out the 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
wint 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
undoubtedly 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 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