again. In a 
 moment Major Booth was there, the Master had 
 dismounted, the habits, loud with sympathy and 
 excitement, had gathered round ; a Whip was 
 examining the cut, while he spoke to the yellow- 
 haired woman. 
 
 Mrs. Pat tie-less, her face splashed with mud, 
 her bare hands stained with blood, told her story. 
 It is, I think, a point in her favour that for a 
 moment she forgot what her appearance must be. 
 
 " The horse would have bled to death before the 
 lady got to Carnfother, sir," said the Whip to the 
 Master ; " it isn't the first time I seen life saved by 
 that one. Sure, didn't I see him heal a man that got 
 his leg in a mowing machine, and he half-dead, with 
 the blood spouting out of him like two rainbows ! " 
 
 This is not a fairy story. Neither need it be 
 set lightly down as a curious coincidence. I know 
 the charm that the old man said. I cannot give it 
 here. It will only work successfully if taught by 
 man to woman or by woman to man ; nor do I 
 pretend to say that it will work for every one. I 
 believe it to be a personal and wholly incompre- 
 hensible gift, but that such a gift has been 
 bestowed, and in more parts of Ireland than one, 
 is a bewildering and indisputable fact.
 
 HIGH TEA AT McKEOWN'S. 
 
 " Papa ! " said the youngest Miss Purcell, aged 
 eleven, entering the drawing-room at Mount Purcell 
 in a high state of indignation and a flannel dressing- 
 gown that had descended to her in unbroken line of 
 succession from her eldest sister, " isn't it my turn 
 for the foxy mare to-morrow? Nora had her at 
 
 Kilmacabee, and it's a rotten shame " 
 
 The youngest Miss Purcell here showed signs 
 of the imminence of tears, and rooted in the torn 
 pocket of the dressing-gown for the hereditary 
 pocket-handkerchief that went with it. 
 
 Sir Thomas paused in the act of cutting the end 
 off a long cigar, and said briefly : — 
 
 " Neither of you'll get her. She's going plough- 
 ing the Craughmore." 
 
 The youngest Miss Purcell knew as well as her 
 sister Nora that the latter had already comman- 
 deered the foxy mare, and, with the connivance of 
 the cowboy, had concealed her in the cowhouse ; 
 but her sense of tribal honour, stimulated by her 
 sister's threatening eye, withheld her from opening 
 this branch of the subject. 
 
 " Well, but Johnny Mulcahy won't plough to- 
 
 150
 
 High Tea at McKeown's. 151 
 
 morrow because he's going to the Donovan child's 
 funeral. Tommy Brien's just told me so, and he'll 
 be drunk when he comes back, and to-morrow'll be 
 the first day that Carnage and Trumpeter are going 
 out " 
 
 The youngest Miss Purcell paused, and uttered 
 a loud sob. 
 
 "My darling baby," remonstrated Lady Purcell 
 from behind a reading-lamp, " you really ought 
 not to run about the stable-yard at this hour of the 
 night, or, indeed, at any other time ! " 
 
 " Baby's always bothering to come out hunting," 
 remarked an elder sister, " and you know yourself, 
 mamma, that the last time she came was when she 
 stole the postman's pony, and he had to run all the 
 way to Drinagh, and you said yourself she was to 
 be kept in the next day for a punishment." 
 
 " How ready you are with your punishments ! 
 What is it to you if she goes out or no?" demanded 
 Sir Thomas, whose temper was always within easy 
 reach. 
 
 " She can have the cob, Tom," interposed stout 
 and sympathetic Lady Purcell, on whom the tears 
 of her youngest born were having their wonted 
 effect, " I'll take the donkey chaise if I go out." 
 
 "The cob is it?" responded Sir Thomas, in the 
 stalwart brogue in which he usually expressed him- 
 self "The cob has a leg on him as big as your
 
 152 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 own since the last day one of them had him out ! " 
 The master of the house looked round with exceed- 
 ing disfavour on his eight good-looking daughters. 
 " However, I suppose it's as good to be hanged for 
 a sheep as a lamb, and if you don't want him " 
 
 The youngest Miss Purcell swiftly returned her 
 handkerchief to her pocket, and left the room be- 
 fore any change of opinion was possible. 
 
 Mount Purcell was one of those households that 
 'deserve to be subsidised by any country neighbour- 
 hood in consideration of their unfailing supply of 
 topics of conversation. Sir Thomas was a man of 
 old family, of good income and of sufficient educa- 
 tion, who, while reserving the power of comporting 
 himself like a gentleman, preferred as a rule to as- 
 similate his demeanour to that of one of his own 
 tenants (with whom, it may be mentioned, he was 
 extremely popular). Many young men habitually 
 dined out on Sir Thomas's brogue and his un- 
 wearying efforts to dispose of his eight daughters. 
 
 His wife was a handsome, amiable, and by no 
 means unintelligent lady upon whose back the 
 eight daughters had ploughed and had left long 
 furrows. She was not infrequently spoken of as 
 " that un/7;i:unate Lady Purcell ! " with a greater or 
 less broadening of the accent on the second syllable 
 according to the social standard of the speaker. 
 Her tastes were comprehended and sympathised
 
 High Tea at McKeown's. 153 
 
 with by her gardener, and by the clerk at Mudie's 
 who refilled her box. The view taken of her by 
 her husband and family was mainly a negative one, 
 and was tinged throughout by the facts that she 
 was afraid to drive anything more ambitious than 
 the donkey, and had been known to mistake the 
 kennel terrier for a hound puppy. She had suc- 
 ceeded in transmitting to her daughters her very 
 successful complexion and blue eyes, but her 
 responsibility for them had apparently gone no 
 further. The Misses Purcell faced the world and 
 its somewhat excessive interest in them with the 
 intrepid esprit de corps of a square of British in- 
 fantry, but among themselves they fought, as the 
 coachman was wont to say — and no one knew better 
 than the coachman — " both bitther an regular, like 
 man and wife ! " They ranged in age from about 
 five and twenty downwards, sportswomen, warriors, 
 and buccaneers, all of them, and it would be difficult 
 to determine whether resentment or a certain secret 
 pride bulked the larger in their male parent's mind 
 in connection with them. 
 
 " Are you going to draw Clashnacrona to-mor- 
 row ? " asked Muriel, the second of the gang (Lady 
 Purcell, it should have been mentioned, had also 
 been responsible for her daughters' names), rising 
 from her chair and pouring what was left of her 
 after-dinner coffee into her saucer, a proceeding
 
 154 ^^^ ^^ ^h^ /nV/z Shore. 
 
 which caused four pairs of lambent eyes to discover 
 themselves in the coiled mat of red setters that oc- 
 cupied the drawing-room hearthrug. 
 
 " No, I am not," said Sir Thomas, " and, whaf s 
 more, I'm coming in early. I'm a fool to go hunting 
 at all at this time o' year, with half the potatoes not 
 out of the ground." He rose, and using the toe of 
 his boot as the coulter of a plough, made a way for 
 himself among the dogs to the centre of the hearth- 
 rug. " Be hanged to these dogs ! I declare I don't 
 know am I more plagued with dogs or daughters ! 
 Lucy ! " 
 
 Lady Purcell dutifully disinterred her attention 
 from a catalogue of Dutch bulbs. 
 
 "When I get in to-morrow I'lr go call on that 
 Local Government Board Inspector who's staying 
 in Drinagh. They tell me he's a very nice fellow 
 and he's rolling in money. I daresay I'll ask him 
 to dinner. He was in the army one time, I believe. 
 They often give these jobs to soldiers. If any of 
 you girls come across him," he continued, bending 
 his fierce eyebrows upon his family, " I'll trouble 
 you to be civil to him and show him none of your 
 infernal airs because he happens to be an English- 
 man ! I hear he's bicycling all over the country 
 and he might come out to see the hounds." 
 
 Rosamund, the eldest, delivered herself of an al- 
 most imperceptible wink in the direction of Violet,
 
 High Tea at McKeown's. 155 
 
 the third of the party. Sir Thomas's diplomacies 
 were thoroughly appreciated by his offspring. "It's 
 time some of you were cleared out from under my 
 feet ! " he told them. Nevertheless when, some 
 four or five years before, a subaltern of Engineers 
 engaged on the Government survey of Ireland had 
 laid his career, plus fifty pounds per annum and 
 some impalpable expectations, at the feet of Muriel, 
 the clearance effected by Sir Thomas had been that 
 of Lieutenant Aubrey Hamilton. "Is it marry one 
 of my daughters to that penniless pup!" he had said 
 to Lady Purcell, whose sympathies had, as usual, 
 been on the side of the detrimental. " Upon my 
 honour, Lucy, you're a bigger- fool than I thought 
 you — and that's saying a good deal ! " 
 
 It was near the beginning of September, and but 
 a sleepy half dozen or so of riders had turned out 
 to meet the hounds the following morning, at Liss 
 Cranny Wood. There had been rain during the 
 night and, though it had ceased, a wild wet wind was 
 blowing hard from the north-west. The yellowing 
 beech trees twisted and swung their grey arms in 
 the gale. Hats flew down the wind like driven 
 grouse ; Sir Thomas's voice, in the middle of the 
 covert, came to the riders assembled at the cross 
 roads on the outskirts of the wood in gusts, fitful 
 indeed, but not so fitful that Nora, on the dis- 
 trained foxy mare, was not able to gauge to a
 
 156 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 nicety the state of his temper. From the fact of her 
 unostentatious position in the rear it might safely 
 be concluded that it, like the wind, was still rising. 
 The riders huddled together in the lee of the trees, 
 their various elements fused in the crucible of Sir 
 Thomas's wrath into a compact and anxious mass. 
 There had been an unusually large entry of pup- 
 pies that season, and Sir Thomas's temper, never 
 at its best on a morning of cubbing, was making 
 exhaustive demands on his stock of expletives. 
 Rabbits were flying about in every direction, each 
 with a shrieking puppy or two in its wake. Jerry, 
 the Whip, was galloping ventre a terre along the 
 road in the vain endeavour to overtake a couple in 
 headlong flight to the farm where they had spent 
 their happier earlier days. At the other side of the 
 wood the Master was blowing himself into apoplexy 
 in the attempt to recall half a dozen who were away 
 in full cry after a cur-dog, and a zealous member 
 of the hunt looked as if he were playing polo with 
 another puppy that doubled and dodged to evade 
 the lash and the duty of getting to covert. Hither 
 and thither among the beech trees went that selec- 
 tion from the Master's family circle, exclusive of the 
 furtive Nora, that had on this occasion taken the 
 field. It was a tradition in the country that there 
 were never fewer than four Miss Purcells out, and 
 that no individual Miss Purcell had more than three
 
 High Tea at McKeowns. 157 
 
 days' hunting in the season. Whatever may have 
 been the truth of this, the companion legend that 
 each Miss Purcell slept whh. two hound puppies 
 in her bed vi^as plausibly upheld by the devotion 
 with which the latter clung to the heels of their 
 nurses. 
 
 In the midst of these scenes of disorder an old 
 fox, rightly judging that this was no place for him, 
 slid out of the covert, and crossed the road just in 
 front of where Nora, in a blue serge skirt and a red 
 Tam-o'-Shantercap, lurked on the foxy mare. Close 
 after him came four or five couple of old hounds, 
 and, prominent among her elders, yelped the puppy 
 that had been Nora's special charge. This was not 
 cubbing, and no one knew it better than Nora ; but 
 the sight of Carnage among the prophets — Carnage, 
 whose noblest quarry hitherto had been the Mount 
 Purcell turkey-cock — overthrew her scruples. The 
 foxy mare, a ponderous creature, with a mane like a 
 Nubian lion and a mouth like steel, required nearly 
 as much room to turn in as a man-of-war, and 
 while Nora, by vigorous use of her heel and a 
 reliable ash plant, was getting her head round, her 
 sister Muriel, on a raw-boned well-bred colt — Sir 
 Thomas, as he said, made the best of a bad job, 
 and utilised his daughters as roughriders — shot 
 past her down the leafy road, closely followed by a 
 stranger on a weedy bay horse, which Nora in-
 
 158 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 stantly recognised as the solitary hireling of the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 Through the belt of wood and out into the open 
 country went the five couple, and after them went 
 Muriel, Nora and the strange man. There had 
 been an instant when the colt had thought that it 
 seemed a pity to leave the road, but, none the less, 
 he had the next instant found himself in the air, a 
 considerable distance above a low stone wall, with 
 a tingling streak across his ribs, and a bewildering 
 sensation of having been hustled. The field in 
 which he alighted was a sloping one and he ramped 
 down it very enjoyably to himself, with all the 
 weight of his sixteen hands and a half concentrated 
 in his head, when suddenly a tall grassy bank 
 confronted him, with, as he perceived with horror, a 
 ditch in front of it. He tried to swerve, but there 
 seemed something irrevocable about the way in 
 which the bank faced him, and if his method of 
 "changing feet" was not strictly conventional, he 
 achieved the main point and found all four safely 
 under him when he landed, which was as much — if 
 not more than as much — as either he or Muriel 
 expected. The Miss Purcells were a practical 
 people, and were thankful for minor mercies. 
 
 It was at about this point that the stranger on the 
 hireling drew level ; he had not been at the meet, 
 and Muriel turned her head to see who it was that
 
 High Tea at McKeowfis. 159 
 
 was kicking old McConnell's screw along so well. 
 He lifted his cap, but he was certainly a stranger. 
 She saw a discreetly clipped and pointed brown 
 beard, with a rather long and curling moustache. 
 
 " Fed on furze ! " thought Muriel, with a remem- 
 brance of the foxy mare's upper lip when she came 
 in " off the hill ". 
 
 Then she met the strange man's eyes — was he 
 quite a stranger? What was it about the greeny- 
 grey gleam of them that made her heart give a 
 curious lift, and then sent the colour running from 
 it to her face and back again to her heart ? 
 
 " I thought you were going to cut me — Muriel ! " 
 said the strange man. 
 
 In the meantime the five couple and Carnage 
 were screaming down the heathery side of Liss 
 Cranny Hill, on a scent that was a real comfort to 
 them after nearly five miserable months of kennels 
 and road-work, and a glorious wind under their 
 sterns. Jerry, the Whip, was riding like a madman 
 to stop them ; they knew that well, and went the 
 faster for it. Sir Thomas was blowing his horn 
 inside out. But Jerry was four fields behind, and 
 Sir Thomas was on the wrong side of the wood, and 
 Miss Muriel and the strange gentleman were 
 coming on for all they were worth, and were as 
 obviously bent on having a good time as they were. 
 Carnage flung up her handsome head and squealed
 
 i6o All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 with pure joy, as she pitched herself over the big 
 bounds fence at the foot of the hill, and flopped 
 across the squashy ditch on the far side. There 
 was grass under her now, beautiful firm dairy grass, 
 and that entrancing perfume was lying on it as 
 thick as butter — Oh ! it was well to be hunting ! 
 thought Carnage, with another most childish shriek, 
 legging it after her father and mother and several 
 other blood relations in a way that did Muriel's 
 heart good to see. 
 
 The fox, as good luck would have it, had chosen 
 the very pick of Sir Thomas's country, and Muriel 
 and the stranger had it all to themselves. She 
 looked over her shoulder. Away back in a half-dug 
 potato field Nora and a knot of labourers were en- 
 gaged in bitter conflict with the foxy mare on the 
 subject of a bank with a rivulet in front of it. To 
 refuse to jump running water had been from girl- 
 hood the resolve of the foxy mare ; it was plain 
 that neither Nora's ash plant, nor the stalks of rag- 
 wort, torn from the potato ridges, with which the 
 countrymen flagellated her from behind, were likely 
 to make her change her mind. Farther back still 
 were a few specks, motionless apparently, but re- 
 presenting, as Muriel was well aware, the speeding 
 indignant forms of those Miss Purcells who had got 
 left. As for Sir Thomas — well, it was no good 
 going to meet the devil half-way ! was the filial re-
 
 High Tea at McKeowtis. i6l 
 
 flection of Sir Thomas's second daughter, as, with 
 a clatter of stones, she and the colt dropped into a 
 road, and charged on over the bank on the other 
 side, the colt leaving a hind leg behind him in it, 
 and sending thereby a clod of earth flying into the 
 stranger's face. The stranger only laughed, and 
 catching hold of the much enduring hireling he 
 drove him level with the colt, and lifted him over 
 the ensuing bank and gripe in a way subsequently 
 described by Jerry as having " covered acres ". 
 
 But the old fox's hitherto straight neck was 
 getting a twist in it. Possibly he had summered 
 himself rather too well, and found himself a little 
 short of training for the point that he had first fixed 
 on. At all events, he swung steadily round, and 
 headed for the lower end of the long belt of Liss 
 Cranny Wood ; and, as he and his pursuers so 
 headed. Retributive Justice, mounted on a large 
 brown horse, very red in the face, and followed by 
 a string of hounds and daughters, galloped steadily 
 toward the returning sinners. 
 
 It is probably superfluous to reproduce for sporting 
 readers the exact terms in which an infuriated 
 master of hounds reproves an erring flock. Sir 
 Thomas, even under ordinary circumstances, had a 
 stirring gift of invective. It was currently reported 
 that after each day's hunting Lady Purcell made a 
 house-to-house visitation of conciliation to all sub- 
 
 II
 
 1 62 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 scribers of five pounds and upwards. On this 
 occasion the Master, having ordered his two 
 daughters home without an instant's delay, pro- 
 ceeded to a satiric appreciation of the situation at 
 large and in detail, with general reflections as to the 
 advantage to tailors of sticking to their own trade, 
 and direct references of so pointed a character to 
 the mental abilities of the third delinquent, that 
 that gentleman's self-control became unequal to 
 further strain, and he also retired abruptly from the 
 scene. 
 
 Nora and Muriel meanwhile pursued their 
 humbled, but unrepentant, way home. It was 
 blowing as hard as ever. Muriel's hair had only 
 been saved from complete overthrow by two hair- 
 pins yielded, with pelican-like devotion, by a sister. 
 Nora had lost the Tam-o'-Shanter, and had torn 
 her blue serge skirt. The foxy mare had cast a 
 shoe, and the colt was unaffectedly done. 
 
 " He's mad for a drink ! " said Muriel, as he 
 strained towards the side of the bog road, against 
 which the waters of a small lake, swollen by the 
 recent rains, were washing in little waves under the 
 lash of the wind — " I think I'll let him just wet his 
 mouth." 
 
 She slackened the reins, and the thirsty colt 
 eagerly thrust his muzzle into the water. As he 
 did so he took another forward step, and instantly,
 
 High Tea at McKeowns. 163 
 
 with a terrific splash, he and his rider were flounder- 
 ing in brown water up to his withers in the ditch 
 below the submerged edge of the road. To Muriel's 
 credit it must be said that she bore this unlooked- 
 for immersion with the nerve of a Baptist convert. 
 In a second she had pulled the colt round parallel 
 with the bank, and in another she had hurled her- 
 self from the saddle and was dragging herself, like 
 a wounded otter, up on to the level of the road. 
 
