Scarcely had he spoke when we both came together at a stone-fence, about
three feet high. This time I was a little in advance, as my horse was
fresher, and took it first.

'Oh, the devil a better!' said Father Tom. 'Burke himself couldn't beat
that! Here, now: keep this way out of the deep ground, and rush him at
the double ditch there.'

Resolved on securing his good opinion, I gripped my saddle firmly with
my knees, and rode at the fence. Over we went in capital style; but
lighting on the top of a rotten ditch, the ground gave way, and my
horse's hind legs slipped backwards into the gripe. Being at full
stretch, the poor animal had no power to recover himself, so that,
disengaging his forelegs, I pulled him down into the hollow, and then
with a vigorous dash of the spur and a bold lift carried him clean over
it into the field.

'Look, now!' said the priest; 'that pleases me better than all you did
before. Presence of mind--that's the real gift for a horseman when he's
in a scrape; but, mind me, it was your own fault, for here's the way to
take the fence.' So saying, he made a slight semicircle in the field,
and then, as he headed his horse towards the leap, rushed him at it
furiously, and came over like the bound of a stag.

'Now,' said Father Tom, pointing with his whip as he spoke, 'we have a
beautiful bit of galloping-ground before us; and if you ever reach this
far, and I don't see why you shouldn't, here's where you ought to make
play. Listen to me now,' said he, dropping his voice: 'Tom Molloy s mare
isn't thoroughbred, though they think she is. She has got a bad drop in
her. Now, the horse is all right, clean bred, sire and dam, by reason he
'll be able to go through the dirt when the mare can't; so that all you
've to do, if, as I said before, you get this far, is to keep straight
down to the two thorn-bushes--there, you see them yonder. Burke won't
be able to take that line, but must keep upon the headlands, and go all
round yonder; look, now, you see the difference--so that before he can
get over that wide ditch you'll be across it, and making for the stone
wall After that, by the powers, if you don't win, I, can't help you!'

'Where does the course turn after, father?' said I.

'Oh! a beautiful line of flat country, intersprinkled with walls,
ditches, and maybe a hedge or two; but all fair, and only one rasping
fence--the last of all. After that, you have a clean gallop of about a
quarter of a mile,