“Why, of course you beat them, Norah—easily!” he said, shamelessly ignoring the boys’ side of the race. “Didn’t I tell you that pony could beat most things in Donegal, if she got the chance?”
“I did cut a corner,” Norah admitted, laughing. “But ’tis themselves has the animals of great size—and they flippant leppers!” She dropped into brogue with an ease born of close association with Timsy and his parents. “Sir John, is that the Doon Rock?”
She pointed with her whip to a great rocky eminence half a mile away.
“Yes, that’s the Rock,” O’Neill answered. “It’s rather a landmark, isn’t it? We’ll wait for you at the foot, if you’ll jog on after us.”
The riders followed the motor slowly. The road led past the great mass, half hill, half rock, that towered over the little fields. It was about three hundred feet high, with sparse vegetation endeavouring to find a footing on its rugged sides, and grey boulders, weather-worn and clothed with lichen, jutting out, grim and bleak. The motor halted under its shadow, and the groom who occupied the front seat with Con, the lame chauffeur, led the horses away to a cottage close by.
A few hundred yards away a curious sight puzzled the Australians. On a little green, where some grey stones marked a well, was a little plantation of sticks stuck in the ground. Fluttering rags waved from many of them, and ornamented the ragged brambles near the well.
“You haven’t seen a holy well, have you?” O’Neill asked. “That is one of the most famous—the Well of Doon.”
“But what are the sticks?” Wally asked.
“Come and see.”
They walked over to the well. A deeply marked path led to it, and all about it the ground was beaten hard by the feet of many people, save in the patch of ground where the sticks stood upright. There were all kinds of sticks; rough stakes, cut from a hedge, ash-plants, blackthorns—some of no value, others well-finished and costly. Rags, white and coloured, fluttered from them. And there was more than one crutch, standing straight and stiff among the lesser sticks.