 " Well you've done it now, Muriel ! " said Nora 
 dispassionately. " How pleased Sir Thomas will be 
 when the colt begins to cough to-morrow morning ! 
 He's bound to catch cold out of this. Look out ! 
 Here's that man that went the run with us. I'd try 
 and wipe some of the mud off my face if I were 
 you ! " 
 
 A younger sister of fifteen is not apt to err on 
 the side of over sympathy, but the deficiencies of 
 Nora were more than made up for by the solicitude 
 of the stranger with the pointed beard. He hauled 
 the colt from his watery nest, he dried him down 
 with handfuls of rushes, he wiped the saddle with 
 his own beautiful silk pocket-handkerchief. For a 
 stranger he displayed — so it struck Nora — a sur- 
 prising knowledge of the locality. He pointed out 
 that Mount Purcell was seven miles away, and that 
 the village of Drinagh, where he was putting up — 
 (" Oho ! so he's the inspector Sir Thomas was going
 
 164 ^^^ on the Irish Shore. 
 
 to be so civil to ! " thought the younger Miss Purcell 
 with an inward grin) — was only two or three miles 
 
 away. 
 
 " You know, Nora," said Muriel with an unusually 
 conciliatory manner, " it isn't at all out of our way, 
 and the colt ought to get a proper rub down and a 
 hot drink." 
 
 " I should have thought he'd had about as much 
 to drink as he wanted, hot or cold ! " said Nora. 
 
 But Nora had not been a younger sister for fifteen 
 years for nothing, and it was for Drinagh that the 
 party steered their course. 
 
 Their arrival stirred McKeown's Hotel (so-called) 
 to its depths. Destiny had decreed that Mrs. 
 McKeown, being, as she expressed it, "an epicure 
 about boots," should choose this day of all others to 
 go to " town " to buy herself a pair, leaving the 
 direction of the hotel in the hands of her husband, 
 a person of minor importance, and of Mary Ann 
 Whooly, a grey-haired kitchen-maid, who milked 
 the cows and made the beds, and at a distance in 
 the backyard was scarcely distinguishable from the 
 surrounding heaps of manure. 
 
 The Inspector's hospitality knew no limits, and 
 failed to recognise that those of McKeown's Hotel 
 were somewhat circumscribed. He ordered hot 
 whisky and water, mutton chops, dry clothes for 
 Miss Purcell, fires, tea, buttered toast, poached eggs
 
 " THE GREY-HAIRED KITCHEN-MAID."
 
 High Tea at McKeowns. 167 
 
 and other delicacies simultaneously and imme- 
 diately, and the voice of Mary Ann Whooly im- 
 ploring Heaven's help for herself and its vengeance 
 upon her inadequate assistants was heard far in the 
 streets of Drinagh. 
 
 "Sure herself" (herself was Mrs. McKeown) "has 
 her box locked agin me, and I've no clothes but 
 what's on me ! " she protested, producing after a long 
 interval a large brown shawl and a sallow-complex- 
 ioned blanket, " but the Captain's after sending 
 these. Faith, they'll do ye grand ! Arrah, why not, 
 asthore 1 Sure he'll never look at ye ! " 
 
 These consisted of a long covert coat, a still 
 longer pair of yellow knitted stockings, and a pair 
 of pumps. 
 
 " Sure they're the only best we have," continued 
 Mary Ann Whooly, pooling, as it were, her ward- 
 robe with that of the lodger. " God's will must be. 
 Miss Muriel, my darlin' gerr'l ! " 
 
 It says a good deal for the skill of Nora as a tire- 
 woman that her sister's appearance ten minutes 
 afterwards was open to no reproach, save possibly 
 that of eccentricity, and the Inspector's gaze — which 
 struck the tire-woman as being of a singularly en- 
 amoured character for so brief an acquaintance — 
 was so firmly fixed upon her sister's countenance 
 that nothing else seemed to signify. It was by this 
 time past two o'clock, and the repast, which arrived
 
 1 68 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 in successive relays, had, at all events, the merit of 
 combining the leading features of breakfast, lunch 
 and afternoon tea in one remarkable procession. 
 Julia Connolly, having inaugurated the entertain- 
 ment with tumblers of dark brown steaming whisky 
 and water, was impelled from strength to strength 
 by her growing sense of the greatness of the 
 occasion, and it would be hard to say whether the 
 younger Miss Purcell was more gratified by the 
 mound of feather-light pancakes which followed on 
 the tea and buttered toast, or by the almost cring- 
 ing politeness of her elder sister. 
 
 " How civil she is ! " thought Nora scornfully ; 
 "for all she's so civil she'll have to lend me her 
 saddle next week, or I'll tell them the whole story ! " 
 (Them meant the sisterhood.) *' I bet he was hold- 
 ing her hand just before the pancakes came in ! " 
 
 At about this time Lady Purcell, pursuing her 
 peaceful way home in her donkey chaise, was start- 
 led by the sound of neighing and by the rattle of 
 galloping hoofs behind her, and her consternation 
 may be imagined when the foxy mare and the colt, 
 saddled but riderless, suddenly ranged up one on 
 either side of her chaise. Having stopped them- 
 selves with one or two prodigious bounds that sent 
 the mud flying in every direction, they proceeded 
 to lively demonstrations of friendship towards the 
 donkey, which that respectable animal received
 
 High Tea at McKeowris. 169 
 
 with every symptom of annoyance. Lady Purcell 
 had never in her life succeeded in knowing one 
 horse from another, and what horses these were she 
 had not the faintest idea ; but the side saddles were 
 suggestive of her Amazon brood ; she perceived 
 that one of the horses had been under water, and 
 by the time she had arrived at her own hall door, 
 with the couple still in close attendance upon her, 
 anxiety as to the fate of her daughters and exhaus- 
 tion from much scourging of the donkey, upon whom 
 the heavy coquetries of the foxy mare had had a 
 most souring effect, rendered the poor lady but just 
 capable of asking if Sir Thomas had returned. 
 
 " He is, my Lady, but he's just after going down 
 to the farm, and he's going on to call on the 
 English gentleman that's at Mrs. McKeown's." 
 
 " And the young ladies ? " gasped Lady Purcell. 
 
 The answer suited with her fears. Lady Purcell 
 was not wont to take the initiative, still less one 
 of her husband's horses, without his approval ; but 
 the thought of the saturated side-saddle lent her 
 decision, and as soon as a horse and trap could be 
 got ready she set forth for Drinagh. 
 
 It need not for a moment be feared that such 
 experienced campaigners as the Misses Muriel and 
 Nora Purcell had forgotten that their father had 
 settled to call upon their temporary host, what 
 time the business of the morning should be ended,
 
 1 70 Ail on the Irish Shore. 
 
 or that they had not arranged a sound scheme 
 of retirement, but when the news was brought to 
 them that during the absence of the stable-boy — 
 " to borrow a half score of eggs and a lemon for 
 pancakes," it was explained — their horses had 
 broken forth from the cowshed and disappeared, it 
 may be admitted that even their stout hearts 
 quailed. 
 
 " Oh, it will be all right ! " the Inspector assured 
 them, with the easy optimism of the looker-on in 
 domestic tragedy ; " your father will see there was 
 nothing else for you to do." 
 
 " That's all jolly fine," returned Nora, " but Fm 
 going out to borrow Casey's car " (Casey was the 
 butcher), " and I'll just tell old Mary Ann to keep a 
 sharp look out for Sir Thomas, and give us warning 
 in time." 
 
 It is superfluous to this simple tale to narrate 
 the conversation that befel on the departure of 
 Nora. It was chiefly of a retrospective character, 
 with disquisitions on such abstractions as the 
 consolations that sometimes follow on the loss of 
 a wealthy great-aunt, the difficulties of shaving 
 with a " tennis elbow," the unchanging quality of 
 certain emotions. This later topic was still under 
 discussion when Nora burst into the room. 
 
 "Here's Sir Thomas!" she panted. "Muriel 
 fly ! There's no time to get downstairs, but Mary
 
 High 'tea at McKeowns. 171 
 
 Ann Whooly said we could go into the room off 
 this sitting-room till he's gone." 
 
 Flight is hardly the term to be applied to the 
 second Miss Purcell's retreat, and it says a good 
 deal for the Inspector's mental collapse that he saw 
 nothing ludicrous in her retreating back, clad as it 
 was in his own covert coat, with a blanket like the 
 garment of an Indian brave trailing beneath it. 
 Nora tore open a door near the fireplace, and re- 
 vealed a tiny room containing a table, a broken 
 chair, and a heap of feathers near an old feather 
 bed on the floor. 
 
 « Get in, Muriel ! " she cried. 
 
 They got in, and as the door closed on them Sir 
 Thomas entered the room. 
 
 During the morning the identity of the stranger 
 on whom he had poured the vials of his wrath, with 
 the Local Government Board Inspector whom he 
 was prepared to be delighted to honour, had been 
 brought home to Sir Thomas, and nothing could 
 have been more handsome and complete than the 
 apology that he now tendered. He generously 
 admitted the temptation endured in seeing hounds 
 get away with a good fox on a day devoted to 
 cubbing, and even went so far as to suggest that 
 possibly Captain Clarke 
 
 " Hamilton-Clarke," said the Inspector. 
 
 " Had ridden so hard in order to stop them."
 
 172 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 " Er — quite so," said the Inspector. 
 
 Something caused the dressing-room door to 
 rattle, and Captain Hamilton-Clarke grew rather 
 red. 
 
 " My wife and I hope," continued Sir Thomas, 
 urbanely, " that you will come over to dine with 
 us to-morrow evening, or possibly to-night." 
 
 He stopped. A trap drove rapidly up to the 
 door, and Lady Purcell's voice was heard agitatedly 
 inquiring " if Miss Muriel and Miss Nora were 
 there ? Casey had just told her " 
 
 The rest of the sentence was lost. 
 
 " Why, that is my wife ! " said Sir Thomas 
 " What the deuce does she want here ? " 
 
 A strange sound came from behind the door of 
 the dressing-room : something between a stifled cry 
 and a laugh. The Inspector's ears became as red 
 as blood. Then from within there was heard a 
 sort of rush, and something fell against the door. 
 There followed a wholly uncontrolled yell and a 
 crash, and the door was burst open. 
 
 It has, I think, been mentioned that in the 
 corner of the dressing-room in which the Misses 
 Purcell had taken refuge there was on the floor 
 the remains of a feather bed. The feathers had 
 come out through a ragged hole in one corner of 
 it ; Nora, in the shock of hearing of Lady Purcell's 
 arrival, trod on the corner of the bed and squeezed
 
 High Tea at McKeowns. 173 
 
 more of the feathers put of it. A gush of fluff was 
 the result, followed by 'a curious and unaccountable 
 movement in the bed, and then from the hole there 
 came forth a corpulent and very mangy old, rat. 
 Its face was grey and scaly, and horrid pink patches 
 adorned its fat person. It gave one beady glance 
 at Nora, and proceeded with hideous composure to 
 lope heavily across the floor towards the hole in 
 the wall by which it had at some bygone time 
 entered the room. But the hole had been nailed 
 up, and as the rat turned to seek another way of 
 escape the chair upon which Muriel had inconti- 
 nently sprung broke down, depositing her and her 
 voluminous draperies on top of the rat. 
 
 I cannot feel that Miss Purcell is to be blamed 
 that at this moment all power of self-control, of 
 reason almost, forsook her. Regardless of every 
 other consideration, she snatched the blankets and 
 the covert-coat skirts into one massive handful, and 
 with, as has been indicated, a yell of housemaid 
 stridency, flung herself against the door and dashed 
 into the sitting-room, closely followed by Nora, 
 and rather less closely by the rat. The latter 
 alone retained its presence of mind, and without 
 an instant's delay hurried across the room and 
 retired by the half-open door. Immediately from 
 the narrow staircase there arose a series of those 
 acclaims that usually attend the progress of royalty,
 
 174 ^^^^ (^^ the Irish Shore. 
 
 and, in even an intenser degree, of rats. There came 
 a masculine shout, a shrill and ladylike scream, a 
 howl from Mary Ann Whooly, accompanied by the 
 clang and rattle of a falling coal box, and then 
 Lady Purcell, pale and breathless, appeared at the 
 doorway of the sitting-room. 
 
 " Sure the young ladies isn't in the house at all, 
 your ladyship ! " cried the pursuing voice of Mary 
 Ann Whooly, faithful, even at this supreme crisis, 
 to a lost cause. 
 
 Lady Purcell heard her not. She was aware 
 only of her daughter Muriel, attired like a scare- 
 crow in a cold climate, and of the attendant fact 
 that the arm of the Local Government Board 
 Inspector was encircling Muriel's waist, as far 
 as circumstances and a brown woollen shawl 
 would permit. Nora, leaning half-way out of the 
 window, was calling at the top of her voice for Sir 
 Thomas's terrier ; Sir Thomas was very loudly 
 saying nothing in particular, much as an angry 
 elderly dog barks into the night. Lady Purcell 
 wildly concluded that the party was rehearsing a 
 charade — the last scene of a very vulgar charade. 
 
 " Muriel ! " she exclaimed, " what have you got 
 
 on you ? And who " She paused and stared 
 
 at the Inspector. "Good gracious!" she cried, 
 " why, it's Aubrey Hamilton ! "
 
 THE BAGMAN'S PONY. 
 
 When the regiment was at Delhi, a T. G. was sent 
 to us from the 105th Lancers, a bagman, as they 
 call that sort of globe-trotting fellow that knocks 
 about from one place to another, and takes all the 
 fun he can out of it at other people's expense. Scott 
 in the 105th gave this bagman a letter of introduc- 
 tion to me, told me that he was bringing down a 
 horse to run at the Delhi races ; so, as a matter of 
 course, I asked him to stop with me for the week. 
 It was a regular understood thing in India then, 
 this passing on the T. G. from one place to another ; 
 sometimes he was all right, and sometimes he was 
 a good deal the reverse — in any case, you were 
 bound to be hospitable, and afterwards you could, 
 if you liked, tell the man that sent him that you 
 didn't want any more from him. 
 
 The bagman arrived in due course, with a rum- 
 looking roan horse, called the " Doctor " ; a very 
 good horse, too, but not quite so good as the 
 bagman gave out that he was. He brought along 
 his own grass-cutter with him, as one generally does 
 in India, and the grass-cutter's pony, a sort of 
 animal people get because he can carry two or 
 
 175
 
 176 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 three more of these beastly clods of grass they dig 
 up for horses than a man can, and without much 
 regard to other qualities. The bagman seemed a 
 decentish sort of chap in his way, but, my word ! 
 he did put his foot in it the first night at mess ; by 
 George, he did ! There was somehow an idea that 
 he belonged to a wine merchant business in England, 
 and the Colonel thought we'd better open our best 
 cellar for the occasion, and so we did ; even got out 
 the old Madeira, and told the usual story about the 
 number of times it had been round the Cape. The 
 bagman took everything that came his way, and 
 held his tongue about it, which was rather damping. 
 At last, when it came to dessert and the Madeira, 
 Carew, one of our fellows, couldn't stand it any 
 longer — after all, it is aggravating if a man won't 
 praise your best wine, no matter how little you care 
 about his opinion, and the bagman was supposed to 
 be a connoisseur. 
 
 " Not a bad glass of wine that," says Carew to 
 him ; " what do you think of it ? " 
 
 "Not bad," says the bagman, sipping it, " I think I'll 
 show you something better in this line if you'll come 
 and dine with me in London when you're home next." 
 
 " Thanks," says Carew, getting as red as his own 
 jacket, and beginning to splutter — he always did 
 when he got angry — " this is good enough for me, 
 and for most people here "
 
 'The Bagman s Pony. 177 
 
 " Oh, but nobody up here has got a palate left," 
 says the bagman, laughing in a very superior sort 
 of way. 
 
 "What do you mean, sir?" shouted Carew, 
 
 jumping up, " I'll not have any d d bagmen 
 
 coming here to insult me ! " 
 
 By George, if you'll beb'eve me, Carew had a 
 false palate, with a little bit of sponge in the middle, 
 and we all knew it, except the bagman. There was 
 a frightful shindy, Carew wanting to have his blood, 
 and all the rest of us trying to prevent a row. We 
 succeeded somehow in the end, I don't quite know 
 how we managed it, as the bagman was very war> 
 like too ; but, anyhow, when I was going to bed 
 that night I saw them both in the billiard room, 
 very tight, leaning up against opposite ends of the 
 billiard table, and making shoves at the balls — with 
 the wrong ends of their cues, fortunately. 
 
 " He called me a d d bagman," says one, 
 
 nearly tumbling down with laughing. 
 
 "Told me I'd no palate," says the other, putting 
 his head down on the table and giggling away there, 
 " best thing I ever heard in my life." 
 
 Every one was as good friends as possible next 
 day at the races, and for the whole week as well. 
 Unfortunately for the bagrnan his horse didn't pull 
 off things in the way he expected, in fact he hadn't 
 a look in — we just killed him from first to last. As 
 
 12
 
 178 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 things went on the bagman began to look queer, 
 and by the end of the week he stood to lose a pretty 
 considerable lot of money, nearly all of it to me. 
 The way we arranged these matters then was a 
 general settling-up day after the races were over ; 
 every one squared up his books and planked ready 
 money down on the nail, or if he hadn't got it 
 he went and borrowed from some one else to do 
 it with. The bagman paid up what he owed the 
 others, and I began to feel a bit sorry for the fellow 
 when he came to me that night to finish up. He 
 hummed and hawed a bit, and then asked if I 
 should mind taking an I. O. U. from him, as he 
 was run out of the ready. 
 
 Of course I said, " All right, old man, certainly, 
 just the same to me," though it's usual in such cases 
 to put down the hard cash, but still — fellow staying 
 in my house, you know — sent on by this pal of mine 
 in the nth — absolutely nothing else to be done. 
 
 Next morning I was up and out on parade as 
 usual, and in the natural course of events began to 
 look about for my bagman. By George, not a sign 
 of him in his room, not a sign of him anywhere. 
 I thought to myself, this is peculiar, and I went 
 over to the stable to try whether there was any- 
 thing to be heard of him. 
 
 The first thing I saw was that the "Doctor's" 
 stall was empty.
 
 The Bagman s Pony. 179 
 
 " How's this ? " I said to the groom ; " where's 
 Mr. Leggett's horse ? " 
 
 " The sahib has taken him away this morning." 
 
 I began to have some notion then of what my 
 I. O. U. was worth. 
 
 " The sahib has left his grass-cutter and his 
 pony," said the sais, who probably had as good a 
 notion of what was up as I had. 
 
 "All right, send for the grass-cutter," I said. 
 
 The fellow came up, in a blue funk evidently, 
 and I couldn't make anything of him. Sahib this, 
 and sahib that, and salaaming and general idiotcy 
 — or shamming — I couldn't tell which. I didn't 
 know a nigger then as well as I do now. 
 
