i82 BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 



with the bone - setting canter of the grooms' 

 carriage — a landscape ahvays pretty, never start- 

 ling, laden in the bright hot morning with the 

 trance of June, and with the tenderness of its 

 unconscious farewell to us. That one-sided fore- 

 knowledge of parting pervaded all things, and 

 indued with romance the two inquiring faces 

 — one bay with a white spot, the other drab with 

 a white blaze — that gazed at us across the empty 

 mangers in unwearied expectancy of oats. At 

 Ruabon Junction, during a long, hot interval in 

 a siding, we fed them with penny buns and with 

 an armful of hay stolen by Miss O'Flannigan 

 from a cart that stood outside a public -house 

 adjacent to our siding. It was an unusual mani- 

 festation of sentiment, but it was accepted on its 

 merits ; and the lumps of warm dough were chewed 

 and gulped with much fuss and detail, and the hay 

 snatched from our hands with a voracity that we 

 ventured to hope was a politeness. When, at 

 Oswestry, the final moment came, they suffered 



