CONQUERING BILLY. 71 



will now tell you what I learned about him. In speak- 

 ing of him, Oiney said : "Larry, it was this way. A 

 friend of mine, Mike Walsh by name, lived beyant 

 Toronto. He had an ould gray mare that was a good 

 one. She had been run and run, here, there and every- 

 where, over all kinds of tracks and all kinds of roads, 

 and under all kinds of names, let me tell ye. She was 

 getting old and onsartin the first time I see'd her at the 

 'burg, but I wanted her to breed. Mike would not 

 hear of it ; but I kept at him until he promised to send 

 her to a good horse and sell me the colt. Breed her he 

 did the next spring, after she fell in her work and hurt- 

 ed her shoulder, to a high flyer up in Western Canada, 

 called Terror. Isn't that a name for you? Well, it 

 isn't here or there, he was a clipper horse in his day 

 and they tell me his colts are doing fine. At all events, 

 I have one of them and will make him earn his oats, or 

 onto the plough he goes. In due time Mike's old mare 

 had a foal. It was a colt as black as your hat, so he 

 wrote me. By that I knew it would be a gray. I did 

 not like it, but let me tell you right here, a good horse 

 cannot be a bad color. I stood by my bargain and 

 here it is. When the colt was a two-year-old Mike 

 had him gelded and sent him down here on the boat. I 

 went to Prescott and got him. It was on the Twelfth 

 of July and all the Orangemen in the country were 

 there paradin'. Half of them knew me and the other 

 half had heard of me, no doubt, for when I went to 

 lead the colt up the street from the wharf, it was Oiney 

 here and Oiney there until I could not hear myself 

 think. Then they began laughing at me and wanted 

 to know where I was going with King William's horse, 

 for, as you must know, all of the King Willie's in the 



