"'Is it me? says Jem. 'Why, I never leaped a horse in my life!'
"'Bother!' says one; 'you're joking. You told us yourself that you did it twenty times, and there's the English colonel that made the bet with you, and he'll be saying, if you don't do it, that the Irish are all braggers; so, my dear fellow, it just comes to this—you must either leap the pond or fight me; for, relying upon your word, I told the colonel I saw you do it myself.'
"'I must fight you or leap the pond, is it?' answered Jem, trembling from head to foot.
"'Certainly, my dear fellow,' replied Sir Harry. 'Either I must shoot you or see you make the leap; so take your choice.'
"'Oh! then, bring out the horse,' whimpered Jem, who was beginning to wish he wasn't Squire Kavanagh.
"In a minute afterward, Jem found himself out in the lawn, opposite a pond that appeared to him sixty feet wide at the least. 'Why,' said he, 'you might as well ask me to jump over the ocean, or give a hop-step-and-a-leap from Howth to Holyhead, as get any horse to cross that lake of a pond.'
"'Come, Kavanagh,' said Sir Henry, 'no nonsense with us. We know you can do it if you like; and now that you're in for it, you must finish it.'
"'Faix, you'll finish me, I'm afeerd,' said Jem, seeing they were in earnest with him; 'but what will you do if I'm drowned?'
"'Do?' says Sir Henry.' Oh, make yourself aisy on that account. You shall have the grandest wake that ever was seen in the country. We'll bury you dacently, and we'll all say that the bouldest horseman now in Ireland is the late Squire Kavanagh. If that doesn't satisfy you, there's no pleasing you; so bring out the horse immediately.'
"'Oh! murder, murder!" says Jem to himself; 'isn't this a purty thing, that I must be drowned to make a great character for a little spalpeen like Squire Kavanagh? Oh, then, it's I that wish I was Jem M'Gowan again! Going to be drowned like a rat, or smothered like a blind kitten! and all for a vagabond I don't care a straw about. I, that never was on a horse's back before, to think of leaping over an ocean! Bad cess to you, Squire Kavanagh, for your boastin' and your wagerin'!'