fresh air around, the sunny
blue sky overhead, and the flower-speckled sward underfoot--perhaps it
was all these put together, but, whatever the cause, our three
travellers commenced their journey at a pace that would have rendered
them incapable of further progress in a few hours had they kept it up.
Their state of mind was aptly expressed, at the end of one of these wild
flights, by Larry, who exclaimed, as he reined in--

"Ah, then, it's flyin' I'll be in a minit. Sure av I only had a pair o'
wings no bigger than a sparrow's, I cud do it aisy."

"Yoo's a goose, Larry," observed Bunco.

"Faix if I was it's mesilf as would fly away an' lave you to waller on
the dirty earth ye belongs to," retorted the other.

"Dirty earth!" echoed Will Osten, gazing round on the plains of bright
green grass that waved in the soft air with something like the gentle
heavings of the sea. "Come, let's have another!"

They stretched out again at full gallop and swept away like the wind
itself.

"Hooroo!" shouted Larry O'Hale, wildly throwing out both arms and rising
in his stirrups; "look here, Bunco, I'm goin' to fly, boy!"

Larry didn't mean to do so, but he _did_ fly! His horse put its foot in
a badger-hole at that moment and fell. The rider, flying over its head,
alighted on his back, and remained in that position quite motionless,
while his alarmed comrades reined up hastily and dismounted.

"Not hurt, I hope," said Will, anxiously.

"Och! ha! gintly, doctor, take me up tinderly," gasped the poor man as
they raised him to the perpendicular position, in which he stood for
nearly a minute making very wry faces and slowly moving his shoulders
and limbs to ascertain whether any bones were fractured.

"I do belave I'm all right," he said at length with a sigh of relief;
"have a care, Bunco, kape yer paws off, but take a squint at the nape o'
me neck an' see if me back-bone is stickin' up through me shirt-collar."

"Me no can see him," said the sympathetic Bunco.

"That's a blissin' anyhow. I only wish ye cud _feel_ him, Bunco.
Doctor, dear, did ye iver see stars in the day-time?"

"No, never."

"Then ye'd better make a scientific note of it in yer book, for I see
'em at this good minit dancin' about like will-o'-the-wisps in a bog of
Ould Ireland. There, help me on to the back o' the baste--bad luck to
the badgers, say I."

Thus muttering to himself and his comrades, half exasperated by the
stunning effects of his fa