ever met the pony of his dreams, but he had
not lost faith in it, and though he would range through the Bantry fair
with a sour eye, behind the sourness there was ever a kindling spark of
hope.

Towards the end of October, in the year '83, Mr. Denny received an
invitation from an old friend to go down to "the West"--thus are those
regions east of the moon, and west of the sun, and south-west of
Drimoleague Junction, designated in the tongue of Cork civilisation--to
"look at a colt," and with a saddle and bridle in the netting and a
tooth-brush in his pocket he set his face for the wilderness. I have no
time to linger over the circumstances of the deal. Suffice it to say
that, after an arduous haggle, Mr. Denny bought the colt, and set forth
the same day to ride him by easy stages to his future home.

It was a wet day, wet with the solid determination of a western day, and
the loaded clouds were flinging their burden down on the furze, and the
rocks, and the steep, narrow road, with vindictive ecstacy. They also
flung it upon Mr. Denny, and both he and his new purchase were glad to
find a temporary shelter in one of the many public-houses of a village
on the line of march. He was sitting warming himself at an indifferent
turf fire, and drinking a tumbler of hot punch, when the sound of loud
voices outside drew him to the window. In front of a semi-circle of blue
frieze coats, brown frieze trousers and slouched black felt hats, stood
a dejected grey pony, with a woman at its head and a lanky young man on
its back; and it was obvious to Mr. Denny that a transaction, of an even
more fervid sort than that in which he had recently engaged, was toward.

"Fifteen pound!" screamed the woman, darting a black head on the end of
a skinny neck out of the projecting hood of her cloak with the swiftness
of a lizard; "fifteen pound, James Hallahane, and the divil burn the
ha'penny less that I'll take for her!"

The elderly man to whom this was addressed continued to gaze steadily at
the ground, and turning his head slightly away, spat unostentatiously.
The other men moved a little, vaguely, and one said in a tone of remote
soliloquy:--

"She wouldn't go tin pound in Banthry fair."

"Tin pound!" echoed the pony's owner shrilly. "Ah, God help ye, poor
man! Here, Patsey, away home wid ye out o' this. It'll be night, and
dark night itself before--"

"I'll give ye eleven pounds," said James Hallahane, addressing the toes
of his boot