side enjoying to the full the spring of his
powerful horse; for Barney had spent the last farthing of his salary on
the two best steeds the country could produce, being determined, as he
said, to make the last overland voyage on clipper-built animals, which,
he wisely concluded, would fetch a good price at the end of the journey.
"Pull up! d'ye hear? They can't stand goin' at that pace. Back yer
topsails, ye young rascal, or I'll board ye in a jiffy."

"How can I pull up with _that_ before me!" cried Martin, pointing to a
wide ditch or gully that lay in front of them. "I must go over that
first."

"Go over that!" cried Barney, endeavouring to rein in his horse, and
looking with an anxious expression at the chasm. "It's all very well
for you to talk o' goin' over, ye feather; but fifteen stun--Ah, then,
_won't_ ye stop? Bad luck to him, he's got the bit in his teeth! Oh
then, ye ugly baste, go, and my blissin' go with ye!"

The leap was inevitable. Martin went over like a deer. Barney shut his
eyes, seized the pommel of the saddle, and went at it like a
thunder-bolt. In the excitement of the moment he shouted, in a
stentorian voice, "Clap on all sail! d'ye hear? Stu'n sails and
skyscrapers! Kape her steady! Hooray!"

It was well for Barney that he had seized the saddle. Even as it was,
he received a tremendous blow from the horse's head as it took the leap,
and was thrown back on its haunches when it cleared the ditch, which it
did nobly.

"Hallo! old boy, not hurt, I hope," said Martin, suppressing his
laughter as his comrade scrambled on to the saddle. "You travel about
on the back of your horse at full gallop like a circus rider."

"Whist, darlint, I do belave he has damaged my faygur-head. What a nose
I've got! Sure I can see it mesilf without squintin'."

"So you have, Barney. It's a little swelled, but never mind. We must
all learn by experience, you know. So come alone."

"Hould on, ye spalpeen, till I git my wind!"

But Martin was off again at full speed; and Barney's horse, scorning to
be left behind, took the bit again in its teeth and went--as he himself
expressed it,--"screamin' before the wind."

A new sensation is not always and necessarily an agreeable thing.
Martin and Barney found it so on the evening of that same day, as they
reclined (they could not sit) by the side of their fire on the campo
under the shelter of one of the small trees which grew here and there at
wide i