THE CARLOW AND ISLAND 19 



a scholar. The point that I picked up on this occasion, 

 all unwillingly I confess, was cheaply acquired, for it only 

 involved the price of a felt hat and a stiff neck, viz. that 

 the part of a bank you ought not to choose for your leap 

 is where by force of cattle tread or rainwash it has become 

 razor-topped and thin. In this condition it is likely 

 enough to crumble to your horse's beat and — well, in my 

 case I found myself heading downwards into the further 

 ditch, till brought up short by my crumpled billycock and 

 the rein still grasped in my hand. I looked upward in 

 mortal terror for what might be coming after. But no 

 horse was to be seen, till I heard two good Irish oaths and 

 two good Irish shillelagh strokes, when above the bank he 

 appeared, and jumped hastily over instead of upon me. 

 How it all happened I could neither make out at the time, 

 nor have I been able to decipher since. But it left an 

 impress on my mind that nothing is to be gained from the 

 cowardly instinct of going for the lowest level, any more 

 than safety is always to be attained in Mid-England by 

 skirting for the meanest gaps. And how that Irishman 

 came to be there in the nick of time, blackthorn in hand, 

 is comprehensible only through the fact that, wherever 

 and whenever hounds are running in Ireland, there are 

 men on foot — labourers and " herds "—running too. 



But to continue with my own experiences, as one who 

 serves to illustrate conclusions probably arrived at by every 

 new comer in Ireland. This little episode lost me the pilot 

 I had intended as mine own, and whom, altogether without 

 his leave, I had selected as most likely to keep me near 

 hounds and out of danger. Accordingly, in jumping the 

 next fence, I jumped it anywhere but at the right spot, 

 and, having descended its second stone-built face (for, 

 Janus-like, these Carlow banks frown at you w-ith a face 

 back and front),^ found myself penned in a corral that 

 to my notion would have held a Texan steer. But the 

 old schoolmaster I was bestriding never hesitated a 

 moment. At once he took the shortest route after the 



' Lord Iluntly will remember the fact, during his Mastership of the Fitzwilliam, 

 of an inquiring visitor asking him overnight, " Would he be likely to find the 

 ditches in that country towards him, or from him, at his fences next day?" 