 " This is a very fishy business," I thought to my- 
 self, " and I think it's well on the cards the grass- 
 cutter will be out of this to-night on his pony. No, 
 by Jove, I'll see what the pony's good for before he 
 does that. Is the grass-cutter's pony there?" I 
 said to the sais. 
 
 " He is there, sahib, but he is only a kattiawa 
 tattoo" which is the name for a common kind of 
 mountain pony. 
 
 I had him out, and he certainly was a wretched- 
 looking little brute, dun with a black stripe down 
 his back, like all that breed, and all bony and 
 ragged and starved. 
 
 " Indeed, he is a gareeb kuch kam ki nahin" said
 
 i8o All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 the sais, meaning thereby a miserable beast, in the 
 most intensified form, " and not fit to stand in the 
 sahib's stable." 
 
 All the same, just for the fun of the thing, I put 
 the grass-cutter up on him, and told him to trot 
 him up and down. By George ! the pony went 
 like a flash of lightning ! I had him galloped next ; 
 same thing — fellow could hardly hold him. I 
 opened my eyes, I can tell you, but no matter what 
 way I looked at him I couldn't see where on earth 
 he got his pace from. It was there anyhow, there 
 wasn't a doubt about that. " That'll do," I said, 
 " put him up. And you just stay here," I said to 
 the grass-cutter ; "till I hear from Mr. Leggett where 
 you're to go to. Don't leave Delhi till you get 
 orders from me." 
 
 It got about during the day that the bagman 
 had disappeared, and had had a soft thing of it as 
 far as I was concerned. The ii2th were dining 
 with us that night, and they all set to work to draw 
 me after dinner about the business — thought them- 
 selves vastly witty over it. 
 
 " Hullo Paddy, so you're the girl he left behind 
 him ! " " Hear he went off with two suits of your 
 clothes, one over the other." " Cheer up, old man ; 
 he's left you the grass-cutter and the pony, and 
 what he leaves must be worth having, I'll bet ! " 
 and so on.
 
 The Bagman's Pony. i8i 
 
 I suppose I'd had a good deal more than my 
 share of the champagne, but all of a sudden I began 
 to feel pretty warm. 
 
 " You're all d d funny," I said, ** but I daresay 
 
 you'll find he's left me something that is worth 
 having." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " " Go on ! " «' Paddy's a great man 
 when he's drunk," and a lot more of the same sort. 
 
 " I tell you what it is," said I, " I'll back the pony 
 he's left here to trot his twelve miles an hour on the 
 road." 
 
 " Bosh ! " says Barclay of the 1 12th. " I've seen 
 him, and I'll lay you a thousand rupees even he 
 doesn't." 
 
 "Done!" said I, whacking my hand down on 
 the table. 
 
 "And I'll lay another thousand," says another 
 fellow. 
 
 "Done with you too," said I. 
 
 Every one began to stare a bit then. 
 
 " Go to bed, Paddy," says the Colonel, " you're 
 making an exhibition of yourself." 
 
 " Thank you, sir ; I know pretty well what I'm 
 talking about," said I ; but, by George, I began 
 privately to think I'd better pull myself together 
 a bit, and I got out my book and began to hedge 
 — laid three to one on the pony to do eleven miles 
 in the hour, and four to one on him to do ten — all
 
 1 82 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 the fellows delighted to get their money on. I was 
 to choose my own ground, and to have a fortnight 
 to train the pony, and by the time I went to bed 
 I stood to lose about j;^ 1,000. 
 
 Somehow in the morning I didn't feel quite so 
 cheery about things — one doesn't after a big night 
 — one gets nasty qualms, both mental and the 
 other kind. I went out to look after the pony, 
 and the first thing I saw by way of an appetiser 
 was Biddy, with a face as long as my arm. Biddy, 
 I should explain, was a chap called Biddulph, in 
 the Artillery ; they called him Biddy for short, and 
 partly, too, because he kept a racing stable with 
 me in those days, I being called Paddy by every 
 one, because I was Irish — English idea of wit — 
 Paddy and Biddy, you see. 
 
 " Well," said he, " I hear you've about gone and 
 done it this time. The 112th are going about 
 with trumpets and shawms, and looking round for 
 ways to spend that thousand when they get it. 
 There are to be new polo ponies, a big luncheon, 
 and a piece of plate bought for the mess, in 
 memory of that benefactor of the regiment, the 
 departed bagman. Well, now, let's see the pony. 
 That's what Pve come down for." 
 
 I'm hanged if the brute didn't look more vulgar 
 and wretched than ever when he was brought out, 
 and I began to feel that perhaps I was more parts
 
 'J'he Bagman s Pony. 183 
 
 of a fool than I thought I was. Biddy stood look- 
 ing at him there with his underlip stuck out. 
 
 " 1 think you've lost your money," he said. 
 That was all, but the way he said it made me feel 
 conscious of the shortcomings of every hair in 
 the brute's ugly hide. 
 
 " Wait a bit," I said, " you haven't seen him 
 going yet. I think he has the heels of any pony 
 in the place." 
 
 I got a boy on to him without any more ado, 
 thinking to myself I was going to astonish Biddy. 
 "You just get out of his way, that's all," says I, 
 standing back to let him start. 
 
 If you'll believe it, he wouldn't budge a foot ! — 
 not an inch — no amount of licking had any effect 
 on him. He just humped his back, and tossed his 
 head and grunted — he must have had a skin as thick 
 as three donkeys ! I got on to him myself and put 
 the spurs in, and he went up on his hind legs and 
 nearly came back with me — that was all the good 
 I got of that. 
 
 " Where's the grass-cutter," I shouted, jumping 
 off him in about as great a fury as I ever was in. 
 " I suppose he knows how to make this devil go ! " 
 
 " Grass-cutter went away last night, sahib. Me 
 see him try to open stable door and go away. Me 
 see him no more." 
 
 I used pretty well all the bad language I knew
 
 184 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 in one blast. Biddy began to walk away, laughing 
 till I felt as if I could kick him. 
 
 " I'm going to have a front seat for this trotting 
 match," he said, stopping to get his wind. " Spec- 
 tators along the route requested to provide them- 
 selves with pitchforks and fireworks, I suppose, in 
 case the champion pony should show any of his 
 engaging little temper. Never mind, old man, I'll 
 see you through this, there's no use in getting into 
 a wax about it. I'm going shares with you, the 
 way we always do," 
 
 I can't say I responded graciously, I rather think 
 I cursed him and everything else in heaps. When 
 he was gone I began to think of what could be done. 
 
 " Get out the dog-cart," I said, as a last chance. 
 " Perhaps he'll go in harness," 
 
 We wheeled the cart up to him, got him harnessed 
 to it, and in two minutes that pony was walking, 
 trotting, anything I wanted — can't explain why — 
 one of the mysteries of horseflesh. I drove him 
 out through the Cashmere Gate, passing Biddy on 
 the way, and feeling a good deal the better for it, 
 and as soon as I got on to the flat stretch of road 
 outside the gate I tried what the pony could do. 
 He went even better than I thought he could, very 
 rough and uneven, of course, but still promising. 
 I brought him home, and had him put into training 
 at once, as carefully as if he was going for the
 
 The Bagman's Pony. 185 
 
 Derby. I chose the course, took the six-mile 
 stretch of road from the Cashmere gate to Sufter 
 Jung's tomb, and drove him over it every day. It 
 was a splendid course — level as a table, and dead 
 straight for the most part — and after a few days 
 he could do it in about forty minutes out and 
 thirty-five back. People began to talk then, 
 especially as the pony's look and shape were im- 
 proving each day, and after a little time every 
 one was planking his money on one way or 
 another — Biddy putting on a thousand on his own 
 account — still, I'm bound to say the odds were 
 against the pony. The whole of Delhi got into 
 a state of excitement about it, natives and all, 
 and every day I got letters warning me to take 
 care, as there might be foul play. The stable the 
 pony was in was a big one, and I had a wall built 
 across it, and put a man with a gun in the outer 
 compartment. I bought all his corn myself, in 
 feeds at a time, going here, there, and everywhere 
 for it, never to the same place for two days 
 together — I thought it was better to be sure than 
 sorry, and there's no trusting a nigger. 
 
 The day of the match every soul in the place 
 turned out, such crowds that I could scarcely get 
 the dog-cart through when I drove to the Cashmere 
 gate. I got down there, and was looking over the 
 cart to see that everything was right, when a little
 
 1 86 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 half-caste keranie, a sort of low-class clerk, came 
 up behind me and began talking to me in a 
 mysterious kind of way, in that vile chi-chi accent 
 one gets to hate so awfully. 
 
 'Look here, Sar," he said, "you take my car, 
 Sar; it built for racing. I do much trot-racing 
 myself" — mentioning his name — "and you go 
 much faster my car, Sar." 
 
 I trusted nobody in those days, and thought a 
 good deal of myself accordingly. I hadn't found 
 out that it takes a much smarter man to know 
 how to trust a few. 
 
 "Thank you," I said, "I think I'll keep my 
 own, the pony's accustomed to it." 
 
 I think he understood quite well what I felt, 
 but he didn't show any resentment. 
 
 " Well, Sar, you no trust my car, you let me see 
 your wheels ? " 
 
 " Certainly," I said " you may look at them," 
 determined in my own mind I should keep my 
 eye on him while he did. 
 
 He got out a machine for propping the axle, 
 and lifted the wheel off the ground. 
 
 " Make the wheel go round," he said. 
 
 I didn't like it much, but I gave the wheel a 
 turn. He looked at it till it stopped. 
 
 " You lose match if you take that car," he said, 
 " you take my car, Sar."
 
 The Bagman s Pony. 187 
 
 " What do you mean ? " said I, pretty sharply. 
 
 "Look here," he said, setting the wheel going 
 again. "You see here, Sar, it die, all in a minute, 
 it jerk, doesn't die smooth. You see my wheel, 
 Sar." 
 
 He put the lift under his own, and started the 
 wheel revolving. It took about three times as 
 long to die as mine, going steady and silent and 
 stopping imperceptibly, not so much as a tremor 
 in it. 
 
 " Now, Sar ! " he said, " you see I speak true, 
 Sar. I back you two hundred rupee, if I lose I'm 
 ruin, and I beg you, Sar, take my car ! can no win 
 with yours, mine match car." 
 
 " All right!" said I with a sort of impulse, " I'll 
 take it." And so I did. 
 
 I had to start just under the arch of the Cash- 
 mere gate, by a pistol shot, fired from overhead. 
 I didn't quite care for the look of the pony's ears 
 while I was waiting for it — the crowd had frightened 
 him a bit I think. By Jove, when the bang came he 
 reared straight up, dropped down again and stuck 
 his fore-legs out, reared again when I gave him the 
 whip, every second of course telling against me. 
 
 " Here, let me help you," shouted Biddy, jumping 
 into the trap. His weight settled the business, 
 down came the pony, and we went away like 
 blazes.
 
 1 88 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 The three umpires rode with us, one each side 
 and one behind, at least that was the way at first, 
 but I found the clattering of their hoofs made it 
 next to impossible to hold the pony. I got them 
 to keep back, and after that he went fairly steadily, 
 but it was anxious work. The noise and excite- 
 ment had told on him a lot, he had a tendency to 
 break during all that six miles out, and he was in 
 a lather before we got to Sufter Jung's tomb. 
 There were a lot of people waiting for me out 
 there, some ladies on horseback, too, and there 
 was a coffee-shop going, with drinks of all kinds. 
 As I got near they began to call out, "You're 
 done, Paddy, thirty-four minutes gone already, 
 you haven't the ghost of a chance. Come and 
 have a drink and look pleasant over it." 
 
 I turned the pony, and Biddy and I jumped out. 
 I went up to the table, snatched up a glass of brandy 
 and filled my mouth with it, then went back to the 
 pony, took him by the head, and sent a squirt of 
 brandy up each nostril ; I squirted the rest down 
 his throat, went back to the table, swallowed half a 
 tumbler of curacoa or something, and was into the 
 trap and off again, the whole thing not taking more 
 than twenty seconds. 
 
 The business began to be pretty exciting after 
 that. You can see four miles straight ahead of you 
 on that road ; and that day the police had special
 
 T'he Bagman^ s Pony. 189 
 
 orders to keep it clear, so that it was a perfectly 
 blank, white stretch as far as I could see. You 
 know how one never seems to get any nearer to 
 things on a road like that, and there was the clock 
 hanging opposite to me on the splash board ; I 
 couldn't look at it, but I could hear its beastly click- 
 click through the trotting of the pony, and that was 
 nearly as bad as seeing the minute hand going from 
 pip to pip. But, by George, I pretty soon heard a 
 worse kind of noise than that. It was a case of 
 preserve me from my friends. The people who had 
 gone out to Sufter Jung's tomb on horseback to 
 meet me, thought it would be a capital plan to come 
 along after me and see the fun, and encourage me 
 a bit — so they told me afterwards. The way they 
 encouraged me was by galloping till they picked 
 me up, and then hammering along behind me like 
 a troop of cavalry till it was all I could do to keep 
 the pony from breaking. 
 
 " You've got to win, Paddy," calls out Mrs. Harry 
 Le Bretton, galloping up alongside, " you promised 
 you would ! " 
 
 Mrs. Harry and I were great friends in those 
 days — very sporting little woman, nearly as keen 
 about the match as I was — but at that moment I 
 couldn't pick my words. 
 
 " Keep back ! " I shouted to her ; " keep back, for 
 pity's sake ! "
 
 190 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 It was too late — the next instant the pony was 
 galloping. The penalty is that you have to pull up, 
 and make the wheels turn in the opposite direction, 
 and I just threw the pony on his haunches. He 
 nearly came back into the cart, but the tremendous 
 jerk gave the backward turn to the wheels and I was 
 off again. Not even that kept the people back. 
 Mrs. Le Bretton came alongside again to say some- 
 thing else to me, and I suddenly felt half mad from 
 the clatter and the frightful strain of the pony on 
 my arms. 
 
 "D n it all! Le Bretton!" I yelled, as the 
 
 pony broke for the second time, "can't you keep 
 your wife away ! " 
 
 They did let me alone after that — turned off the 
 road and took a scoop across the plain, so as to 
 come up with me at the finish — and I pulled myself 
 together to do the last couple of miles. I could see 
 that Cashmere gate and the Delhi walls ahead of 
 me ; 'pon my soul I felt as if they were defying me 
 and despising me, just standing waiting there under 
 the blazing sky, and they never seemed to get any 
 nearer. It was like the first night of a fever, the 
 whizzing of the wheels, the ding-dong of the pony's 
 hoofs, the silence all round, the feeling of stress and 
 insane hurrying on, the throbbing of my head, and 
 the scorching heat. I'll swear no fever I've ever 
 had was worse than that last two miles.
 
 The Bagman's Pony. 191 
 
 As I reached the Delhi walls I took one look at 
 the clock. There was barely a minute left. 
 
 " By Jove ! " I gasped, " I'm done ! " 
 
 I shouted and yelled to the pony like a madman, 
 to keep up what heart was left in the wretched little 
 brute, holding on to him for bare life, with my arms 
 and legs straight out in front of me. The gray wall 
 and the blinding road rushed by me like a river — I 
 scarcely knew what happened — I couldn't think of 
 anything but the ticking of the clock that I was 
 somehow trying to count, till there came the bang 
 of a pistol over my head. 
 
 It was the Cashmere gate, and I had thirteen 
 seconds in hand. 
 
 There was never anything more heard of the bag- 
 man. He can, if he likes, soothe his conscience 
 with the reflection that he was worth a thousand 
 pounds to me. 
 
 But Mrs. Le Bretton never quite forgave me.
 
 AN IRISH PROBLEM. 
 
 Conversation raged on the long flanks of the 
 mail-car. 
 
 An elderly priest, with a warm complexion and 
 a controversial under-lip, was expounding his 
 native country to a fellow-traveller, with slight but 
 irrepressible pulpit gestures of the hand. The fellow- 
 traveller, albeit lavender-hued from an autumn east 
 wind, was obediently observing the anaemic patches 
 of oats and barley, pale and thin, like the hair of a 
 starving baby, and the huge slants of brown heather 
 and turf bog, and was interjecting "Just so!" at 
 decent intervals. Now and then, as the two tall 
 brown mares slackened for a bout of collar-work at 
 a hill, or squeezed slowly past a cart stacked high 
 with sods of turf, we, sitting in silence, Irish wolves 
 in the clothing of English tourists, could hear across 
 the intervening pile of luggage and bicycles such a 
 storm of conversation as bursts forth at a dinner- 
 party after the champagne has twice gone round. 
 
 The brunt of the talk was borne by the old lady 
 
 in the centre. Her broad back, chequered with red 
 
 plaid, remained monumental in height and stillness, 
 
 but there was that in the tremor o( the steel spray 
 
 192
 
 An Irish Problem. 193 
 
 in her bonnet that told of a high pressure of narra- 
 tive. The bearded Dublin tourist on her left was 
 but little behind her in the ardour of giving infor- 
 mation. His wife, a beautifully dressed lady with 
 cotton-wool in her ears, remained abstracted, 
 whether from toothache, or exclusiveness, or mere 
 wifely boredom, we cannot say. Among the swift 
 shuttles of Irish speech the ponderous questions 
 and pronouncements of an English fisherman drove 
 their way. The talk was, we gathered, of sport and 
 game laws and their administration. 
 
 " Is it hares ? " cried the Dublin tourist, perorat- 
 ing after a flight or two into the subject of poachers ; 
 "what d'ye think would happen a hare in Donegal?" 
 
 His handsome brown eye swept his audience, 
 even, through the spokes of a bicycle, gathering in 
 our sympathies. It left no doubts as to the tragedy 
 that awaited the hare. 
 
 The east wind hunted us along the shore of the 
 wide, bleak bay, rimmed with yellow sea-weed, and 
 black and ruffled like the innumerable lakelets that 
 lay along our route. The tall mountain over it was 
 hooded in cloud. It seemed as threatening and 
 mysterious as Sinai ; ready to utter some awful 
 voice of law to the brown solitudes and windy 
 silences. 
 
 Far ahead of us a few houses rose suddenly above 
 the low coast line, an ugly family party of squat 
 
 13
 
 194 ^^^ ^^ the Irish Shore. 
 
 gables and whitewashed walls, with nothing nearer 
 them to westward than the homesteads of America. 
 
 Far and near there was not a tree visible, nor a 
 touch of colour to tell of the saving grace of flowers. 
 The brown mares swung the car along with some- 
 thing resembling enthusiasm ; Letterbeg was the 
 end of their stage ; it was the end of ours also. 
 Numb with long sitting we dropped cumbrously to 
 earth from the high footboard, and found ourselves 
 face to face with the problem of how to spend the 
 next three hours. It was eleven o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, too early for lunch, though, apparently, quite the 
 fashionable hour in Letterbeg for bottled porter, 
 judging by the squeak of the corkscrew and the 
 clash of glasses that issued from the dark interior 
 of the house in front of which we had been shed by 
 the mail-car. This was a long cottage with a pros- 
 perous slate roof, and a board over its narrow door 
 announcing that one Jas. Heraty was licensed for 
 the retail of spirits and porter. 
 
