ated
on Mrs. Pat's ear with a truly fiendish rasp; "do you want a lead?"

The incensed Mrs. Pat once more replied in forcible 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 undignified
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 persistently 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 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 declined, 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 endure. 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 ro