ave the money in me pocket!"

The colour flooded Fanny Fitz's face. She stared at Patsey with eyes
that more than ever suggested the Connemara trout-stream with the sun
playing in it; so bright were they, so changing, and so wet. So at least
thought a man, much addicted to fishing, who was regarding the scene
from a little way off.

"He was a dealer, miss," went on Patsey; "a Dublin fella'. Sixty-three
sovereigns I asked him, and he offered me fifty-five, and a man that was
there said we should shplit the differ, and in the latther end he gave
me the sixty pounds. He wasn't very stiff at all. I'm thinking he wasn't
buying for himself."

The man who had noticed Fanny Fitz's eyes moved away unostentatiously.
He had seen in them as much as he wanted; for that time at least.

THE CONNEMARA MARE

PART I

The grey mare who had been one of the last, if not the very last, of the
sales at the Dublin Horse Show, was not at all happy in her mind.

Still less so was the dealer's under-strapper, to whom fell the task of
escorting her through the streets of Dublin. Her late owner's groom had
assured him that she would "folly him out of his hand, and that whatever
she'd see she wouldn't care for it nor ask to look at it!"

It cannot be denied, however, that when an electric tram swept past her
like a terrace under weigh, closely followed by a cart laden with a
clanking and horrific reaping-machine, she showed that she possessed
powers of observation. The incident passed off with credit to the
under-strapper, but when an animal has to be played like a salmon down
the length of Lower Mount Street, and when it barn-dances obliquely
along the north side of Merrion Square, the worst may be looked for in
Nassau Street.

And it was indeed in Nassau Street, and, moreover, in full view of the
bow window of Kildare Street Club, that the cup of the under-strapper's
misfortunes brimmed over. To be sure he could not know that the new
owner of the grey mare was in that window; it was enough for him that a
quiescent and unsuspected piano-organ broke with three majestic chords
into Mascagni's "Intermezzo" at his very ear, and that, without any
apparent interval of time, he was surmounting a heap composed of a
newspaper boy, a sandwich man, and a hospital nurse, while his hands
held nothing save a red-hot memory of where the rope had been. The
smashing of glass and the clatter of hoofs on the pavement filled in
what space was left i