"There's Cara Chapel," he said, indicating a slated building on the edge of a vast expanse of bog. "You'll see how illegantly we will disappoint him; he is on the upper road, and that puts a good mile on him. It will be worth your while to watch his face, as we give him the go-by, and finds we have bested him after all!!! Do you get the smell of them hawthorns, miss? they are coming out beautiful," (as they careered along a narrow, grassy, boreen, between a forest of may-bushes, white with flower.) "And now here's the bog," he added, proudly, as the boreen suddenly turned into a cart track, running like a causeway through a wide extent of peat and heath, that lay far beneath on either side, without the smallest fence, or protection. It was an exceedingly awkward, dangerous-looking place, and they were entirely at the mercy of Finnigan's mare, who rattled joyously along, pricking her dainty ears to and fro, as if she was on the qui vive for the smallest excuse to shy, and bolt—and the pretext was not wanting! An idle jackass, in the bog below, suddenly lifted up his voice, and brayed a bray so startlingly near, and so piercingly shrill, that even Helen was appalled; how much more the sensitive creature between the shafts, who stopped for one second, thrust her head well down between her fore-legs, wrenched the reins out of Larry's hands,—and ran away!
"Begorra, we are in for it now," he shouted. "Hould on by your eyelashes, miss; we will just slip off quietly at the first corner. Kape yourself calm! Bad scram to you for a red-haired divil" (to the mare). "Bad luck to them for rotten ould reins," reins now represented by two strips of leather, trailing in the dust.
"Oh! murder, we are done!" he cried, as he beheld a heavily laden turf-cart, drawn up right across the track.
"Oh, holy Mary! she'll put us in the bog."
The owner of the turf-cart was toiling up the bank with a final creel on his back, when he beheld the runaways racing down upon his devoted horse and kish. His loud execrations were idle as the little evening breeze that was playing with the tops of the rushes and the gorse—Finnigan's mare was already into them! With a loud crash and a sound of splintering shafts a thousand sods of turf were sent flying in every direction. Helen was shot off the car and landed neatly and safely in a heap of bog-mould that luckily received her at the side of the road; Larry also made a swift involuntary descent, but in a twinkling had sprung to his feet and seized his horse's head, calling out to his companion as she picked herself up,—
"'Tis yourself that is the fine souple young lady, and not a hair the worse; nayther is the mare, barrin' a couple of small cuts, and one of the shafts is broke—faix, it might have been sarious!"
"Arrah, what sort of a driver are ye, at all?" shouted the owner of the turf-cart, breathless with rage, and haste. "Oh, 'tis Larry Flood—an' I might have known!"
"And what call have you to be taking up the whole road?" retorted Larry loudly. "The divil sweep you and your old turf kish, that was nearly being the death of us!"
"Ah! and sure wasen't she running away as hard as she could lay leg to groun'?"
"Well, and if she was; diden't she see you below in the bog, and take you for a scarecrow? and small blame. Here, don't be botherin' me, Tim Mooney, but lend a hand to rig up the machine, and the tackling."