 The mail-car rolled away ; as it crawled over the 
 top of a hill and sank out of sight a last wave of 
 the priestly hand seemed to include us. Doubtless 
 we were being expounded as English tourists, and 
 our great economic value to the country was being 
 expatiated upon. The role is an important one, 
 and has its privileges ; yet, to the wolf, there is 
 something stifling in sheep's clothing ; certainly.
 
 An Irish Problem. 195 
 
 on the occasions when it was discarded by us, a 
 sympathy and understanding with the hotels was 
 quickly established. Possibly they also are wolves. 
 Undoubtedly the English tourist, with his circular 
 ticket and his coupons, does not invariably get the 
 best of everything. We write surrounded by him 
 and his sufferings. An earlier visit than usual to 
 the hotel sitting-room has revealed him, lying 
 miserably on the sofa, shrouded in a filthy duvet, 
 having been flung there at some two in the morn- 
 ing on his arrival, wet through, from heaven knows 
 what tremendous walk. Subsequently we hear 
 him being haled from his lair by the chambermaid, 
 who treats him as the dirt under her feet (or, in- 
 deed, if we may judge by our bedroom carpet, with 
 far less consideration). 
 
 " Here ! " she says, *' go in there and wash yer- 
 self!" 
 
 We hear her slamming him into a room from 
 which two others of his kind have been recently 
 bolted like rabbits, by the boots, to catch the 6 A.M. 
 train. We can just faintly realise its atmosphere. 
 
 This, however, is a digression, but remotely con- 
 nected with Letterbeg and Mr. Heraty's window, to 
 which in our forlorn state we turned for distraction. 
 
 It was very small, about two feet square, but it 
 made its appeal to all the needs of humanity from 
 the cradle to the grave. A feeding-bottle, a rosary,
 
 196 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 a photograph of Mr. Kruger, a peg-top, a case of 
 salmon flies, an artistic letter-weight, consisting 
 of a pigeon's egg carved in Connemara marble, 
 two seductively small bottles of castor-oil — these, 
 mounted on an embankment of packets of corn- 
 flour and rat poison, crowded the four little panes. 
 Inside the shop the assortment ranged from bundles 
 of reaping-hooks on the earthen floor to bottles of 
 champagne in the murk of the top shelf. A few 
 men leaned against the tin-covered counter, gravely 
 drinking porter. As we stood dubiously at the 
 door there was a padding of bare feet in the road- 
 way, and a very small boy with a red head, dressed 
 in a long flannel frock of a rich madder shade 
 fluttered past us into the shop. 
 
 " Me dada says let yees be hurrying ! " he gasped, 
 between spasms of what was obviously whooping- 
 cough. " Sweeny's case is comin' on ! " 
 
 Had the message been delivered by the Sergeant- 
 at-Arms it could not have been received with more re- 
 spectful attention or been more immediately obeyed. 
 The porter was gulped down, one unfinished glass 
 being bestowed upon the Sergeant-at-Arms, possibly 
 as a palliative for the whooping-cough, and the party 
 trooped up the road towards a thatched and white- 
 washed cottage that stood askew at the top of a 
 lane leading to the seashore. Two tall constables 
 of the R.I.C. stood at the door of the cottage. It
 
 An Irish Problem. 197 
 
 came to us, with a lifting of the heart, that we had 
 chanced upon Petty Sessions day in Letterbeg, and 
 this was the court-house. 
 
 It was uncommonly hot in what is called in news- 
 papers " the body of the court ". Something of the 
 nature of a rood-screen, boarded solidly up to a 
 height of about four feet, divided the long single 
 room of the cottage ; we, with the rest of the public, 
 were penned in the division nearest the door. The 
 cobwebbed boards of the loft overhead almost rested 
 on our hats ; the public, not being provided with 
 seats by the Government, shuffled on the earthen 
 floor and unaffectedly rested on us and each other. 
 Within the rood-screen two magistrates sat at a 
 table, with their suite, consisting of a clerk, an 
 interpreter, and a district inspector of police, disposed 
 round them. 
 
 " The young fella with the foxy mustash is 
 Docthor Lyden," whispered an informant in response 
 to a question, " and the owld lad that's lookin' at 
 ye now is Heraty, that owns the shop above " 
 
 At this juncture an emissary from the Bench 
 very kindly offered us seats within the rood-screen. 
 We took them, on a high wooden settle, beside the 
 magisterial table, and the business of the court 
 proceeded. 
 
 Close to us stood the defendant, Sweeny, a tall 
 elderly man, with a long, composed, shaven face
 
 198 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 and an all-observant grey eye : Irish in type, Irish 
 in expression, intensely Irish in the self-possession 
 in which he stood, playing to perfection the part of 
 calm rectitude and unassailable integrity. 
 
 Facing him, the plaintiff lounged against the 
 partition ; a man strangely improbable in appear- 
 ance, with close-cropped grey hair, a young, fresh- 
 coloured face, a bristling orange moustache, and a 
 big, blunt nose. One could have believed him a 
 soldier, a German, anything but what he was, 
 a peasant from the furthest shores of Western 
 Ireland, cut off from what we call civilisation by 
 his ignorance of any language save his own ancient 
 speech, wherein the ideas of to-day stand out in 
 English words like telegraph posts in a Connemara 
 moorland. 
 
 Between the two stood the interpreter — small, old, 
 froglike in profile, full of the dignity of the Govern- 
 ment official. 
 
 " Well, we should be getting on now," remarked 
 the Chairman, Heraty, J. P., after some explanatory 
 politeness to his unexpected visitors. " William, 
 swear the plaintiff!" 
 
 The oath was administered in Irish, and the 
 orange moustache brushed the greasy Testament. 
 The space above the dado of the partition became 
 suddenly a tapestry of attentive faces, clear-eyed, 
 all-comprehending.
 
 SWEENY, 
 
 tl
 
 An Irish 'Problem. 201 
 
 "This case," announced Mr. Heraty judicially, 
 yet not without a glance at the visitors, " is a demand 
 for compensation in the matter of a sheep that was 
 drowned. William " — this to the interpreter — " ask 
 Darcy what he has to say for himself?" 
 
 Darcy hitched himself round, still with a shoulder 
 propped against the partition, and uttered, without 
 any enthusiasm, a few nasal and guttural sentences. 
 
 " He says, yer worship," said William, with unctu- 
 ous propriejty, "that Sweeny's gorsoons were ever 
 and always hunting his sheep, and settin' on their 
 dog to hunt her, and that last week they dhrove her 
 into the lake and dhrownded her altogether." 
 
 " Now," said Mr. Heraty, in a conversational 
 tone, " William, when ye employ the word 'gor- 
 soon,' do ye mean children of the male or female 
 sex ? " 
 
 " Well, yer worship," replied William, who, it 
 may incidentally be mentioned, was himself in need 
 of either an interpreter or of a new and complete 
 set of teeth, " I should considher he meant ayther 
 the one or the other." 
 
 " They're usually one or the other," said Doctor 
 Lyden solemnly, and in a stupendous brogue. It 
 was the first time he had spoken ; he leaned back, 
 with his hands in his pockets, and surveyed with 
 quiet but very bright eyes the instant grin that 
 illumined the faces of the tapestry.
 
 202 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 " Sure William himself is no bad judge of gor- 
 soons," said Mr. Heraty. " Hadn't he a christening 
 in his own house three weeks ago ? " 
 
 At this excursion into the family affairs of the 
 interpreter the grin broke into a roar. 
 
 " See now, we'll ask Mr. Byrne, the schoolmaster," 
 went on Mr. Heraty with owl-like gravity. " Isn't 
 that Mr. Byrne that I see back there in the coort ? 
 Come forward, Mr. Byrne ! " 
 
 Thus adjured, a tall, spectacled man emerged 
 from the crowd, and, beaming with a pleasing 
 elderly bashfulness through his spectacles, gave it 
 as his opinion that though gorsoon was a term 
 usually applied to the male child, it was equally 
 applicable to the female. "But, indeed," he con- 
 cluded, " the Bench has as good Irish as I have 
 myself, and better." 
 
 " The law requires that the thransactions of this 
 coort shall take place in English," the Chairman re- 
 sponded, "and we have also the public to consider." 
 
 As it was pretty certain that we were the only 
 persons in the court who did not understand Irish, 
 it was borne in upon us that we were the public, 
 and we appreciated the consideration. 
 
 "We may assume, then, that the children that 
 set on the dog wor' of both sexes," proceeded Mr. 
 
 Heraty. " Well, now, as to the dog William, 
 
 ask Darcy what sort of dog was it."
 
 An Irish Problem. 203 
 
 The monotonous and quiet Irish sentences 
 followed one another again. 
 
 " That'll do. Now, William " 
 
 " He says, yer worship, that he was a big lump 
 of a yalla dog, an' very cross, by reason of he r'arin' 
 a pup." 
 
 " And 'twas to make mutton-broth for the pup 
 she dhrove Darcy's sheep in the lake, I suppose ? " 
 
 A contemptuous smile passed over Darcy's face 
 as the Chairman's sally was duly translated to him, 
 and he made a rapid reply. 
 
 " He says there isn't one of the neighbours but 
 got great annoyance by the same dog, yer worship, 
 and that when the dog'd be out by night hunting, 
 there wouldn't be a yard o' wather in the lakes but 
 he'd have it barked over." 
 
 " It appears," observed Dr. Lyden serenely, 
 " that the dog, like the gorsoons, was of both sexes." 
 
 " Well, well, no matther now ; we'll hear what the 
 defendant has to say. Swear Sweeny ! " said Mr. 
 Heraty, smoothing his long grey beard, with 
 suddenly remembered judicial severity and looking 
 menacingly over his spectacles at Sweeny. " Here, 
 now ! you don't want an interpreter ! You that 
 has a sisther married to a stationmaster and a 
 brother in the Connaught Rangers ! " 
 
 " I have as good English as anny man in this 
 coort," said Sweeny morosely.
 
 204 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 " Well, show it off man ! What defence have ye ? " 
 
 " I say that the sheep wasn't Darcy's at all," said 
 Sweeny firmly, standing as straight as a ramrod, 
 with his hands behind his back, a picture of surly, 
 wronged integrity. " And there's no man livin' can 
 prove she was. Ask him now what way did he 
 know her?" 
 
 The question evidently touched Darcy on a 
 tender point. He squared his big shoulders in his 
 white flannel jacket, and turning his face for the 
 first time towards the magistrates delivered a flood 
 of Irish, in which we heard a word that sounded 
 like 7illdn often repeated. 
 
 " He says, yer worships," translated William, 
 " why wouldn't he know her ! Hadn't she the iilldn 
 on her ! He says a poor man like him would know 
 one of the few sheep he has as well as yer worship'd 
 know one o' yer own gowns if it had sthrayed from 
 ye. 
 
 It is probable that we looked some of the stupe- 
 faction that we felt at this remarkable reference to 
 Mr. Heraty's wardrobe. 
 
 " For the benefit of the general public," said Dr. 
 Lyden, in his languid, subtle brogue, with a side- 
 glance at that body, " it may be no harm to mention 
 that the plaintiff is alluding to the Chairman's 
 yearling calves and not to his costume." 
 
 *' Order now ! " said Mr. Heraty severely.
 
 An Irish Problem. 205 
 
 " An' he says," continued William, warily purging 
 his frog-countenance of any hint of appreciation, 
 " that Sweeny knew the ulldti that was on her as 
 well as himself did." 
 
 " Ulldn ! What sort of English is that for an 
 interpreter to be using ! Do ye suppose the general 
 public knows what is an ulldn ? " interrupted Mr. 
 Heraty with lightning rapidity. " Explain that 
 now ! 
 
 "Why, yer worship, sure anny one in the 
 world'd know what the ulldn on a sheep's back 
 is ! " said William, staggered by this sudden 
 onslaught, "though there's some might call it the 
 rebughr 
 
 " God help the Government that's payin' you 
 wages ! " said Mr. Heraty with sudden and bitter 
 ferocity (but did we intercept a wink at his col- 
 league ?). " If it wasn't for the young family you're 
 r'arin' in yer old age, I'd commit ye for contempt ot 
 coort ! " 
 
 A frank shout of laughter, from every one in 
 court but the victim, greeted this sally, the chorus 
 being, as it were, barbed by a shrill crow of 
 whooping-cough. 
 
 " Mr. Byrne ! " continued Mr. Heraty without a 
 smile, " we must call upon you again ! " 
 
 Mr. Byrne's meek scholastic face once more 
 appeared at the rood-screen.
 
 2o6 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 "Well, I should say," he ventured decorously, 
 "that the expression is locally applied to what I 
 may call a plume or a feather that is worn on 
 various parts of the sheep's back, for a mark, as I 
 might say, of distinction." 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Byrne, thank you," said Mr. 
 Heraty, to whose imagination a vision of a plumed 
 or feathered sheep seemed to offer nothing unusual, 
 " remember that now, William ! " 
 
 Dr. Lyden looked at his watch. 
 
 " Don't you think Sweeny might go on with his 
 defence ? " he remarked. " About the children. 
 Sweeny — how many have ye ? " 
 
 " I have four." 
 
 " And how old are they ? " 
 
 " There's one o' thim is six years an' another o' 
 thim is seven " 
 
 "Yes, and the other two eight and nine, I 
 suppose?" commented Dr. Lyden. 
 
 The defendant remained silent. 
 
 " Do ye see now how well he began with the 
 youngest — the way we'd think 'twas the eldest ! " 
 resumed Dr. Lyden. " I think we may assume that 
 a gorsoon — male or female — of eight or nine years 
 is capable of setting a dog on the sheep." 
 
 Here Darcy spoke again. 
 
 " He says," interpreted William, " there isn't pig 
 nor ass, sheep nor duck, belongin' to him that isn't
 
 An Irish Problem. 207 
 
 heart-scalded with the same childhren an' their 
 dog." 
 
 "Well, I say now, an' I swear it," said Sweeny, 
 his eye kindling like a coal, and his voice rising as 
 the core of what was probably an old neighbourly 
 grudge was neared, "my land is bare from his 
 bastes threspassing on it, and my childhren are in 
 dread to pass his house itself with the kicks an' the 
 sthrokes himself an' his mother dhraws on them ! 
 The Lord Almighty knows " 
 
 " Stop now ! " said Mr. Heraty, holding up his 
 hand. " Stop ! The Lord's not intherferin' in this 
 case at all ! It's me an' Doctor Lyden has it to 
 settle." 
 
 No one seemed to find anything surprising in 
 this pronouncement ; it was accepted as seriously 
 as any similar statement of the Prophet Samuel to 
 the Children of Israel, and was evidently meant to 
 imply that abstract justice might be expected. 
 
 " We may assume, then," said Dr. Lyden amiably, 
 "that the sheep walked out into Sweeny's end of 
 the lake and drowned herself there on account of 
 the spite there was between the two families." 
 
 The court tittered. A dingy red showed itself 
 among the grizzled hairs and wrinkles on Sweeny's 
 cheek. In Ireland a point can often be better 
 carried by sarcasm than by logic. 
 
 " She was blind enough to dhrown herself, or two
 
 2o8 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 like her ! " he said angrily ; " she was that owld and 
 blind it was ayqual to her where she'd go ! " 
 
 " How d'ye know she was blind ? " said Mr. 
 Heraty quickly. 
 
 " I thought the defence opened with the state- 
 ment that it wasn't Darcy's sheep at all," put in 
 Dr. Lyden, leaning back in his chair with his eyes 
 fixed on the rafters. 
 
 Sweeny firmly regarded Mr. Heraty. 
 
 " How would I know she was blind ? " he re- 
 peated. " Many's the time when she'd be takin' a 
 sthroll in on my land I'd see her fallin' down in the 
 rocks, she was that blind ! An' didn't I see Darcy's 
 mother one time, an' she puttin' something on her 
 eyes." 
 
 "Was it glasses she was putting on the sheep's 
 eyes ? " suggested the Chairman, with a glance that 
 admitted the court to the joke. 
 
 " No, but an ointment," said Sweeny stubbornly. 
 " I seen her rubbing it to the eyes, an' she no 
 more than thirty yards from me." 
 
 "Will ye swear that?" thundered Mr. Heraty; 
 " will you swear that at a distance of thirty yards 
 you could tell what was between Darcy's mother's 
 fingers and the sheep's eyes ? No you will not ! 
 Nor no man could ! William, is Darcy's mother in 
 the coort? We'll have to take evidence from her 
 as to the condition of the sheep's eyes ! "
 
 An Irish Problem. 209 
 
 " Darcy says, yer worship, that his mother would 
 lose her life if she was to be brought into coort,' 
 explained William, after an interlude in Irish, to 
 which both magistrates listened with evident 
 interest ; " that ere last night a frog jumped into 
 the bed to her in the night, and she got out of the 
 bed to light the Blessed Candle, and when she got 
 back to the bed again she was in it always between 
 herself and the wall, an' she got a wakeness out of 
 it, and great cold " 
 
 "Are ye sure it wasn't the frog got the wake- 
 ness ? " asked Dr. Lyden. 
 
 A gale of laughter swept round the court. 
 
 " Come, come ! " said Mr. Heraty ; " have done 
 with this baldherdash ! William, tell Darcy some 
 one must go fetch his mother, for as wake as she 
 is she could walk half a mile ! " Mr. Heraty here 
 drew forth an enormous white pocket-handkerchief 
 and trumpeted angrily in its depths. 
 
 Darcy raised his small blue eyes with their thick 
 lashes, and took a look at his judge. There was a 
 gabbled interchange of Irish between him and the 
 interpreter. 
 
 " He says she could not, yer worship, nor as much 
 as one perch." 
 
 " Ah, what nonsense is this ! " said Mr. Heraty 
 testily ; " didn't I see the woman meself at Mass 
 last Sunday ? " 
 
 14
 
 2IO All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Darcy's reply was garnished with a good deal 
 more gesticulation than usual, and throughout his 
 speech the ironic smile on Sweeny's face was a 
 masterpiece of quiet expression. 
 
 " He says," said William, " that surely she was at 
 Mass last Sunday, the same as your worship says, 
 but 'twas on the way home that she was taking a 
 wall, and a stone fell on her and hurted her finger, 
 and the boot preyed on it, and it has her de- 
 sthroyed." 
 
 At this culmination of the misadventures of Mrs. 
 Darcy the countenances of the general public must 
 again have expressed some of the bewilderment 
 that they felt. 
 
 "Perhaps William will be good enough to ex- 
 plain," said Dr. Lyden, permitting a faint smile to 
 twitch the foxy moustache, " how Mrs. Darcy's boot 
 affected her finger ? " 
 
 William's skinny hand covered his frog-mouth 
 with all a deserving schoolboy's embarrassment at 
 being caught out in a bad translation. 
 
