lgent body. What is the case of one to-day may be that of another
to-morrow, and everyone is interested in seeing that the stricken man is
given time to rise again. So the burden of Worlington Dodds was
lightened for him; many shoulders helped to bear it, and he was able to
go for a little summer tour into Ireland, for the doctors had ordered
him rest and change of air to restore his shaken nervous system. Thus
it was that upon the 15th of July, 1870, he found himself at his
breakfast in the fly-blown coffee-room of the "George Hotel" in the
market square of Dunsloe. It is a dull and depressing coffee-room, and
one which is usually empty, but on this particular day it was as crowded
and noisy as that of any London hotel. Every table was occupied, and a
thick smell of fried bacon and of fish hung in the air. Heavily booted
men clattered in and out, spurs jingled, riding-crops were stacked in
corners, and there was a general atmosphere of horse. The conversation,
too, was of nothing else. From every side Worlington Dodds heard of
yearlings, of windgalls, of roarers, of spavins, of cribsuckers, of a
hundred other terms which were as unintelligible to him as his own
Stock Exchange jargon would have been to the company. He asked the
waiter for the reason of it all, and the waiter was an astonished man
that there should be any man in this world who did not know it.

"Shure it's the Dunsloe horse fair, your honour--the greatest
horse-fair in all Oireland. It lasts for a wake, and the folk come from
far an' near--from England an' Scotland an' iverywhere. If you look out
of the winder, your honour, you'll see the horses, and it's asy your
honour's conscience must be, or you wouldn't slape so sound that the
creatures didn't rouse you with their clatter."

Dodds had a recollection that he had heard a confused murmur, which had
interwoven itself with his dreams--a sort of steady rhythmic beating and
clanking--and now, when he looked through the window, he saw the cause
of it. The square was packed with horses from end to end--greys, bays,
browns, blacks, chestnuts--young ones and old, fine ones and coarse,
horses of every conceivable sort and size. It seemed a huge function
for so small a town, and he remarked as much to the waiter.

"Well, you see, your honour, the horses don't live in the town, an' they
don't vex their heads how small it is. But it's in the very centre of
the horse-bradin' districts of Oireland,