flying off, and then gripping their
fore-riders hard and fast by the bosoms. When we got to the Dumb-hill,
there were five or six fellows that didn't come with us to the priest's,
but met us with cudgels in their hands, to prevent any of them from
starting before the others, and to show fair play.

"Well, when they were all in a lump,--horses, mules, raheries, and
asses--some, as I said, with saddles, some with none; and all jist as I
tould you before;--the word was given and off they scoured, myself along
with the rest; and divil be off me, if ever I saw such another sight but
itself before or since. Off they skelped through thick and thin, in a
cloud of dust like a mist about us; but it was a mercy that the life
wasn't trampled out of some of us; for before we had gone fifty perches,
the one-third of them were sprawling a-top of one another on the road.
As for the women, they went down right and left--sometimes bringing the
horsemen with them; and many of the boys getting black eyes and bloody
noses on the stones. Some of them, being half blind with the motion of
the whiskey, turned off the wrong way, and galloped on, thinking they
had completely distanced the crowd; and it wasn't until they cooled a
bit that they found out their mistake.

[Illustration: PAGE 693-- How he kept his sate so long has puzzled me]

"But the best sport of all was, when they came to the Lazy Corner, just
at Jack Gallagher's flush,* where the water came out a good way acrass
the road; being in such a flight, they either forgot or didn't know how
to turn the angle properly, and plash went above thirty of them, coming
down right on the top of one another, souse in the pool. By this time
there was about a dozen of the best horsemen a good distance before the
rest, cutting one another up for the bottle: among these were the Dorans
and Flanagans; but they, you see, wisely enough, dropped their women at
the beginning, and only rode single. I myself didn't mind the bottle,
but kept close to Mary, for fraid that among sich a divil's pack of
half-mad fellows, anything might happen her. At any rate, I was next the
first batch: but where do you think the tailor was all this time? Why
away off like lightning, miles before them--flying like a swallow: and
how he kept his sate so long has puzzled me from that day to this; but,
any how, truth's best--there he was topping the hill ever so far before
them. After all, the unlucky crathur nearly missed the bot