 " I beg yer worships' pardon," he said, in deep 
 confusion, " but sure your worships know as well as 
 meself that in Irish we have the one word for your 
 finger or your toe." 
 
 " There's one thing I know very well anyhow," 
 said Dr. Lyden, turning to his colleague, " I've no 
 more time to waste sitting here talking about old
 
 An Irish Problem. 211 
 
 Kit Darcy's fingers and toes ! Let the two o' them 
 get arbitrators and settle it out of court. There's 
 nothing between them now only the value of the 
 sheep." 
 
 " Sure I was satisfied to leave it to arbithration, 
 but Darcy wasn't willin'." This statement was 
 Sweeny's. 
 
 " So you were willin' to have arbithration before 
 you came into coort at all?" said Mr. Heraty, 
 eyeing the tall defendant with ominous mildness. 
 " William, ask Darcy is this the case." 
 
 Darcy's reply, delivered with a slow, sarcastic 
 smile, provoked a laugh from the audience. 
 
 " Oh, ho ! So that was the way, was it ! " cried 
 Mr. Heraty, forgetting to wait for the translation. 
 " Ye had your wife's cousin to arbithrate ! Small 
 blame to Darcy he wasn't willin' ! It's a pity ye 
 didn't say your wife herself should arbithrate when 
 ye went about it ! You would hardly believe the 
 high opinion Sweeny here has of his wife," con- 
 tinued the Chairman in illuminative excursus to Dr. 
 Lyden ; " sure he had all the women wild below at 
 my shop th' other night sayin' his wife was the 
 finest woman in Ireland ! Upon my soul he had ! " 
 
 " If I said that," growled the unfortunate Sweeny, 
 " it was a lie for me." 
 
 " Don't ye think it might be a good thing now," 
 suggested the indefatigable doctor, in his mournful
 
 212 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 tuneful voice, "to call a few witnesses to give evi- 
 dence as to whether Mrs. Michael Sweeny is the 
 finest woman in Ireland or no?" 
 
 " God knows, gentlemen, it's a pity ye haven't 
 more to do this day," said Sweeny, turning at length 
 upon his tormentors, " I'd sooner pay the price of 
 the sheep than be losin' me time here this way." 
 
 " See, now, how we're getting to the rights of it 
 in the latter end," commented Dr. Lyden imperturb- 
 ably. " Sweeny began here by saying" — he checked 
 off each successive point on his fingers — " that the 
 sheep wasn't Darcy's at all. Then he said that his 
 children of eight and nine years of age were too 
 young to set the dog on the sheep. Then, that if 
 the dog hunted her it was no more than she de- 
 served for constant trespass. Then he said that 
 the sheep was so old and blind that she com- 
 mitted suicide in his end of the lake in order to 
 please herself and to spite him ; and, last of all, he 
 tells us that he offered to compensate Darcy for her 
 before he came into court at all ! " 
 
 " And on top of that," Mr. Heraty actually rose 
 in his seat in his exquisite appreciation of the 
 position, " on top of that, mind you, after he has 
 the whole machinery of the law and the entire 
 population of Letterbeg attending on him for a 
 matter o' two hours, he informs us that we're wast- 
 ing his valuable time ! "
 
 An Irish Problem. 213 
 
 Mr. Heraty fixed his eyes in admirable passion — 
 whether genuine or not we are quite incapable of 
 pronouncing — upon Sweeny, who returned the gaze 
 with all the gloom of an unfortunate but invincibly 
 respectable man. 
 
 Dr. Lyden once more pulled out his watch. 
 
 " It might be as well for us," he said languidly, 
 " to enter upon the inquiry as to the value of the 
 sheep. That should take about another three- 
 quarters of an hour. William, ask Darcy the price 
 he puts on the sheep." 
 
 Every emotion has its limits. We received with 
 scarce a stirring of surprise the variations of sworn 
 testimony as to the value of the sheep. Her price 
 ranged from one pound, claimed by Darcy and his 
 adherents, to sixpence, at which sum her skin was 
 unhesitatingly valued by Sweeny. Her age swung 
 like a pendulum between two years and fourteen, 
 and, finally, in crowning proof of her worth and 
 general attractiveness, it was stated that her own 
 twin had been sold for fifteen shillings to the police 
 at Dhulish, " ere last week ". At this re-entrance 
 into the case of the personal element Mr. Heraty's 
 spirits obviously rose. 
 
 " I think we ought to have evidence about this," 
 he said, fixing the police officer with a dangerous 
 eye. " Mr. Cox, have ye anny of the Dhulish 
 police here ? "
 
 214 ^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ Shore. 
 
 Mr. Cox, whose only ofificial act up to the present 
 had been the highly beneficial one of opening the 
 window, admitted with a grin that two of the 
 Dhulish men were in the court 
 
 " Well, then ! " continued the Chairman, "Mr. 
 Cox, maybe ye'd kindly desire them to step forward 
 in order that the court may be able to estimate from 
 their appearance the nutritive qualities of the twin 
 sisther of Darcy's sheep," 
 
 At this juncture we perceived, down near the 
 crowded doorway, two tall and deeply embarrassed 
 members of the R.I.C. hastily escaping into the 
 street. 
 
 "Well, well ; how easy it is to frighten the police!" 
 remarked the Chairman, following them with a re- 
 gretful eye. " I suppose, afther all, we'd betther 
 put a price on the sheep and have done with it. In 
 my opinion, when there's a difficulty like this — 
 what I might call an accident — between decent 
 men like these (for they're both decent men, and 
 I've known them these years), I'd say both parties 
 should share what hardship is in it. Now, doctor, 
 what shall we give Darcy ? I suppose if we gave 
 him 8s. compensation and 2s. costs we'd not be far 
 out?" 
 
 Dr. Lyden, already in the act of charging his 
 pipe, nodded his head. 
 
 Sweeny began to fumble in his pockets, and draw-
 
 An Irish Problem. 215 
 
 ing out a brownish rag, possibly a handkerchief, 
 knotted in several places, proceeded to untie one of 
 the knots. The doctor watched him without speak- 
 ing. Ultimately, from some fastness in the rag a 
 half-sovereign was extracted, and was laid upon 
 the table by Sweeny. The clerk, a well-dressed 
 young gentleman, whose attitude had throughout 
 been one of the extremest aloofness, made an entry 
 in his book with an aggressively business-like air. 
 
 "Well, that's all right," remarked Dr. Lyden, 
 getting lazily on his legs and looking round for his 
 hat ; " it's a funny thing, but I notice that the de- 
 fendant brought the exact sum required into court 
 with him." 
 
 " I did ! And I'm able to bring more than it, 
 thanks be to God ! " said Sweeny fiercely, with all 
 the offended pride of his race. " I have two pounds 
 here this minute " 
 
 "If that's the way with ye, may be ye'd like us to 
 put a bigger fine on ye ! " broke in Mr. Heraty hotly, 
 in instant response to Sweeny's show of temper. 
 
 Dr. Lyden laughed for the first time. 
 
 " Mr. Heraty's getting cross now, in the latter 
 end," he murmured explanatorily to the general 
 public, while he put on an overcoat, from the pocket 
 of which protruded the Medusa coils of a stetho- 
 scope.
 
 2i6 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Long before the arrival of the mail-car that was 
 to take us away, the loafers and the litigants had 
 alike been swallowed up, apparently by the brown, 
 hungry hillsides ; possibly also, some of them, by 
 Mr. Heraty's tap-room. Again we clambered to 
 our places among the inevitable tourists and their 
 inevitable bicycles, again the laden car lumbered 
 heavily yet swiftly along the bog roads that quivered 
 under its weight, while the water in the black ditches 
 on either side quivered in sympathy. The tourists 
 spoke of the vast loneliness, unconscious of the in- 
 tricate network of social life that lay all around 
 them, beyond their ken, far beyond their under- 
 standing. They spoke authoritatively of Irish 
 affairs; mentioned that the Irish were "a bit 'ot 
 tempered," but added that " all they wanted was 
 fair play". 
 
 They had probably been in Ireland for a week 
 or fortnight. They had come out of business 
 centres in England, equipped with circular tickets, 
 with feeling hearts, and with the belief that two 
 and two inevitably make four ; whereas in Ireland 
 two and two are just as likely to make five, or three, 
 and are still more likely to make nothing at all. 
 
 Never will it be given to them to understand the 
 man of whom our friend Sweeny was no more than 
 a type. How can they be expected to realise that 
 a man who is decorous in family and village life,
 
 An Irish Problem. 217 
 
 indisputably God-fearing, kind to the poor, and 
 reasonably honest, will enmesh himself in a tissue 
 of sworn lies before his fellows for the sake of half 
 a sovereign and a family feud, and that his fellows 
 will think none the worse of him for it. 
 
 These things lie somewhere near the heart of the 
 Irish problem.
 
 THE DANE'S BREECHIN'. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 The story begins at the moment when my brother 
 Robert and I had made our final arrangements for 
 the expedition. These were considerable. Robert 
 is a fisherman who takes himself seriously (which 
 perhaps is fortunate, as he rarely seems to take 
 anything else), and his paraphernalia does credit to 
 his enthusiasm, if not to his judgment. For my 
 part, being an amateur artist, I had strapped to- 
 gether a collection of painting materials that would 
 enable me to record my inspiration in oil, water- 
 colour, or pastel, as the spirit might move me. We 
 had ordered a car from Coolahan's public-house in 
 the village ; an early lunch was imminent. 
 
 The latter depended upon Julia ; in fact it would 
 be difficult to mention anything at Wavecrest 
 Cottage that did not depend on Julia. We, who 
 were but strangers and sojourners (the cottage with 
 the beautiful name having been lent to us, with Julia, 
 by an Aunt), felt that our very existence hung upon 
 her clemency. How much more then luncheon, at 
 
 the revolutionary hour of a quarter to one ? Even 
 
 218
 
 The Dane's Breechin\ 219 
 
 courageous people are afraid of other people's 
 servants, and Robert and I were far from being 
 courageous. Possibly this is why Julia treated us 
 with compassion, even with kindness, especially 
 Robert. 
 
 " Ah, poor Masther Robert 1 " I have heard her 
 say to a friend in the kitchen, who was fortunately 
 hard of hearing, " ye wouldn't feel him in the house 
 no more than a feather ! An' indeed, as for the two 
 o' thim, sich gallopers never ye seen ! It's hardly 
 they'd come in the house to throw the wet boots off 
 thim ! Thim'd gallop the woods all night like the 
 deer ! " 
 
 At half-past twelve, all, as I have said, being in 
 train, I went to the window to observe the weather, 
 and saw a covered car with a black horse plodding 
 along the road that separated Wavecrest Cottage 
 from the seashore. At our modest entrance gates 
 it drew up, and the coachman climbed from his 
 perch with a dignity befitting his flowing grey beard 
 and the silver band on his hat. 
 
 A covered car is a vehicle peculiar to the south of 
 Ireland ; it resembles a two-wheeled waggonette with 
 a windowless black box on top of it. Its mouth is 
 at the back, and it has the sinister quality of totally 
 concealing its occupants until the irrevocable 
 moment when it is turned and backed against your 
 front door steps. For this moment my brother
 
 220 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Robert and I did not wait. A short passage and a 
 flight of steps separated us from the kitchen ; be- 
 yond the steps, and facing the kitchen door, a door 
 opened into the garden. Robert sh'pped up heavily 
 in the passage as we fled, but gained the garden 
 door undamaged. The hall door bell pealed at my 
 ear ; I caught a glimpse of Julia, pounding chops 
 with the rolling pin. 
 
 " Say we're out," I hissed to her — " gone out for 
 the day ! We are going into the garden ! " 
 
 " Sure ye needn't give yerself that much trouble," 
 replied Julia affably, as she snatched a grimy cap 
 off a nail. 
 
 Nevertheless, in spite of the elasticity of Julia's 
 conscience, the garden seemed safer. 
 
 In the garden, a plot of dense and various vegeta- 
 tion, decorated with Julia's lingerie, we awaited 
 the sound of the departing wheels. But nothing 
 departed. The breathless minutes passed, and then, 
 through the open drawing-room window, we were 
 aware of strange voices. The drawing-room window 
 overlooked the garden thoroughly and command- 
 ingly. There was not a moment to lose. We 
 plunged into the raspberry canes, and crouched 
 beneath their embowered arches, and the fulness of 
 the situation began to sink into our souls. 
 
 Through the window we caught a glimpse of a 
 white beard and a portly black suit, of a black
 
 The Danes Breechin. 221 
 
 bonnet and a dolman that glittered with jet, of yet 
 another black bonnet. 
 
 With Aunt Dora's house we had taken on, as it 
 were, her practice, and the goodwill of her acquaint- 
 ance. The Dean of Glengad and Mrs. Doherty 
 were the very apex and flower of the latter, and in 
 the party now installed in Aunt Dora's drawing- 
 room I unhesitatingly recognised them, and Mrs. 
 Doherty's sister, Miss McEvoy. Miss McEvoy was 
 an elderly lady of the class usually described as 
 being " not all there ". The expression, I imagine, 
 implies a regret that there should not be more. As, 
 however, what there was of Miss McEvoy was 
 chiefly remarkable for a monstrous appetite and a 
 marked penchant for young men, it seems to me 
 mainly to be regretted that there should be as much 
 of her as there is. 
 
 A drive of nine miles in the heat of a June 
 morning is not undertaken without a sustaining 
 expectation of luncheon at the end of it. There 
 were in the house three mutton chops to meet 
 that expectation. I communicated all these facts 
 to my brother. The consternation of his face, 
 framed in raspberry boughs, was a picture not 
 to be lightly forgotten. At such a moment, with 
 everything depending on sheer nerve and resource- 
 fulness, to consign Julia to perdition was mere 
 self-indulgence on his part, but I suppose it was
 
 222 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 inevitable. Here the door into the garden opened 
 and Julia came forth, with a spotless apron and a 
 face of elaborate unconcern. She picked a hand- 
 ful of parsley, her black eyes questing for us among 
 the bushes ; they met mine, and a glance more 
 alive with conspiracy it has not been my lot to 
 receive. She moved desultorily towards us, gather- 
 ing green gooseberries in her apron. 
 
 " I told them the two o' ye were out," she mur- 
 mured to the gooseberry bushes. "They axed 
 when would ye be back. I said ye went to town 
 on the early thrain and wouldn't be back till 
 night. 
 
 Decidedly Julia's conscience could stand alone. 
 
 " With that then," she continued, " Miss McEvoy 
 lands into the hall, an' ' O Letitia,' says she, ' those 
 must be the gentleman's fishing rods ! ' and then 
 'Julia!' says she, 'could ye give us a bit o' 
 lunch ? That one's the imp ! " 
 
 " Look here ! " said Robert hoarsely, and with 
 the swiftness of panic, " I'm off! I'll get out over 
 the back wall." 
 
 At this moment Miss McEvoy put her head 
 out of the drawing-room window and scanned the 
 garden searchingly. Without another word we 
 glided through the raspberry arches like departing 
 fairies in a pantomine. The kindly lilac and 
 laurestina bushes grew tall and thick at the end
 
 The Danes Breechiti. 223 
 
 of the garden ; the wall was high, but, as is usual 
 with fruit-garden walls, it had a well-worn feasible 
 corner that gave on to the lane leading to the 
 village. We flung ourselves over it, and landed 
 breathless and dishevelled, but safe, in the heart 
 of the bed of nettles that plumed the common 
 village ash-heap. Now that we were able, tempor- 
 arily at all events, to call our souls our own, we (or 
 rather I) took further stock of the situation. Its 
 horrors continued to sink in. Driven from home 
 without so much as a hat to lay our heads in, 
 separated from those we loved most (the mutton 
 chops, the painting materials, the fishing tackle), a 
 promising expedition of unusual charm cut off, 
 so to speak, in the flower of its youth — these were 
 the more immediately obvious of the calamities 
 which we now confronted. I preached upon them, 
 with Cassandra eloquence, while we stood, indeter- 
 minate, among the nettles. 
 
 " And what, I ask you," I said perorating, " what 
 on the face of the earth are we to do now ? " 
 
 " Oh, it'll be all right, my dear girl," said Robert 
 easily. Gratitude for his escape from the addresses 
 of Miss McEvoy had apparently blinded him to the 
 difficulties of the future. " There's Coolahan's pub. 
 We'll get something to eat there — you'll see it'll be 
 all right." 
 
 " But," I said, picking my way after him among
 
 224 ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^' Shore. 
 
 the rusty tins and the broken crockery, "the 
 Coolahans will think we're mad ! We've no hats, 
 and we can't tell them about the Dohertys." 
 
 " I don't care what they think," said Robert. 
 
 What Mrs. Coolahan may have thought, as we 
 dived from the sunlight into her dark and porter- 
 sodden shop, did not appear ; what she looked was 
 consternation. 
 
 "Luncheon!" she repeated with stupefaction, 
 " luncheon ! The dear help us, I have no luncheon 
 for the like o' ye ! " 
 
 " Oh, anything will do," said Robert cheerfully. 
 His experiences at the London bar had not in- 
 structed him in the commissariat of his country. 
 
 " A bit of cold beef, or just some bread and 
 cheese." 
 
 Mrs. Coolahan's bleared eyes rolled wildly to 
 mine, as seeking sympathy and sanity. 
 
 " With the will o' Pether ! " she exclaimed, 
 "how would I have cold beef? And as for 
 cheese ! " She paused, and then, curiosity over- 
 powering all other emotions. " What ails Julia 
 Cronelly at all that your honour's ladyship is 
 comin' to the like o' this dirty place for your 
 dinner? " 
 
 "Oh, Julia's run away with a soldier!" struck in 
 Robert brilliantly. 
 
 "Small blame to her if she did itself!" said Mrs.
 
 The Dane 5 Breechiri. 225 
 
 Coolahan, gallantly accepting the jest without a 
 change of her enormous countenance, she's a long 
 time waiting for the chance ! Maybe ourselves'd 
 go if we were axed ! I have a nice bit of salt 
 pork in the house," she continued, " would I give 
 your honours a rasher of it ? " 
 
 Mrs, Coolahan had probably assumed that 
 either Julia was incapably drunk, or had been 
 dismissed without benefit of clergy ; at all events 
 she had recognised that diplomatically it was 
 correct to change the conversation. 
 
 We adventured ourselves into the unknown 
 recesses of the house, and sat gingerly on greasy 
 horsehair-seated chairs, in the parlour, while the 
 bubbling cry of the rasher and eggs arose to heaven 
 from the frying-pan, and the reek filled the house 
 as with a grey fog. Potent as it was, it but faintly 
 foreshadowed the flavour of the massive slices that 
 presently swam in briny oil on our plates. But we 
 had breakfasted at eight ; we tackled them with 
 determination, and without too nice inspection of 
 the three-pronged forks. We drank porter, we 
 achieved a certain sense of satiety, that on very 
 slight provocation would have broadened into 
 nausea or worse. All the while the question re- 
 mained in the balance as to what we were to do for 
 our hats, and for the myriad baggage involved in 
 the expedition. 
 
