A sweeping movement was inaugurated, whose objects were to find the pony or her attendant, John Sullivan, or Lyney.
"Should you know the pony if you saw her?" I said confidentially to Dr. Fraser, as she and I set forth together.
"We've not had it very long," she replied dubiously. "Luckily it's an easy colour. John Sullivan calls it maroan—a sort of mixture of roan and maroon."
We advanced from field to field, driving like twin darning-needles through the groups of people, but neither John Sullivan nor the maroan pony transpired.
"Come on, come on! The Stepping Match is starting!" shouted some one.
Dr. Fraser and I were caught in the tightening mesh of the crowd, as in the intricacies of a trammel net; an irregular thumping of hoofs, and a row of bare and bobbing heads, passing above the heads of the crowd, indicated that the Stepping Match was under way. Lyney's dour face and green jacket were in the lead, and, as before, had he been Diana of the Ephesians, he could not have been more passionately called upon. As it was obviously useless for us to do so at this juncture, we climbed on to a bank near the winning post, and watched the race. Lyney was riding a long-backed yellow animal with a face as cross as his own, and a step as fast as the tick of a watch.
"Anny other man than Lyney wouldn't carry that old pony round," said one man.
"She has a score o' years surely, but she's as wicked as a bee," said another.
"Lyney's very knacky; he couldn't be bate," said the first man.
"Well, well, look at Jimmy Kenny and his father, and the two o' them riding!" went on the commentator. "Faith, I'd give the father the sway. Jimmy's riding uneven. When the nag is rising, he's falling."