214 STRAY -AW AYS 



It was an impressive programme. Either the bog 

 or the mountain might have seemed a sufficiently 

 serious proposition, but Mikey-Dan (whieh is neither 

 Japanese nor Russian, and is merely the hyphenated 

 title by which the middle-aged farmer was made 

 known to his godchildren) had no shade of hesitation 

 in his decisions. Without further preamble he lowered 

 himself down a steep drop out of the road into a boggy 

 field. 



" Bring on the dogs ! " he ordered briefly. 



" Huic over ! " said the huntsman, with an equal 

 brevity, and the hounds flow^ed over the lip of the 

 road, like water out of a basin, and followed Mikey- 

 Dan. 



So also did the few riders and the many runners. 

 Born in the blood of the Irish country boy is the love 

 of a horse. Hounds to him are no more than dogs, 

 things of small account with which one turns cattle ; 

 mean creatures, to be treated meanly. But the horse, 

 and especially the " hunting-horse," is a gentleman, 

 and is revered as such. To see hounds run, they 

 might say, is good, and it is a pleasant thing to behold 

 the death of a fox, but what are these to watching a 

 big-jumped horse throw a lep ! There once befell a 

 blank day in the country now being treated of, and 

 the master (who was riding a " big-jumped " mare) 

 deplored to a farmer friend the disappointment that 

 the lack of sport must have caused. He had forgotten 

 the many and bizarre obstacles that had occurred 

 during the day's fruitless wanderings. Not so the 

 friend. 



" Arrah, what disappointment had they ? No ! But 

 they were well pleased. Kitty filled their eye ! " 



The " bateing for game " involved a sufficiency of 

 dramatic interest, even though the leading gentleman 

 of the piece, " Charles James " himself, was not on 



