‘Well, Mr. Flurry, and gintlemen,’ recommenced Slipper, ‘I declare to ye when owld Bocock’s mare heard thim roars she sthretched out her neck like a gandher, and when she passed me out she give a couple of grunts, and looked at me as ugly as a Christian.

“‘Hah!” says I, givin’ her a couple o’ dhraws o’ th’ ash plant across the butt o’ the tail, the way I wouldn’t blind her; “I’ll make ye grunt!” says I, “I’ll nourish ye!”

‘I knew well she was very frightful of th’ ash plant since the winter Tommeen Sullivan had her under a side-car. But now, in place of havin’ any obligations to me, ye’d be surprised if ye heard the blaspheemious expressions of that young boy that was ridin’ her; and whether it was over-anxious he was, turnin’ around the way I’d hear him cursin’, or whether it was some slither or slide came to owld Bocock’s mare, I dunno, but she was bet up agin the last obstackle but two, and before ye could say “Schnipes”, she was standin’ on her two ears beyond in th’ other field! I declare to ye, on the vartue of me oath, she stood that way till she reconnoithered what side would Driscoll fall, an’ she turned about then and rolled on him as cosy as if he was meadow grass!’

Slipper stopped short; the people in the doorway groaned appreciatively; Mary Kate murmured, ‘The Lord save us!’

‘The blood was dhruv out through his nose and ears,’ continued Slipper, with a voice that indicated the cream of the narration, ‘and you’d hear his bones crackin’ on the ground! You’d have pitied the poor boy.’

‘Good heavens!’ said Leigh Kelway, sitting up very straight in his chair.

‘Was he hurt, Slipper?’ asked Flurry casually.

‘Hurt is it?’ echoed Slipper in high scorn; ‘killed on the spot!’ He paused to relish the effect of the denouement on Leigh Kelway. ‘Oh, divil so pleasant an afthernoon ever you seen; and indeed, Mr. Flurry, it’s what we were all sayin’, it was a great pity your honour was not there for the likin’ you had for Driscoll.’

As he spoke the last word there was an outburst of singing and cheering from a car-load of people who had just pulled up at the door. Flurry listened, leaned back in his chair, and began to laugh.

‘It scarcely strikes one as a comic incident,’ said Leigh Kelway, very coldly to me; ‘in fact, it seems to me that the police ought—’

‘Show me Slipper!’ bawled a voice in the shop; ‘show me that dirty little undherlooper till I have his blood! Hadn’t I the race won only for he souring the mare on me! What’s that you say? I tell ye he did! He left seven slaps on her with the handle of a hayrake—’

There was in the room in which we were sitting a second door, leading to the back yard, a door consecrated to the unobtrusive visits of so-called ‘Sunday travellers’. Through it Slipper faded away like a dream, and, simultaneously, a tall young man, with a face like a red-hot potato tied up in a bandage, squeezed his way from the shop into the room.

‘Well, Driscoll,’ said Flurry, ‘since it wasn’t the teeth of the rake he left on the mare, you needn’t be talking!’

Leigh Kelway looked from one to the other with a wilder expression in his eye than I had thought it capable of. I read in it a resolve to abandon Ireland to her fate.

At eight o’clock we were still waiting for the car that we had been assured should be ours directly it returned from the races. At half-past eight we had adopted the only possible course that remained, and had accepted the offers of lifts on the laden cars that were returning to Skebawn, and I presently was gratified by the spectacle of my friend Leigh Kelway wedged between a roulette table and its proprietor on one side of a car, with Driscoll and Slipper, mysteriously reconciled and excessively drunk, seated,