He swung into his own saddle as his uncle came down the steps, and mounted the elephantine grey which Larry Lyburn was holding for him.
It was at this moment that a ragged individual, of the type which is all eyes for disaster, and all ears for bad news, and all tongue for telling it, yelled out:
“Here’s wan of the whips riding hell for leather. Musha! but somethin’ must a’ happened to the houn’s!”
Right across the park he was coming, a dingy scarlet figure on a big brown horse.
“It’s Billy Croom, the second whip!” cried Mr Mahony, who was standing up in his cart. “Will yiz look at the face of him, white as chalk!”
The huntsman took the sunk fence dividing the great lawn from the grasslands, and, full gallop, came, scattering the crowd to right and to left till ten paces from where General Grampound, Dicky Fanshawe and Miss Lestrange were grouped he reined in, bringing the big brown mare on her haunches.
“No mate!” cried Billy. “Mr O’Farrell’s tumbled down the stairs and killed hisself—Musha! don’t all be axin’ me at once—He’s fell from the first flure down to the haal—I left the docther settin’ his arum—an’ he won’t be in the saddle agin for a month. ‘Into the saddle wid you, Billy,’ says Mrs O’Farrell, and she near crazy, ‘and aff you go wid my respects and give ’m the news.’ Stan’ clear and don’t be crowdin’ me—mind wid that stick, and don’t be proddin’ it into the mare, or it’s stars she’ll be kickin’ out of you—she ain’t an umbrilla stand. What was you afther sayin’, sir?”
“I am asking you, is Mr O’Farrell dead or not?” said General Grampound, who had been vainly endeavouring to make his voice heard in the hubbub.
“No, sir; he’s only bruck his arum.”
“Then what the deuce do you mean by saying he had killed himself?”