MIGRATION IN THE FROST 207 



the Master, wondering what next — the devil or the deep 

 sea — might be awaiting us. Curiously there was little 

 scent for a first three minutes ; perhaps hounds' heads 

 were up, or the water had washed away the scent from 

 the yellow grass. Half-hidden, half-open drains cut each 

 field ; but bullocks had made their own roadways round 

 each fence angle, till some high, blind, and bushy banks 

 became a wild necessity. At one of these — wet and 

 greasy atop because of the water by degrees splashed on 

 to them — they say that no less than seven eager folk lay 

 prone and besmeared. Personally I didn't stay to count 

 them. My mission was, if possible, forward — after the 

 Master. And if my little black Daniel carried me near 

 him, it was due to the fact that his schoolmaster led him, 

 and that he knew more than three months ago. 



Soon we were out of the swamps of Ballyrichard. 

 Now we were on the best of turf — fences thorny, banks 

 easy and frequented — checked a moment at the river 

 Anner, but went into full play along the hillside that my 

 kindly private secretary has noted at Killaghy. 



The accepted notion of Tipperary — not mine, but that 

 of the Irish public — is that its banks are broad and bare, 

 and its ditches ;///. lYo such thing, except exemplified to- 

 day, when we rode to the borders of Kilkenny ! First 

 there were high razor-shaped banks, then great thorn 

 hedges (thorns growing as trees) embroidering the banks, 

 with a deep bramble-covered ditch on either side — a cross, 

 in fact, between Northern Meath and the stubbornest of 

 the Belvoir Vale. Again, instead of a whole fieldside being 

 equally practicable, there was seldom but one spot — and 

 that a kind of dive through a hoop — where egress could 

 be insisted upon. And believe me, without prejudice, if it 

 had not been for the Master and Mr Riall, I believe those 

 spots would have been undiscovered still. There w-ere, 

 now and again, iron gates, it is true, between the great 

 grass fields. But more often than not, these gates were 

 mere cold steel delusions — agricultural ornaments, pad- 

 locked until haytime — and we beat the bars in vain. 



Yet, wherever the two leaders laid bare a bank, the 

 public followed — earliest among them always two young 



