'Oh, the devil a better!' said Father Tom. 'Burke himself couldn't beat that! Here, now: keep this way out of the deep ground, and rush him at the double ditch there.'
Resolved on securing his good opinion, I gripped my saddle firmly with my knees, and rode at the fence. Over we went in capital style; but lighting on the top of a rotten ditch, the ground gave way, and my horse's hind legs slipped backwards into the gripe. Being at full stretch, the poor animal had no power to recover himself, so that, disengaging his forelegs, I pulled him down into the hollow, and then with a vigorous dash of the spur and a bold lift carried him clean over it into the field.
'Look, now!' said the priest; 'that pleases me better than all you did before. Presence of mind—that's the real gift for a horseman when he's in a scrape; but, mind me, it was your own fault, for here's the way to take the fence.' So saying, he made a slight semicircle in the field, and then, as he headed his horse towards the leap, rushed him at it furiously, and came over like the bound of a stag.
'Now,' said Father Tom, pointing with his whip as he spoke, 'we have a beautiful bit of galloping-ground before us; and if you ever reach this far, and I don't see why you shouldn't, here's where you ought to make play. Listen to me now,' said he, dropping his voice: 'Tom Molloy s mare isn't thoroughbred, though they think she is. She has got a bad drop in her. Now, the horse is all right, clean bred, sire and dam, by reason he 'll be able to go through the dirt when the mare can't; so that all you 've to do, if, as I said before, you get this far, is to keep straight down to the two thorn-bushes—there, you see them yonder. Burke won't be able to take that line, but must keep upon the headlands, and go all round yonder; look, now, you see the difference—so that before he can get over that wide ditch you'll be across it, and making for the stone wall After that, by the powers, if you don't win, I, can't help you!'
'Where does the course turn after, father?' said I.
'Oh! a beautiful line of flat country, intersprinkled with walls, ditches, and maybe a hedge or two; but all fair, and only one rasping fence—the last of all. After that, you have a clean gallop of about a quarter of a mile, over as nice a sod as ever you cantered.'
'And that last fence, what is it like?'
''Faith, it is a rasper! It's a wide gully, where there was a boreen once, and they say it is every inch of sixteen feet—that'll make it close upon twenty when you clear the clay on both sides. The grey horse, I'm told, has a way of jumping in and jumping out of these narrow roads; but take my advice, and go it in a fly. And now, Captain, what between the running, and the riding, and the talking altogether, I am as dry as a limekiln; so what do you say if we turn back to town, and have a bit of supper together? There's a kind of a cousin of mine, one Bob Mahon, a Major in the Roscommon, and he has got a grouse-pie, and something hot to dilute it with, waiting for us.'
'Nothing will give me more pleasure, father; and there's only one thing more—indeed I had nearly forgotten it altogether——''
'What's that?' said the priest, with surprise.