 15
 
 226 Alt on the Irish Shore. 
 
 We finally decided to write a minute inventory 
 of what was indispensable, and to send it to Julia 
 by the faithful hand of Mrs. Coolahan's car-driver, 
 one Croppy, with whom previous expeditions had 
 placed us upon intimate terms. It would be neces- 
 sary to confide the position to Croppy, but this 
 we felt, could be done without a moment's un- 
 easiness. 
 
 By the malignity that governed all things on 
 that troublous day, neither of us had a pencil, and 
 Mrs. Coolahan had to be appealed to. That she 
 had by this time properly grasped the position 
 was apparent in the hoarse whisper in which she 
 said, carefully closing the door after her : — 
 
 " The Dane's coachman is inside ! " 
 
 Simultaneously Robert and I removed ourselves 
 from the purview of the door. 
 
 " Don't be afraid," said our hostess reassuringly, 
 " he'll never see ye — sure I have him safe back in 
 the snug ! Is it a writing pin ye want, Miss ? " she 
 continued, moving to the door. " Katty Ann ! 
 Bring me in the pin out o' the office !" 
 
 The Post Office was, it may be mentioned, a 
 department of the Coolahan public-house, and was 
 managed by a committee of the younger members 
 of the Coolahan family. These things are all, I 
 believe, illegal, but they happen in Ireland. The 
 committee was at present, apparently, in full session, 
 
 ^
 
 The Dane's Breechin\ 227 
 
 judging by the flood of conversation that flowed in 
 to us through the open door. The request for the 
 pen caused an instant hush, followed at an inter- 
 val by the slamming of drawers and other sounds 
 of search. 
 
 " Ah, what's on ye delaying this way ? " said Mrs. 
 Coolahan irritably, advancing into the shop. " Sure 
 I seen the pin with Helayna this morning." 
 
 At the moment all that we could see of the junior 
 postmistress was her long bare shins, framed by 
 the low-browed doorway, as she stood on the 
 counter to further her researches on a top shelf, 
 
 " The Lord look down in pity on me this day ! " 
 said Mrs. Coolahan, in exalted and bitter indigna- 
 tion, " or on any poor creature that's striving to earn 
 her living and has the likes o' ye to be thrusting to ! " 
 
 We here attached ourselves to the outskirts of 
 the search, which had by this time drawn into its 
 vortex a couple of countrywomen with shawls over 
 their heads, who had hitherto sat in decorous but 
 observant stillness in the background. Katty Ann 
 was rapidly examining tall bottles of sugar-stick, 
 accustomed receptacles apparently for the pen. 
 Helayna's raven fringe showed traces of a dive into 
 the flour-bin. Mrs. Coolahan remained motionless 
 in the midst, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, an ex- 
 position of suffering and of eternal remoteness 
 from the ungodly.
 
 22 8 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 We were now aware for the first time of the 
 presence of Mr. Coolahan, a taciturn person, with 
 a blue-black chin and a gloomy demeanour, 
 
 " Where had ye it last ? " he demanded. 
 
 " I seen Katty Ann with it in the cow-house, sir," 
 volunteered a small female Coolahan from i)eneath 
 the flap of the counter. 
 
 Katty Ann, with a vindictive eye at the tell-tale, 
 vanished. 
 
 " That the Lord Almighty might take me to 
 Himself!" chanted Mrs. Coolahan. "Such a 
 mee-aw ! Such a thing to happen to me — the pure, 
 decent woman! G'wout!" This, the imperative 
 of the verb to retire, was hurtled at the tell-tale, 
 who, presuming on her services, had incautiously 
 left the covert of the counter, and had laid a sticky 
 hand on her mother's skirts. 
 
 " Only that some was praying for me," pursued 
 Mrs. Coolahan, " it might as well be the Inspector 
 that came in the office, asking for the pin, an' if 
 that was the way we might all go under the sod ! 
 Sich a mee-aw ! " 
 
 " Musha ! Musha ! " breathed, prayerfully, one of 
 the shawled women. 
 
 At this juncture I mounted on an up-ended barrel 
 to investigate a promising lair above my head, and 
 from this altitude was unexpectedly presented with 
 a bird's-eye view of a hat with a silver band inside
 
 The Dane's Breechin\ 
 
 229 
 
 the railed and curtained "snug". I descended 
 swiftly, not without an impression of black bottles 
 on the snug table, and Katty Ann here slid in from 
 the search in the cow-house. 
 
 "musha ! musha! ' 
 
 " 'Twasn't in it," she whined, " nor I didn't put it 
 in it." 
 
 "For a pinny I'd give ye a slap in the jaw!" 
 said Mr. Coolahan with sudden and startling ferocity. 
 
 "That the Lord Almighty might take me to
 
 230 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Himself!" reiterated Mrs. Coolahan, while the 
 search spread upwards through the house. 
 
 " Look here ! " said Robert abruptly, " this business 
 is going on for a week. I'm going for the things 
 myself." 
 
 Neither I nor my remonstrances overtook him 
 till he was well out into the street. There, outside 
 the Coolahan door, was the Dean's inside car, resting 
 on its shafts ; while the black horse, like his driver, 
 restored himself elsewhere beneath the Coolahan 
 roof. Robert paid no heed to its silent warning. 
 
 " I must go myself. If I had forty pencils I 
 couldn't explain to Julia the flies that I want ! " 
 
 There comes, with the most biddable of men, a 
 moment when argument fails, the moment of dead 
 pull, when the creature perceives his own strength, 
 and the astute will give in, early and imperceptibly, 
 in order that he may not learn it beyond forgetting. 
 
 The only thing left to be done now was to ac- 
 company Robert, to avert what might be irretriev- 
 able disaster. It was now half-past one, and the 
 three mutton chops and the stewed gooseberries 
 must have long since yielded their uttermost to our 
 guests. The latter would therefore have returned 
 to the drawing-room, where it was possible that one 
 or more of them might go to sleep. Remembering 
 that the chops were loin-chops, we might at all 
 events hope for some slight amount of lethargy.
 
 The Danes Breechin\ 231 
 
 Again we waded through the nettles, we scaled the 
 garden-wall, and worked our way between it and 
 the laurestinas towards the door opposite the kitchen. 
 There remained between us and the house an open 
 space of about fifteen yards, fully commanded by 
 the drawing-room window, veiling which, however, 
 the lace curtains met in reassuring stillness. We 
 rushed the interval, and entered the house softly. 
 Here we were instantly met by Julia, with her 
 mouth full, and a cup of tea in her hand. She 
 drew us into the kitchen. 
 
 "Where are they, Julia?" I whispered. "Have 
 they had lunch ? " 
 
 "Is it lunch?" replied Julia, through bread and 
 butter ; " there isn't a bit in the house but they 
 have it ate ! And the eggs I had for the fast-day 
 for myself, didn't That One " — I knew this to indi- 
 cate Miss McEvoy — " ax an omelette from me when 
 she seen she had no more to get ! " 
 
 " Are they out of the dining-room ? " broke in 
 Robert. 
 
 " Faith, they are, 'Twas no good for them to 
 stay in it ! That One's lying up on the sofa in the 
 dhrawing-room like any owld dog, and the Dane 
 and Mrs. Doherty's dhrinking hot water — they have 
 bad shtomachs, the craytures." 
 
 Robert opened the kitchen door and crept towards 
 the dining-room, wherein, not long before the alarm.
 
 232 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 had been gathered all the essentials of the expedi- 
 tion. I followed him. I have never committed a 
 burglary, but since the moment when I creaked 
 past the drawing-room door, foretasting the instant 
 when it would open, my sympathies are dedicated 
 to burglars. 
 
 In two palpitating journeys we removed from the 
 dining-room our belongings, and placed them in 
 the kitchen ; silence, fraught with dire possibilities, 
 still brooded over the drawing-room. Could they 
 all be asleep, or was Miss McEvoy watching us 
 through the keyhole? There remained only my 
 hat, which was upstairs, and at this, the last moment, 
 Robert remembered his fly-book, left under the clock 
 in the dining-room. I again passed the drawing- 
 room in safety, and got upstairs, Robert effecting 
 at the same moment his third entry into the dining- 
 room. I was in the act of thrusting in the second 
 hat pin when I heard the drawing-room door open. 
 I admit that, obeying the primary instinct of self- 
 preservation, my first impulse was to lock myself 
 in ; it passed, aided by the recollection that there 
 was no key. I made for the landing, and from 
 thence viewed, in a species of trance, Miss McEvoy 
 crossing the hall and entering the dining-room. A 
 long and deathly pause followed. She was a small 
 woman ; had Robert strangled her? After two or 
 three horrible minutes a sound reached me, the
 
 The Danes Breech'in . 233 
 
 well-known rattle of the side-board drawer. All 
 then was well — Miss McEvoy was probably looking 
 for the biscuits, and Robert must have escaped in 
 time through the window. I took my courage in 
 both hands and glided downstairs. As I placed 
 my foot on the oilcloth of the hall, I was confronted 
 by the nightmare spectacle of my brother creeping 
 towards me on all-fours through the open door of 
 the dining-room, and then, crowning this already 
 over-loaded moment, there arose a series of yells 
 from Miss McEvoy as blood-curdling as they were 
 excusable, yet, as even in my maniac flight to the 
 kitchen I recognised, something muffled by Marie 
 biscuit. 
 
 It seems to me that the next incident was the 
 composite and shattering collision of Robert, Julia 
 and myself in the scullery doorway, followed by 
 the swift closing of the scullery-door upon us by 
 Julia ; then the voice of the Dean of Glengad, de- 
 manding from the house at large an explanation, 
 in a voice of cathedral severity. Miss McEvoy's 
 reply was to us about as coherent as the shrieks of 
 a parrot, but we plainly heard Julia murmur in the 
 kitchen : — 
 
 "May the devil choke ye ! " 
 
 Then again the Dean, this time near the kitchen 
 door. " Julia ! Where is the man who was secreted 
 under the dinner-table ? "
 
 234 ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^'^^^^ Shore. 
 
 I gripped Robert's arm. The issues of life and 
 death were now in Julia's hands. 
 
 " Is it who was in the dining-room, your Rever- 
 ence?" asked Julia, in tones of respectful honey; 
 "sure that was the carpenter's boy, that came to 
 quinch a rat-hole. Sure we're destroyed with rats." 
 
 " But," pursued the Dean, raising his voice to 
 overcome Miss McEvoy's continuous screams of 
 explanation to Mrs. Doherty, " I understand that 
 he left the room on his hands and knees. He 
 must have been drunk ! " 
 
 " Ah, not at all, your Reverence," replied Julia, 
 with almost compassionate superiority, "sure that 
 poor boy is the gentlest crayture ever came into a 
 house. I suppose 'tis what it was he was ashamed 
 like when Miss McEvoy comminced to screech, and 
 faith he never stopped nor stayed till he ran out of 
 the house like a wild goose !" 
 
 We heard the Dean reascend the kitchen steps, 
 and make a statement of which the words " drink " 
 and "Dora "alone reached us. The drawing-room 
 door closed, and in the release from tension I sank 
 heavily down upon a heap of potatoes. The wolf 
 of laughter that had been gnawing at my vitals 
 broke loose. 
 
 " Why did you go out of the room on your 
 hands and knees?" I moaned, rolling in anguish 
 on the potatoes.
 
 The Dane's Breechin\ 235 
 
 " I got under the table when I heard the brute 
 coming," said Robert, with the crossness of reaction 
 from terror, " then she settled down to eat biscuits, 
 and I thought I could crawl out without her seeing 
 me " 
 
 " Ye can come out ! " said Julia's mouth, appearing 
 at a crack of the scullery door, " I have as many 
 lies told for ye — God forgive me ! — as'd bog a 
 noddy ! " 
 
 This mysterious contingency might have im- 
 pressed us more had the artist been able to conceal 
 her legitimate pride in her handiwork. We emerged 
 from the chill and varied smells of the scullery, re- 
 taining just sufficient social self-control to keep us 
 from flinging ourselves with grateful tears upon 
 Julia's neck. Shaken as we were, the expedition 
 still lay open before us ; the game was in our 
 hands. We were winning by tricks, and Julia 
 held all the honours. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 Perhaps it was the clinging memory of the fried 
 pork, perhaps it was because all my favourite 
 brushes were standing in a mug of soft soap on 
 my washing stand, or because Robert had in his 
 flight forgotten to replenish his cigarette case, but 
 there was no doubt but that the expedition lan- 
 guished.
 
 236 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 There was no fault to be found with the setting. 
 The pool in which the river coiled itself under the 
 pine-trees was black and brimming, the fish were 
 rising at the flies that wrought above it, like a 
 spotted net veil in hysterics, the distant hills lay 
 in sleepy undulations of every shade of blue, the 
 grass was warm, and not unduly peopled with ants. 
 But some impalpable blight was upon us. I ranged 
 like a lost soul along the banks of the river — a lost 
 soul that is condemned to bear a burden of some 
 two stone of sketching materials, and a sketching 
 umbrella with a defective joint — in search of a point 
 of view that for ever eluded me. Robert cast his 
 choicest flies, with delicate quiverings, with co- 
 quettish withdrawals ; had they been cannon-balls 
 they could hardly have had a more intimidating 
 effect upon the trout. Where Robert fished a 
 Sabbath stillness reigned, beyond that charmed 
 area they rose like notes of exclamation in a 
 French novel. I was on the whole inclined to 
 trace these things back to the influence of the 
 pork, working on systems weakened by shock; 
 but Robert was not in the mood to trace them 
 to anything. Unsuccessful fishermen are not fond 
 of introspective suggestions. The member of the 
 expedition who enjoyed himself beyond any ques- 
 tion was Mrs. Coolahan's car-horse. Having been 
 taken out of the shafts on the road above the river,
 
 The Bane's Breechin\ 237 
 
 he had with his harness on his back, like Horatius, 
 unhesitatingly lumbered over a respectable bank 
 and ditch in the wake of Croppy, who had pre- 
 ceded him with the reins. He was now grazing 
 luxuriously along the river's edge, while his driver 
 smoked, no less luxuriously, in the background. 
 
 " Will I carry the box for ye, Miss ? " Croppy 
 inquired compassionately, stuffing his lighted pipe 
 into his pocket, as I drifted desolately past him. 
 " Sure you're killed with the load you have ! This 
 is a rough owld place for a lady to be walkin'. Sit 
 down, Miss. God knows you have a right to be 
 tired." 
 
 It seemed that with Croppy also the day was 
 dragging, doubtless he too had lunched on Mrs. 
 Coolahan's pork. He planted my camp-stool and 
 I sank upon it. 
 
 " Well, now, for all it's so throublesome," he re- 
 sumed, " I'd say painting was a nice thrade. There 
 was a gintleman here one time that was a painther 
 — I used to be dhrivin' him. Faith ! there wasn't 
 a place in the counthry but he had it pathrolled. 
 He seen me mother one day — cleaning fish, I b'lieve 
 she was, below on the quay — an' nothing would 
 howld him but he should dhraw out her picture ! " 
 Croppy laughed unfilially. " Well, me mother was 
 mad. ' To the divil I pitch him ! ' says she ; ' if I 
 wants me photograph drew out I'm liable to pay
 
 238 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 for it,' says she, ' an' not to be stuck up before the 
 ginthry to be ped for the like o' that ! ' ' 'Tis for 
 you bein' so handsome ! ' says I to her. She was 
 black mad altogether then. ' If that's the way,' 
 says she, ' it's a wondher he wouldn't ax yerself, ye 
 rotten little rat,' says she, ' in place of thrying 
 could he make a show of yer poor little ugly little 
 cock-nosed mother ! ' ' Faith ! ' says I to her, ' I 
 wouldn't care if the divil himself axed it, if he give 
 me a half-crown and nothing to do but to be sittin' 
 down ! ' " 
 
 The tale may or may not have been intended to 
 have a personal application, but Croppy's fat scarlet 
 face and yellow moustache, bristling beneath a nose 
 which he must have inherited from his mother, 
 did not lend themselves to a landscape background, 
 and I fell to fugitive pencil sketches of the old white 
 car-horse as he grazed round us. It was thus that 
 I first came to notice a fact whose bearing upon our 
 fortunes I was far from suspecting. The old horse's 
 harness was of dingy brown leather, with dingier 
 brass mountings; it had been frequently mended, 
 in varying shades of brown, and, in remarkable 
 contrast to the rest of the outfit, the breeching was 
 of solid and well-polished black leather, with silver 
 buckles. It was not so much the discrepancy of 
 the breeching as its respectability that jarred upon 
 me ; finally I commented upon it to Croppy.
 
 ^^f: 
 
 
 " CROPpy."
 
 The Danes Breechin\ 241 
 
 His cap was tilted over the maternal nose, he 
 glanced at me sideways from under its peak. 
 
 " Sure the other breechin' was broke, and if that 
 owld shkin was to go the lin'th of himself without a 
 breechin' on him he'd break all before him ! There 
 was some fellas took him to a funeral one time 
 without a breechin' on him, an' when he seen the 
 hearse what did he do but to rise up in the sky." 
 
 Wherein lay the moral support of a breeching 
 in such a contingency it is hard to say. I accepted 
 the fact without comment, and expressed a regret 
 that we had not been indulged with the entire set 
 of black harness. 
 
 Croppy measured me with his eye, grinned 
 bashfully, and said : — 
 
 " Sure it's the Dane's breechin' we have, Miss ! 
 I daresay he'd hardly get home at all if we took 
 any more from him ! " 
 
 The Dean's breeching ! For an instant a wild 
 confusion of ideas deprived me of the power of 
 speech. I could only hope that Croppy had left 
 him his gaiters! Then I pulled myself together. 
 
 " Croppy," I said in consternation, " how did you 
 get it ? Did you borrow it from the coachman ? " 
 
 " Is it the coachman ! " said Croppy tranquilly. 
 " I did not, Miss. Sure he was asleep in the snug." 
 
 " But can they get home without it ? " 
 
 A sudden alarm chilled me to the marrow. 
 
 16
 
 242 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 "Arrah, why not, Miss? That black horse of 
 the Dane's wouldn't care if there was nothing at all 
 on him ! " 
 
 I heard Robert reeling in his line — had he a fish ? 
 Or, better still, had he made up his mind to go 
 home? 
 
 As a matter of fact, neither was the case ; Robert 
 was merely fractious, and in that particular mood 
 when he wished to have his mind imperceptibly 
 made up for him, while prepared to combat any 
 direct suggestion. From what quarter the ignoble 
 proposition that we should go home arose is im- 
 material. It is enough to say that Robert believed 
 it to be his own, and that, before he had time to 
 reconsider the question, the tactful Croppy had 
 crammed the old white horse into the shafts of the 
 car. 
 
