"I would struggle to hold on a little longer yet," said the other. "How many horses have you got here and at Ahaseragh?"
"There are something over a dozen," said Tom. "There may be fifteen in all. I was thinking of sending a draught over to Tattersall's next week. There are some of them would not be worth a five-and-twenty-pound note when you got them there!"
"Well, now I'll tell you what I propose. You shall send over four or five to be summered at Doneraile. There is grass enough there, and though I can't pay my debts, my credit is good at the corn-chandler's." Black Tom, as he heard this, sat still looking blacker than ever. He was a man who hated to have a favour offered to him. But he could bear the insult better from Persse of Doneraile than from anyone else in the county. "I've talked the matter over with Lynch—"
"D—— Lynch," said Daly. He didn't dislike Sir Jasper, but Sir Jasper did not stand quite so high in his favour as did Mr. Persse of Doneraile.
"You needn't d—— anybody; but just listen to me. Sir Jasper says that he will take three, and Nicholas Bodkin will do the same."
"They are both baronets," said Daly. "I hate a man with a handle to his name; he always seems to me to be stuck-up, as though he demanded something more than other people. There is that Lord Ardrahan—"
"A very good fellow too. Don't you be an ass. Lord Ardrahan has offered to take three more."
"I knew it," said Tom.
"It's not as though any favour were offered or received. Though the horses are your own property, they are kept for the services of the hunt. We all understand very well how things are circumstanced at present."
"How do you think I am to feed my hounds if you take away the horses which they would eat?" said Daly, with an attempt at a grim joke. But after the joke Tom became sad again, almost to tears, and he allowed his friend to make almost what arrangements he pleased for distributing both hounds and horses among the gentry of the hunt. "And when they are gone," said he, "I am to sit here alone with nothing on earth to do. What on earth is to become of me when I have not a hound left to give a dose of physic to?"