“Lionel, too, will be glad to see me in the saddle—it's some years since I crossed the sward at a gallop—and I am curious to know if a man's nerve is stouter when the world looks fair before him, or when the night of calamity is lowering above his head.” Muttering these words to himself, he passed out into the hall, and crossing which, entered the courtyard, and took his way towards the stables. It was still dark, but many lights were moving to and fro, and the groom population were all about and stirring. Darcy opened the door and looked down the long range of stalls, where above twenty saddle-horses were now standing, the greater number of them highly bred and valuable animals, and all in the highest possible condition. Great was the astonishment of the stablemen as the Knight moved along, throwing a glance as he went at each stall, while a muttered “Welcome home to yer honor” ran from mouth to mouth.
“The bastes is looking finely, sir,” said Bob Carney, who, as stud-groom and huntsman, had long presided over his department.
“So they are, Bob, but I don't know half of them; where did this strong brown horse come from?”
“That's Clipper, yer honor; I knew you wouldn't know him. He took up finely after his run last winter.”
“And the fore leg, is it strong again?”
“As stout as a bar of iron; one of the boys had him out two days ago, and he took the yellow ditch flying: we measured nineteen feet between the mark of his hoofs.”
“He ought to be strong enough to carry me, Bob.”
“Don't ride him, sir, he's an uncertain divil; and though he 'll go straight over everything for maybe twenty minutes or half an hour, he 'll stop short at a drain not wider than a potato furrow, and the power of man would n't get him over it.”
“That's a smart gray yonder,—what is she?”
“She's the one we tried as a leader one day; yer honor remembers you bid me shoot her, or get rid of her, for she kicked the traces, and nearly the wheel-horse, all to smash; and now she's the sweetest tiling to ride, for eleven stone, in the whole country. There's an English colonel to try her to-day; my only advice to him is, let her have her own way of it, for, if he begins pulling at her, 't is maybe in Donegal he 'll be before evening.”