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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
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