to carry and springin' on, with a good light-handed man
up that knew his work and left ye free to do yours! And a sad night it
was for me when Sir Pat, stripped by years of gambling of all he owned
but the clothes he stood in and me, staked and lost me to a hunt
visitor from Quebec!

"I was a youngster then, only a nine-year-old, but I'll niver forget
the two weeks' run from Queenstown to Quebec whereon hunting tables
were reversed and I became the rider and the ship me mount, across
country the roughest hunter ever lived through: niver a moment of easy
flat goin', but an endless series of gigantic leaps that nigh jouted me
teeth loose, churned me insides till they wouldn't even hold dry feed,
and gave me more of a taste than I liked of what I had been givin'
Roscommon huntsmen over lane side wall jumps--a rise and a jolt, a rise
and a jolt, till it was wonderin' I was the ears were not shaken from
me head.

"Humiliation? It was there at Quebec I got it! In old Roscommon
usually it was lords and ladies rode me of hunt days, men and women
bred to the game as I meself was.

"But at Quebec, the best--and I had the best--were beefy members of
their dinkey colonial Government or fussy, timid barristers I had to
carry on me mouth. Seldom it was I carried a good pair of hands and a
cool head in me nine years' runnin' with the Quebec and Montreal
hounds. And lucky the same was for me, for it forced me to take the
bit in me teeth, rely on meself, and regard me rider no more than if he
were a sack of flour: I jist had it to do to save me own legs and me
rider's neck, for to run by their reinin' and pullin' would have
brought us a cropper at about two out of every three obstacles. Faith,
and I believe it's an honest leaper's luck I've always had with me,
anyway, for me Quebec work was jist what I needed to train me for an
honorable finish with the Lemon County Yankees.

"One Autumn night years ago, when I was eighteen, a clever young Yankee
visitor from New York appeared at our club. For two days I watched his
work on other mounts, and liked it. He was good as any two-legged
product of the old sod itself, a handsome youngster a bit heavier than
Sir Pat, a reckless, deep drinkin', hard swearin', straight ridin'
sort, but with a head and hands ye knew in a minute ye could trust, by
name Jack Lounsend. The third hunt after his arrival, it was me
delight to carry him, and for the first time in years to allow me rider
hi