ned 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 unimpeachable.

"The only reason I'm parting them is I'm giving up me drag, and selling
me stock, and going 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 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 descendants 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 business-like 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 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 outside; Bismarck uttered a
bloodhound bay and got under the sofa. It was a sunny morning in late
October, and the French window was open; outside 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 ladys