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 incomprehensible 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 ploughing the Craughmore.”

The youngest Miss Purcell knew as well as her sister Nora that the latter had already commandeered the foxy mare, and, with the connivance of the cowboy, had concealed her in the cow-house; 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-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.