356 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



ment, which an early Easter may or may not have served 

 prematurely to bring out like nettle-rash, another spring 

 complaint. Now, having no longer before my eyes the 

 fear of authorities, nor even of hats that are cocked nor 

 of plumes that are waved, and having further beguiled my 

 journey from shire to county with the soul-stirring pages 

 of Baron de Marbot, I cannot in my impertinence but 

 think that, with the prolonged horrors of war at every 

 moment imminent before them, our warriors are deserving 

 of all lenity and indulgence in time of peace. The Image 

 of War, with fully ten per cent, of its danger as represented 

 by the banks of Ballyluski, should surely suffice for all 

 martial exercise until such time as the summer has to be 

 killed or until Aldershot claims the corps for its own. 



" Did ye see the terrible fall Mr. H. was after getting ? " 

 queried of me a fair damsel when the first half-dozen of 

 these great overhanging banks had, I thought, been com- 

 fortably surmounted. " Indeed I did not," replied I with 

 a shiver, adopting unconsciously the idiom of the country ; 

 " I wish you had not told me." " Ah, it's nothing," she 

 responded, with a bright laugh as she popped on to a six- 

 foot bank bordering a lane, left both of her mare's hind- 

 legs for some seconds across the crumbling summit, then, 

 picking the animal off its head and off the road, rode gaily 

 on to the same silvery tune of merriment and content. 



These banks of the Croherne township were, it seemed 

 to me, not only unusually massive and consequently 

 overawing, but were slippery with the recent rain and 

 difficult to the foothold. Moreover, they come so close 

 together that you are hardly over one than it becomes 

 your apparent duty to jump into the middle of the pack 

 already hidden by the next. That under such conditions 

 one might easily be tempted to ride too close to hounds I 

 can well imagine, for every few seconds they are entirely 

 out of sight ; and if scent be indifferent, or their fox short- 

 running, small wonder if an anxious field is prone to 

 hover too closely upon their backs. That these particular 

 banks were as trying as most in Tipperary I am the more 

 ready to believe, because after a certain amount of experi- 

 ence I am more able to discriminate for myself between 



