GOOD HORSES AND FRAUDS 159 



The black stretched out well with his powerful 

 stride, hopped me over a ragged ditch, took a 

 horrible stone-faced place with his ears up . . . 

 and ... it was his first and last refusal. 



Believers in dreams may see something in it. 

 My old horse got laminitis, hunting became a pain 

 to him, but I could not bear to shoot him, so he is 

 doing very gentle work for Mr. Arthur White, and 

 showed the old Adam was not dead by jumping 

 the high palings last winter at Fort Etna. 



Ten seasons without a fall, with only one mishap 

 when he caught his foreleg in a root and I had to 

 jump off . . . and he was on offer here for twenty 

 pounds and no one would buy him. 



" He'd take off from a bramble bush and he'd 

 clear the Shannon in flood," Cuthbert used to say. 



Never sick or tired, ready to hack out sixteen 

 miles if he was wanted, doing long days. I had no 

 second horses then. With Blackie in his later days 

 — good and bad things always come together — 

 I had Miss Magner, a bay mare bought from Con 

 Magner, a very hard riding farmer. She was 

 another screw, supposed to be a whistler, but 

 really quite sound, and carried me for eight 

 seasons without a fall. A very hot mare, taking 

 her fences fast, and she could give you the ride of 

 your hfe, and as bad a one as you could think of 

 if her temper was put out. She has made mistakes 

 with me at five fences running — never falling — 

 but if you came to a really bad fence, she was 