 It was by this time past five o'clock, and a 
 threatening range of clouds was rising from seaward 
 across the west. Things had been against us from 
 the first, and if the last stone in the sling of Fate 
 was that we were to be wet through before we got 
 home, it would be no more than I expected. The 
 old horse, however, addressed himself to the eight 
 Irish miles that lay between him and home with 
 unexpected vivacity. We swung in the ruts, we 
 shook like jellies on the merciless patches of broken 
 stones, and Croppy stimulated the pace with weird
 
 The Danes Breechift. 243 
 
 whistlings through his teeth, and heavy prods with 
 the butt of his whip in the region of the borrowed 
 breeching. 
 
 Now that the expedition had been shaken off 
 and cast behind us, the humbler possibilities of the 
 day began to stretch out alluring hands. There 
 was the new box from the library ; there was the 
 afternoon post ; there was a belated tea, with a 
 peaceful fatigue to endear all. We reached at last 
 the welcome turn that brought us into the coast 
 road. We were but three miles now from that 
 happy home from which we had been driven forth, 
 years ago as it seemed, at such desperate hazard. 
 We drove pleasantly along the road at the top of 
 the cliffs. The wind was behind us ; a rising tide 
 plunged and splashed far below. It was already 
 raining a little, enough to justify our sagacity in 
 leaving the river, enough to lend a touch of passion 
 to the thought of home and Julia. 
 
 The grey horse began to lean back against the 
 borrowed breeching, the chains of the traces clanked 
 loosely. We had begun the long zig-zag slant 
 down to the village. We swung gallantly round 
 the sharp turn half-way down the hill. 
 
 And there, not fifty yards away, was the Dean's 
 inside car, labouring slowly, inevitably, up to meet 
 us. Even in that stupefying moment I was aware 
 that the silver-banded hat was at a most uncanoni-
 
 244 ^^^ ^'^ ^^^ ^^^^^ Shore. 
 
 cal angle. Behind me on the car was stowed my 
 sketching umbrella ; I tore it from the retaining 
 embrace of the camp-stool, and unfurled its un- 
 wieldy tent with a speed that I have never since 
 achieved. Robert, on the far side of the car, was 
 reasonably safe. The inestimable Croppy quickened 
 up. Cowering beneath the umbrella, I awaited the 
 crucial moment at which to shift its protection 
 from the side to the back. The sound of the 
 approaching wheels told me that it had almost 
 arrived, and then, suddenly, without a note of 
 warning, there came a scurry of hoofs, a grinding 
 of wheels, and a confused outcry of voices. A 
 violent jerk nearly pitched me off the car, as 
 Croppy dragged the white horse into the opposite 
 bank ; the umbrella flew from my hand and re- 
 vealed to me the Dean's bearded coachman sitting 
 on the road scarcely a yard from my feet, uttering 
 large and drunken shouts, while the covered car 
 hurried back towards the village with the unfor- 
 gettable yell of Miss McEvoy bursting from its 
 curtained rear. The black horse was not absolutely 
 running away, but he was obviously alarmed, and 
 with the long hill before him anything might 
 happen. 
 
 " They're dead ! They're dead ! " said Croppy, 
 with philosophic calm ; " 'twas the parasol started 
 him."
 
 The Danes Breechin\ 245 
 
 As he spoke, the black horse stumbled, the 
 laden car ran on top of him like a landslip, and, 
 with an abortive flounder, he collapsed beneath 
 it. Once down, he lay, after the manner of his 
 kind, like a dead thing, and the covered car, 
 propped on its shafts, presented its open mouth 
 to the heavens. Even as I sped headlong to the 
 rescue in the wake of Robert and Croppy, I fore- 
 knew that Fate had after all been too many for us, 
 and when, an instant later, I seated myself in the 
 orthodox manner upon the black horse's winker, 
 and perceived that one of the shafts was broken, I 
 was already, in spirit, making up beds with Julia 
 for the reception of the party. 
 
 To this mental picture the howls of Miss 
 McEvoy during the process of extraction from 
 the covered car lent a pleasing reality. 
 
 Only those who have been in a covered car 
 under similar circumstances can at all appreciate 
 the difficulty of getting out of it. It has once, in 
 the streets of Cork, happened to me, and I can 
 best compare it to escaping from the cabin of a 
 yacht without the aid of a companion ladder. 
 From Robert I can only collect the facts that the 
 door jammed, and that, at a critical juncture, Miss 
 McEvoy had put her arms round his neck.
 
 246 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 The programme that Fate had ordained was 
 carried out to its ultimate item. The party from 
 the Deanery of Glengad spent the night at Wave- 
 crest Cottage, attired by subscription, like the 
 converts of a Mission ; I spent it in the attic, 
 among trunks of Aunt Dora's old clothes, and 
 rats ; Robert, who throughout had played an 
 unworthy part, in the night mail to Dublin, called 
 away for twenty-four hours on a pretext that would 
 not have deceived an infant a week old. 
 
 Croppy was firm and circumstantial in laying 
 the blame on me and the sketching umbrella. 
 
 " Sure, I seen the horse wondhering at it an' he 
 comin' up the hill to us. 'Twas that turned him." 
 
 The dissertation in which the Dean's venerable 
 coachman made the entire disaster hinge upon the 
 theft of the breeching was able, but cannot con- 
 veniently be here set down. 
 
 For my part, I hold with Julia. 
 
 " 'Twas Helayna gave the dhrink to the Dane's 
 coachman ! The low cursed thing ! There isn't 
 another one in the place that'd do it! I'm told 
 the priest was near breaking his umbrella on her 
 over it."
 
 "MATCHBOX." 
 
 It was the event of Mr. John Denny's life that 
 he valued highest. It is twenty years now since it 
 took place, and many other things have happened 
 to him, such as going to England to give evidence 
 in the Parnell Commission, and matrimony, and 
 taking the second prize in the Lightweight Hunter 
 Class at the Dublin Horse Show. But none of 
 them, not even the trip to London, possesses 
 quite the same fortunate blend of the sublime and 
 the ridiculous that gives this incident such a 
 perennial success at the Hunt and Agricultural 
 Show dinners which are the dazzling breaks in 
 the monotony of Mr. Denny's life, and he prized 
 it accordingly. 
 
 Mr. Johnny Denny — or Dinny Johnny as he was 
 known to his wittier friends — was a young man of 
 the straightest sect of the Cork buckeens, a body 
 whose importance justifies perhaps a particular 
 description of one of their number. His profession 
 was something imperceptibly connected with the 
 County Grand Jury Office, and was quite over- 
 shadowed in winter by the gravities of hunting, 
 
 and in summer by the gallantries of the Militia 
 
 247
 
 248 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 training ; for, like many of his class, he was a 
 captain in the Militia. He was always neatly 
 dressed ; his large moustache looked as if it shared 
 with his boots the attention of the blacking brush. 
 No cavalry sergeant in Ballincollig had a more 
 delicately bowed leg, nor any creature, except, 
 perhaps, a fox-terrier interviewing a rival, a more 
 consummate swagger. He knew every horse and 
 groom in all the leading livery stables, and, in 
 moments of expansion, would volunteer to name 
 the price at which any given animal could be 
 safeguarded from any given veterinary criticism. 
 With all these not specially attractive qualities, 
 however, Dinny Johnny was, and is, a good fellow 
 in his way. His temper was excellent, his courage 
 indisputable ; he has never been known to give 
 any horse — not even a hireling — less than fair play, 
 and a tendency to ride too close to hounds has 
 waned since time, like an Irish elector, has taken 
 to emphasising himself by throwing stones, and 
 Dinny Johnny, once ten stone, now admits to 
 riding 13.7. 
 
 In those days, before the inertia that creeps like 
 mildew over country householders had begun to 
 form, Mr. Denny was in the habit of making 
 occasional excursions into remote parts of the 
 County Cork in search of those flowers of pony 
 perfection that are supposed to blush unseen in any
 
 " Matchbox." 249 
 
 sufficiently mountainous and unknown country, 
 and the belief in which is the touch of wild poetry 
 that keeps alive the soul of the amateur horse 
 coper. He had never met the pony of his dreams, 
 but he had not lost faith in it, and though he would 
 range through the Bantry fair with a sour eye, 
 behind the sourness there was ever a kindling spark 
 of hope. 
 
 Towards the end of October, in the year '83, Mr. 
 Denny received an invitation from an old friend to 
 go down to " the West " — thus are those regions 
 east of the moon, and west of the sun, and south- 
 west of Drimoleague Junction, designated in the 
 tongue of Cork civilisation — to " look at a colt," 
 and with a saddle and bridle in the netting and a 
 tooth-brush in his pocket he set his face for the 
 wilderness. I have no time to linger over the 
 circumstances of the deal. Suffice it to say that, 
 after an arduous haggle, Mr. Denny bought the 
 colt, and set forth the same day to ride him by easy 
 stages to his future home. 
 
 It was a wet day, wet with the solid determina- 
 tion of a western day, and the loaded clouds were 
 flinging their burden down on the furze, and the 
 rocks, and the steep, narrow road, with vindictive 
 ecstacy. They also flung it upon Mr. Denny, and 
 both he and his new purchase were glad to find a 
 temporary shelter in one of the many public-houses
 
 250 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 of a village on the line of march. He was sitting 
 warming himself at an indifferent turf fire, and 
 drinking a tumbler of hot punch, when the sound 
 of loud voices outside drew him to the window. 
 In front of a semi-circle of blue frieze coats, brown 
 frieze trousers and slouched black felt hats, stood 
 a dejected grey pony, with a woman at its head 
 and a lanky young man on its back ; and it was 
 obvious to Mr. Denny that a transaction, of an 
 even more fervid sort than that in which he had 
 recently engaged, was toward. 
 
 " Fifteen pound ! " screamed the woman, darting 
 a black head on the end of a skinny neck out of 
 the projecting hood of her cloak with the swiftness 
 of a lizard ; " fifteen pound, James Hallahane, and 
 the divil burn the ha'penny less that I'll take for 
 her ! " 
 
 The elderly man to whom this was addressed 
 continued to gaze steadily at the ground, and 
 turning his head slightly away, spat unostenta- 
 tiously. The other men moved a little, vaguely, 
 and one said in a tone of remote soliloquy : — 
 
 " She wouldn't go tin pound in Banthry fair." 
 
 " Tin pound ! " echoed the pony's owner shrilly. 
 " Ah, God help ye, poor man ! Here, Patsey, 
 away home wid ye out o' this. It'll be night, and 
 dark night itself before " 
 
 " I'll give ye eleven pounds," said James Halla-
 
 ''Matchbox,'' 251 
 
 hane, addressing the toes of his boots. The young 
 man on the pony turned a questioning eye to- 
 wards his mother, but her sole response was a drag 
 at the pony's head to set it going ; swinging her 
 cloak about her, she paddled through the slush 
 towards the gate, supremely disregarding the fact 
 that a gander, having nerved himself and his 
 harem to the charge, had caught the ragged skirt 
 of her dress in his beak, and being too angry to 
 let go, was being whirled out of the yard in her 
 train. 
 
 Dinny Johnny ran to the door, moved by an 
 impulse for which I think the hot whisky and 
 water must have been responsible. 
 
 " I'll give you twelve pounds for the pony, 
 ma'am !" he called out. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later, when he and the 
 publican were tying a tow-rope round the pony's 
 lean neck, Mr. Denny was aware of a sinking of 
 the heart as he surveyed his bargain. It looked, 
 and was, an utterly degraded little object, as it 
 stood with its tail tucked in between its drooping 
 hindquarters, and the rain running in brown streams 
 down its legs. Its lips were decorated with the 
 absurd, the almost incredible moustache that is the 
 consequence among Irish horses of a furze diet (I 
 would hesitatingly direct the attention of the male 
 youth of Britain to this singular but undoubted
 
 252 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 fact), and although the hot whisky and water had 
 not exaggerated the excellence of its shoulder and 
 the iron soundness of its legs, it had certainly 
 reversed the curve of its neck and levelled the 
 corrugations of its ribs. 
 
 " You could strike a bally match on her, this 
 minute, if it wasn't so wet ! " thought Mr. Denny, 
 and with the simple humour that endeared him to 
 his friends he christened the pony " Matchbox " on 
 the spot. 
 
 " And it's to make a hunther of her ye'd do ? " 
 said the publican, pulling hard at the knot of the 
 tow-rope. " Begor', I know that one. If there was 
 forty men and their wives, and they after her wid 
 sticks, she wouldn't lep a sod o' turf. Well, safe 
 home, sir, safe home, and mind out she wouldn't 
 kick ye. She's a cross thief," and with this valedic- 
 tion Dinny Johnny went on his way. 
 
 There was no disputing the fact of the pony's 
 crossness. 
 
 " She's sourish-like in her timper," Jimmy, Mr. 
 Denny's head man, observed to his subordinate not 
 long after the arrival, and the subordinate, tenderly 
 stroking a bruised knee, replied : — 
 
 "Sour! I niver see the like of her! Be gannies, 
 the divil's always busy with her ! " 
 
 On one point, however, the grey pony proved 
 better than had been anticipated. Without the
 
 ^' Matchbox.'^ 253 
 
 intervention of the forty married couples she took 
 to jumping at once. 
 
 "It comes as aisy to her as lies to a tinker," 
 said Jimmy to a criticising friend ; " the first day 
 ever I had her out on a string she vvint up to the 
 big bounds fence between us and Barrett's as 
 indipindant as if she was going to her bed ; and 
 she jumped it as flippant and as crabbed — By dam, 
 she's as crabbed as a monkey !" 
 
 In those days Mr. Standish O'Grady, popularly 
 known as " Owld Sta'," had the hounds, and it need 
 scarcely be said that Mr. Denny was one of his 
 most faithful followers. This season he had not 
 done as well as usual. The colt was only turning 
 out moderately, and though the pony was un- 
 doubtedly both crabbed and flippant, she could not 
 be expected to do much with nearly twelve stone 
 on her back. It happened, therefore, that Mr, 
 Denny took his pleasure a little sadly, with his 
 loins girded in momentary expectation of trouble, 
 and of a sudden refusal from the colt to jump until 
 the crowd of skirters and gap-hunters drew round, 
 and escape was impossible until Mrs. Tom Graves's 
 splinty old carriage horse had ploughed its way 
 through the bank, and all those whom he most 
 contemned had flaunted through the breach in front 
 of him. He rode the pony now and then, but he 
 more often lent her to little Mary O'Grady, " Owld
 
 254 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 Sta's " untidy, red-cheeked, blue-eyed, and quite 
 uneducated little girl. It was probable that Mary 
 could only just write her name, and it was obvious 
 that she could not do her hair ; but she was afraid 
 of nothing that went on four legs — in Ireland, at 
 least — and she had the divine gift of " hands ". 
 From the time when she was five, up till now, when 
 she was fifteen, Mr. Denny had been her particular 
 adherent, and now he found a chastened pleasure 
 in having his eye wiped by Mary, on the grey 
 pony ; moreover, experience showed him that if 
 anything would persuade the colt to jump freely, it 
 was getting a lead from the little mare. 
 
 " Upon my soul, she wasn't such a bad bargain 
 after all," he thought one pleasant December day 
 as he jogged to the Meet, leading " Matchbox," 
 who was fidgeting along beside him with an 
 expression of such shrewishness as can only be 
 assumed by a pony mare ; " if it wasn't that Mary 
 likes riding her I'd make her up a bit and she'd 
 bring thirty-five anywhere." 
 
 There had been, that autumn, a good deal of 
 what was euphemistically described as " trouble " 
 in that district of the County Cork which Mr. Denny 
 and the Kilcronan hounds graced with their society, 
 and when Mr. O'Grady and his field assembled at 
 the Curragh-coolaghy cross-roads, it was darkly 
 hinted that if the hounds ran over a certain farm
 
 "■ Matchbox y 255 
 
 not far from the covert, there might be more 
 trouble. 
 
 Dinny Johnny, occupied with pulling up Mary 
 O'Grady's saddle girths, and evading the snaps 
 with which " Matchbox " acknowledged the atten- 
 tion, thought little of these rumours. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " he said ; " whatever they do they'll 
 let the hounds alone. Come on, Mary, you and 
 me'll sneak down to the north side of the wood. 
 He's bound to break there, and we've got to take 
 every chance we can get." 
 
 Curragh-coolaghy covert was a large, ill-kept 
 plantation that straggled over a long hillside fight- 
 ing with furze-bushes and rocks for the right of 
 possession ; a place wherein the young hounds 
 could catch and eat rabbits to thdr heart's content 
 comfortably aware that the net of brambles that 
 stretched from tree to tree would effectually screen 
 them from punishment. From its north-east side 
 a fairly smooth country trended down to a river, 
 and if the fox did not fulfil Mr. Denny's expecta- 
 tions by breaking to the north, the purplish patch 
 that showed where, on the further side of the river, 
 Madore Wood lay, looked a point for which he 
 would be likely to make. Conscious of an act 
 which he would have loudly condemned in any one 
 else, Mr. Denny, followed by Mary, like his 
 shadow, rode quietly round the long flank of the
 
 256 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 covert to the north-east corner. They sat in 
 perfect stillness for a few minutes, and then there 
 ' came a rustling on the inside of the high, bracken- 
 fringed fence which divided them from the covert. 
 Then a countryman's voice said in a cautious 
 whisper : — 
 
 " Did he put in the hounds yit ? " 
 
 " He did," said another voice, " he put them in 
 the soud-aisht side ; they'll be apt to get it soon." 
 
 " Get what ? " thought Dinny Johnny, all his 
 bristles rising in wrath as the idea of a drag came 
 to him. 
 
 " There ! they're noising now ! " said the first 
 voice, while a whimper or two came from far back 
 in the wood. " Maybe there'll not be so much chat 
 out o' thim afther once they'll git to Madore ! " 
 
 " 'Twas a pity Scanlan wouldn't put the mate in 
 here and have done with it," said the second voice. 
 " Owld Sta'll niver let them run a dhrag." 
 
 " Yirrah, what dhrag man ! 'Twas the fox him- 
 self they had, and he cut open to make a good 
 thrail, and the way Scanlan laid it the devil himself 
 wouldn't know 'twas a dhrag, and they have little 
 Danny Casey below to screech he seen the fox " 
 
 At the same instant the whimpers swelled into 
 a far-away chorus, that grew each moment fainter 
 and more faint. Much as Mr. Denny desired to 
 undertake the capture of the imparters of these
 
 ^' Matchbox^ 257 
 
 interesting facts, he knew that he had now no time 
 to attempt it, and, with a shout to Mary, he started 
 the colt at full gallop up the rough hill-side, round 
 the covert, while the grey pony scuttled after him 
 as nimbly as a rabbit. The colt seemed to realise 
 the stress of the occasion, and jumped steadily 
 enough ; but the last fence on to the road was too 
 much for his nerves, and, having swerved from it 
 with discomposing abruptness, he fell to his wonted 
 tactics of rearing and backing. 
 
 Mr. Denny permitted himself one minute in 
 which to establish the fruitlessness of spurs, whip 
 and blasphemy in this emergency, and then, 
 descending to his own legs, he climbed over the 
 fence into the road and ran as fast as boots and 
 tops would let him towards the point whence the 
 cry of the hounds was coming, ever more and more 
 faintly. In a moment or two he returned, out of 
 breath, to where the faithful Mary awaited him. 
 
