“I did so,” laughed Steve. “And he was rolling over and over like a rock going down a hill; and he was waving a fond farewell with all four feet in the air, and hurrying to keep an appointment somewhere over the Falls, last I saw of him.”
“Falls or no falls,” said the poundkeeper, “there he is in the pound. They found him down the river a piece, trying to break in an’ steal somebody’s chaff.”
“Let’s see,” said Darby, and marched off with the man.
He came back riding old Blunderbuss and grinning hugely.
“It’s a ghost, Darby,” cried Steve, from the hotel door. “Get off him. He’s a ghost.”
Darby raised himself in the stirrups and bumped back hard in the broken and dilapidated saddle. “Solid sort o’ ghost,” he said. “’E’s able to carry my weight all right.”
Blunderbuss reached round and bit at his rider’s foot, and Darby kicked him in the mouth, rode cheerfully into the yard, and fed him lavishly.
“It’s ’im, an’ as good as ever,” he announced to the other two, when he came back to the bar. “A little hole, not more’n six inch long, in ’is haunch, an’ a scrape up his ribs, and a big bump on his head——”
“I’m sorry for the thing his head bumped, Darby,” said Dolly Grey. “If it was a rock, I’ll bet he bust it.”
“He’s a good ’orse, anyway,” said Darby, proudly. “Not many ’orses could swim the Falls in flood an’ come ’ome smilin’ to brekfas’.”