is his tale, as nearly as I can recall it.

"Ye know I'm Irish, and proud of it. It's there they knew best how to
make and condition an able hunter. No pamperin', softenin' idleness in
box stalls or fat pastures, or light road-joggin', goes in Ireland
between huntin' seasons. It's muscle and wind we need at our trade in
Ireland, and neither can be more than half diviloped in the few weeks'
light conditionin' work that all English and most American
cross-country riders give their hunters. Steady gruellin' work is what
it takes to toughen sinews and expand lungs, and it's the Irish
huntsman that knows it. So between seasons we drag the ploughs and
pull the wains, toil at the rudest farm tasks, and thus are kept in
condition on a day's notice to make the run or take the jump of our
lives.

"Humiliatin'? Hardly, when we find it gives us strength and staying
power to lead the best the shires can send against us: they've neither
power nor stomach to take Irish stone and timber.

"'It's a royal line of blood, his,' I've often heard Sir Patrick say;
'a clean strain of the best for a hundred years, by records of me own
family. His head? There was never a freak in the line till he came;
and where the divil and by what misbegotten luck he came by it is the
mystery of Roscommon. And it's by that same token we call him Avenger,
for no sneerin' stranger ever hunted with him that didn't get the
divil's own peltin' with clods off his handy Irish heels.'

"And the head groom had it from the butler and passed it on to me that
the old Master of the Roscommon Hounds was ever swearin' over his third
bottle, of hunt nights, when I was no more than a five-year-old and the
youngsters would be fleerin' at Sir Pat over the shape of me head:

"'Faith, an' it's Avenger's head ye don't like, lads, is it? By the
powers o' the holy Virgin but it's me pity ye have that none of ye can
show the likes in your stables. By the gray mare that broke King
Charlie's neck, it's the head of him holds brains enough to distinguish
ten average hunters, brains no ordinary brain pan could hold; an' it's
a brain-box shape of a shot sock makin' the disfigurin' hump below his
eyes. It's a four-legged gineral is Avenger, with the cunnin'
foresight of a Bonaparte and the cool judgment of a Wellington.'

"Ah! but they were happy days on the old sod, buckin' timber, flyin'
over brooks, stretchin' over stone or lightin' light as bird atop of
walls too broad