 " It's no good, Mary," he said, wiping the per- 
 spiration from his forehead ; *' they're running like 
 blazes to the south along through the furze, I 
 suppose the devils took it that way to humbug 
 your father, and then they'll turn for the bridge 
 and run into Madore ; and there's the end of the 
 hounds." 
 
 Mary, who regarded the hounds as the chief, if 
 not the only, object of existence, looked at him 
 
 17
 
 258 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 with scared eyes, while the colour died out of her 
 round cheeks. 
 
 " Will they be poisoned, Mr. Denny ? " she 
 gasped, 
 
 " Every man jack of them, if your father doesn't 
 twig it's a drag, and whip 'em off," replied Mr. 
 Denny, with grim brevity. 
 
 " Couldn't we catch them up ? " cried Mary, 
 almost incoherent from excitement and horror. 
 
 " They've gone half-a-mile by this, and that 
 brute," this with an eye of concentrated hatred at 
 the colt, " won't jump a broom-stick." 
 
 " But let me try," urged Mary, maddened by the 
 assumption of masculine calm which Mr. Denny's 
 despair had taken on ; " or — oh, Mr. Denny, if you 
 rode ' Matchbox ' yourself straight to Madore across 
 the river, you'd be in time to whip them off!" 
 
 " By Jove ! " said Dinny Johnny, and was silent. 
 I believe that was the moment at which the identity 
 of the future Mrs, Denny was made clear to him, 
 
 "And you'll have to ride her in my saddle ! " went 
 on Mary at lightning speed, taking control of the 
 situation in a manner prophetic of her future 
 successful career as a matron. " There isn't time 
 to change " 
 
 " The devil I shall ! " said Dinny Johnny, and an 
 unworthy thought of what his friends would say 
 flitted across his mind.
 
 ^' Matchbox^ 259 
 
 "And you'll have to sit sideways, because the 
 lowest crutch is so far back there's not room for 
 your leg if you sit saddleways," continued his 
 preceptor breathlessly. " I know it — Jimmy said 
 so when he rode her to the meet for me last week. 
 Oh hurry — hurry ! How slow you are ! " 
 
 Mr. Denny never quite knew how he got into the 
 horrors of the saddle, still less how he and *' Match- 
 box" got into the road. At one acute moment, 
 indeed, he had believed he was going to precede 
 her thither, but they alighted more or less together, 
 and turning her, by a handy gap, into the field on 
 the other side of the road, he set off at a precarious 
 gallop, followed by the encouraging shrieks of 
 Mary. 
 
 " Thank the Lord there's no one looking, and it's 
 a decent old saddle with a pommel on the off side," 
 he said to himself piously, while he grasped the 
 curving snout of the pommel in question, " I'd be a 
 dead man this minute only for that." 
 
 He felt as though he were wedged in among the 
 claws of a giant crab, but without the sense of re- 
 tention that might be hoped for under such circum- 
 stances. The lowest crutch held one leg in aching 
 durance ; there was but just room for the other 
 between the two upper horns, and the saddle was 
 so short and hollow in the seat that its high-ridged 
 cantle was the only portion from which he derived
 
 26o All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 any support — a support that was suddenly and 
 painfully experienced after each jump. He could 
 see, very far off, the pink coat of " Owld Sta' " 
 following a line which seemed each moment to be 
 turning more directly for Madore, and in his agony 
 he gave the pony an imprudent dig of the spur that 
 sent her on and off a boggy fence in two goat-like 
 bounds, and gave the sunlight opportunity to play 
 intermittently upon the hollow seat of the saddle. 
 She had never carried him so well, and as she put 
 her little head down and raced at the fences, the 
 unfortunate Dinny Johnny felt that though he was 
 probably going to break his neck, no one would 
 ever be able to mention his early demise without 
 a grin. 
 
 Field after field fled by him in painful succession 
 till he found himself safe on the farther side of a 
 big stone-faced " double," the last fence before the 
 river. 
 
 "Please God I'll never be a woman again!" 
 ejaculated Mr. Denny as he wedged his left leg 
 more tightly in behind the torturing leaping horn, 
 " that was a hairy old place ! I wish Mary saw 
 the pair of us coming up on to it like new-born 
 stags ! " 
 
 Had Mary seen him and " Matchbox " a moment 
 later, emerging separately from a hole in mid 
 stream, her respect might not have prevented her
 
 ''Matchbox'' 261 
 
 from laughing, but the fact remains that the pair 
 got across somehow. At the top of the hill beyond 
 the river Dinny Johnny saw the hounds for the first 
 time. They had checked on the road by the bridge, 
 but now he heard them throwing their tongues as 
 they hit the line again, the fatal line that was lead- 
 ing them to the covert. Even at this moment, Mr. 
 Denny could not restrain an admiration that would 
 appear to most people ill-timed. 
 
 " Aren't they going the hell of a docket ! " he 
 exclaimed fondly, "and good old Chantress leading 
 the lot of them, the darling ! It'll be a queer thing 
 now, if I don't get there in time ! " 
 
 Blown though the pony was, he knew instinctively 
 that he had not yet come to the end of her, and he 
 drove her along at a canter until he reached a lane 
 that encircled the covert, along which he would 
 have to go to intercept the hounds. As he jumped 
 into it he was suddenly aware of a yelling crowd of 
 men and boys, who seemed, with nightmare un- 
 expectedness, to fill all the lane behind him. He 
 knew what they were there for, and oblivious of the 
 lamentable absurdity of his appearance, he turned 
 and roared out a defiance as he clattered at full 
 speed down the stony lane. It seemed like another 
 and almost expected episode in the nightmare 
 when he became aware of a barricade of stones, 
 built across the road to a height of about four feet,
 
 262 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 with along the top of it — raising it to what, on a 
 fourteen hand pony, looked like impossibility — the 
 branch of a fir-tree, with all its bristling twigs left 
 on it. 
 
 He heard the cry of the hounds clearly now ; 
 they were within a couple of fields of the covert. 
 Dinny Johnny drove his left spur into the little 
 mare's panting side, let go the crutch, took hold of 
 her head in the way that is unmistakable, and faced 
 her at the barricade. As he did so a countryman 
 sprang up at his right hand and struck furiously 
 at him with a heavy potato spade. The blow was 
 aimed at Dinny Johnny, but the moment was 
 miscalculated, and it fell on " Matchbox " instead. 
 The sharp blade gashed her hind quarter, but with 
 a spring like a frightened deer she rose to the 
 jump. For one supreme moment Dinny Johnny 
 thought she had cleared it, but at the next her 
 hind legs had caught in the branch, and with a 
 jerk that sent her rider flying over her head, she 
 fell in a heap on the road. Fortunately for Mr. 
 Denny, he was a proficient in the art of falling, and 
 though his hands were cut, and blood was streaming 
 down his face, he was able to struggle up, and run 
 on towards the cry of the hounds. There was still 
 time ; panting and dizzy, and half-blinded with his 
 own blood, he knew that there was still time, and 
 he laboured on, heedless of everything but the
 
 " Matchbox^ 263 
 
 hounds. A high wall divided the covert from the 
 lane, and he could see the gate that was the sole 
 entrance to the wood on this side standing open. 
 It was an iron gate, very high, with close upright 
 iron bars and Chantress was racing him to get 
 there first, Chantress, with all the pack at her 
 heels. 
 
 Dinny Johnny won. It was a very close thing 
 between him and Chantress, and that good hound's 
 valuable nose came near being caught as the gates 
 clanged together, but Dinny Johnny was in first. 
 Then he flung himself at the pack, whipping, slash- 
 ing, and swearing like a madman, as indeed he was 
 for the moment. He had often whipped for Mr. 
 O'Grady, and the hounds knew him, but without 
 the solid abetting of the wall and the gate, he would 
 have had but a poor chance. As it was, he whipped 
 ^hem back into the field up which they had run, 
 and as he did so, " Owld Sta' " came puffing up the 
 hill, with about a dozen of the field hard at his 
 heels. 
 
 " Poison ! " gasped Dinny Johnny, falling down 
 at full length on the grass, " the wood's poisoned ! " 
 
 When they went back to look for " Matchbox " 
 she was still lying in the bohireen. Her bridle 
 had vanished, and so had the pursuing countrymen. 
 Mary O'Grady's saddle was broken, and could
 
 264 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 never be used again, and no more could " Match- 
 box," because she had broken her neck. 
 
 And so the hounds, whom she had saved, sub- 
 sequently ate her ; but one of her little hoofs 
 commemorates her name, and as Mr. Denny, with 
 its assistance, lights his after-dinner pipe, he often 
 heaves an appropriate sigh, and remarks : " Well, 
 Mary, we'll never get the like of that pony again ".
 
 "AS I WAS GOING TO BANDON FAIR." 
 
 The first glimpse was worthy the best traditions 
 of an Irish horse-fair. The train moved slowly 
 across a bridge ; beneath it lay the principal street 
 of Bandon, seething with horses, loud with voices, 
 and as the engine-driver, with the stern humour of 
 his kind, let loose the usual assortment of sounds, 
 it seemed as though the roadway below boiled over. 
 Horses reared, plunged and stampeded, while high 
 above the head of a long-tailed chestnut a country- 
 man floated forth into space, a vision, in its brief 
 perfectness, delightfully photographed on the retina. 
 
 From the moment of leaving the railway station 
 the fair was all-pervading. It appeared that 
 the whole district had turned horse dealer. The 
 cramped side pavements of the town failed to ac- 
 commodate the ceaseless promenade of those whose 
 sole business lay in criticising the companion pro- 
 menade of horses in the narrow street. They haled 
 horses before them with the aplomb of a colonel of 
 cavalry buying remounts. 
 
 " Hi ! bay horse ! Pull in here ! Foxy mare ! 
 
 Hi, boy, bring up that foxy mare!" 
 
 The ensuing comments, though mainly of a 
 
 265
 
 266 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 damaging nature, were understood on both sides 
 to be no more than conventional dismissals. The 
 bay horse and the foxy mare were re-absorbed in 
 the stream ; their critics directed their attentions 
 elsewhere with unquenched assiduity. 
 
 It is the truest, most changeless trait of Irish 
 character, the desire to stand well with the horse, 
 to be his confidant, his physician, his exponent. 
 It is comparable to the inborn persuasion in the 
 heart of every man that he is a judge of wine. 
 
 The procession of horses in the long, narrow 
 street makes the brain swim. Hardly has the eye 
 taken in the elderly and astute hunter with the 
 fired hocks, whose forelegs look best in action, 
 when it is dazzled by the career of a cart-horse, 
 scourged to a mighty canter by a boy with a rope's 
 end, or it is horrified by the hairbreadth escape of 
 a group of hooded countrywomen from before the 
 neighing charge of a two-year-old in a halter and 
 string. Yet these things are the mere preliminary 
 to the fair. At the end of the town a gap broken 
 in a fence admits to a long field on a hillside. The 
 entrance is perilous, and before it is achieved may 
 involve more than one headlong flight to the safe 
 summit of a friendly wall, as the young horses 
 protest, and whirl, and buck with the usual fatuity 
 of their kind. Once within the fair field there 
 befal the enticements of the green apple, of the
 
 "y/j / was going to Battdon Fair" 267 
 
 dark-complexioned sweetmeat temptingly denomin- 
 ated "Peggy's leg." of the " crackers "—that is, a 
 confection resembling dog biscuit sown with cara- 
 way seeds — and, above all, of the " crubeens," which, 
 being interpreted, means " pigs' feet," slightly salted, 
 boiled, cold, wholly abominable. Here also is the 
 three-card trick, demonstrated by a man with the 
 incongruous accent of Whitechapel and a defiant 
 eye, that even through the glaze of the second 
 stage of drunkenness held the audience and yet 
 was 'ware of the disposition of the nine of hearts. 
 Here is the drinking booth, and here sundry itiner- 
 ant vendors of old clothes, and — of all improbable 
 commodities to be found at a horse-fair — wall-paper. 
 Neither has much success. The old-clothes woman 
 casts down a heap of singularly repellant rags before 
 a disparaging customer ; she beats them with her 
 fists, presumably to show their soundness in wind 
 and limb : a cloud of germ-laden dust arises. 
 
 " Arrah ! " she says ; " the divil himself wouldn't 
 plaze ye in clothes." 
 
 The wall-paper man is not more fortunate. 
 " Look at that for a nate patthern ! " he says 
 ecstatically, " that'd paper a bed ! Come now, 
 ma'am, wan an' thrippence ! " 
 
 The would-be purchaser silently tests it with a 
 wrinkled finger and thumb, and shakes her head. 
 
 " Well, I declare to ye now, that's a grand paper.
 
 268 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 If ye papered a room with that and put a hen in 
 it she'd lay four eggs ! " But not even the con- 
 sideration of its value as an aesthetic stimulant 
 can compass the sale of the one-and-threepenny 
 wall-paper. 
 
 Down at this end of the fair field congregate 
 the three-year-olds and two-year-olds ; they pierce 
 the air with their infant squeals and neighs, they 
 stamp, and glare, and strike attitudes with absurd 
 statuesqueness, while their owners sit on a bank 
 above them, playing them like fish on the end of a 
 long rope, and fabling forth their perfections with 
 tireless fancy. The perils of the way increase at 
 every moment. In and out among the restless heels 
 the onlooker must steer his course, up into the 
 ampler space on the hill-top, where the horses stand 
 in more open order and a general view is possible. 
 
 Much may be learned at Bandon Fair of how 
 the County Cork hunter is arrived at, of the Lord 
 Hastings colt out of a high-bred Victor mare ; of 
 New Laund, of Speculation, of Whalebone, of the 
 ancient and well-nigh mythical Druid, whose name 
 adds a lustre to any pedigree. These things are 
 matters far more real and serious than English 
 history to every man and boy in the fair field, 
 whether he is concerned in practical horse-dealing 
 or not. Even the mere visitor is fired with the 
 acquisition of knowledge, and, in the intervals of
 
 " y/j / was going to Bandon Fair.'' 269 
 
 saving his life, casts a withering eye on hocks 
 and forelegs, and cultivates the gloomy silence 
 that distinguishes the buyer. 
 
 It can hardly fail to attract the attention of the 
 
 inquirer that, in the highest walks of horsiness, 
 
 the desire to appear horsey has been left behind. 
 
 These shining ones have passed beyond symbols 
 
 of canes, of gaiters, of straws in the mouth ; it is 
 
 as though they craved that incognito which for 
 
 them is for ever impossible. Bandon Fair was 
 
 privileged to have drawn two such into its shouting 
 
 vortex. One wears a simple suit of black serge, 
 
 with trousers of a godly fulness ; in it he might 
 
 fitly hand round the plate in church. His manner 
 
 is almost startlingly candid, his speech, what there 
 
 is of it, is ungarnished with stable slang, his face 
 
 might belong to an imperfectly shaved archbishop. 
 
 Yesterday he bought twenty young horses ; next 
 
 week he will buy forty more ; next year he will 
 
 place them in the English shires at prices never 
 
 heard of in Bandon, and, be it added, they will as 
 
 a rule be worth the money. Here is another noted 
 
 judge of horseflesh, in knickerbocker breeches that 
 
 seem to have been made at home for some one else, 
 
 in leather gaiters of unostentatious roominess and 
 
 rusticity. Though the August day is innocent of 
 
 all suggestion of rain, he carries instead of a 
 
 riding cane a matronly umbrella. When he rides
 
 270 All on the Irish Shore. 
 
 a horse, and he rides several with a singularly 
 intimate and finished method, he hands the 
 umbrella to a reverential bystander ; when the trial 
 is over the umbrella is reassumed. If anything 
 were needed to accent its artless domesticity, it 
 would be the group of boys, horse copers in ambi- 
 tion, possibly in achievement, who sit in a row 
 under a fence, with their teeth grimly clenched 
 upon clay pipes, their eyes screwed up in perpetual 
 and ungenial observation. Their conversation is 
 telegraphic, smileless, esoteric, and punctuated with 
 expectoration. If Phaeton and the horses of the 
 sun were to take a turn round the fair field these 
 critics would find little in them to commend. They 
 are in the primary phase of a life-long art ; perhaps 
 with time and exceptional favours of fortune it may 
 be given to them to learn the disarming mildness, 
 the simplicity, that, like a water-lily, is the perfected 
 outcome of the deep. 
 
 Before two o'clock the magnates of the fair had 
 left it, taking with them the cream of its contents, 
 and in humbler people such a hunger began to 
 assert itself as came near bringing even "crubeens 
 and Peggy's leg within the sphere of practical 
 politics. While slowly struggling through the 
 swarming street the perfume of mutton chops stole 
 exquisitely forth from the door of one of the hotels, 
 accompanied by the sound of a subdued fusillade
 
 A HIERARCH OF HORSE-DEALING.
 
 " /ff / was going to Bandon Fair.'' 273 
 
 of soda-water corks ; over the heads of the filthy 
 press of people round the entrance and the thirsty 
 throng at the bar might be seen a procession of 
 gaitered legs going upstairs to luncheon. It seemed 
 an excellent idea. The air within was blue with 
 tobacco smoke, flushed henchwomen staggered to 
 and fro with arms spread wide across trays of 
 whiskies and sodas, opening doors revealed rooms 
 full of men, mutton chops and mastication. There 
 was wildness in the eye of the attendant as she 
 took the order for yet another luncheon. She fled, 
 with the assurance that it would be ready immedi- 
 ately, yet subsequent events suggested that even 
 while she spoke the sheep that was to respond to 
 that thirty-fifth order for mutton chops was brows- 
 ing in the pastures of Bandon. 
 
 For eyes that had last looked on food at 7 A.M., 
 neither the view of the street obtainable from the 
 first floor parlour window, nor even the contempla- 
 tion of the remarkable sacred pictures that adorned 
 its walls, had the interest they might have held 
 earlier in the day, and the dirty cruet-stand on the 
 dirtier tablecloth was endued with an almost 
 hypnotic fascination in its suggestion of coming 
 sustenance. At the end of the first hour a stupor 
 verging on indifference had set in ; it was far on in 
 the second when the dish of fried mutton chops, 
 the hard potatoes, and the tepid whiskies and sodas 
 
 18
 
 2 74 ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ Irish Shore. 
 
 were flung upon the board. No preliminary to a 
 week's indigestion had been neglected, and a 
 deserved success was the result. 
 
 The business of the fair was still transacted at 
 large throughout the hotel. From behind the 
 mound of mutton chops a buyer shoved a roll of 
 dirty one-pound notes round the potato dish, and 
 after due haggling received back one, according to 
 the mystic Irish custom of " luck-penny ". On the 
 sofa two farmers carried on a transaction in which 
 the swap of a colt, boot money, and luck-penny 
 were blended into one trackless maze of astuteness 
 and arithmetic. On the wall above them a print 
 in which Ananias and Sapphira were the central 
 figures gave a simple and suitable finish to the 
 scene. 
 
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