n't be much
the worse for his splint, and he's worth L70 to you, because you can
ride him ten stone. You had better give me L70 for him." Then the
young man would promise the L70 in three months' time, and if he kept
his word, would swear by Black Daly ever afterwards. In this way Mr.
Daly sold a great many horses.

But he had been put into his present position because he hunted the
hounds, during the illness of a distant cousin, who was the then
master. The master had died, but the county had the best sport that
winter that it had ever enjoyed. "I don't see why I should not do
it, as well as another," Tom Daly had said. He was then known as Tom
Daly. "You've got no money," his cousin had said, the son of the old
gentleman who was just dead. It was well understood that the cousin
wished to have the hounds, but that he was thought not to have all
the necessary attributes. "I suppose the county means to pay for all
sport," said Tom. Then the hat went round, and an annual sum of L900
a year was voted. Since that the hounds have gone on, and the bills
have been paid; and Tom has raised the number of days' hunting to
four a week, or has lowered it to two, according to the amount of
money given. He makes no proposition now, but declares what he means
to do. "Things are dearer," he said last year, "and you won't have
above five days a fortnight, unless you can make the money up to
L1,200. I want L400 a day, and L400 I must have." The county had
then voted him the money in the plenitude of its power, and Daly had
hunted seven days a fortnight. But all the Galway world felt that
there was about to be a fall.

Black Daly was a man quite as dark as his sobriquet described him. He
was tall, but very thin and bony, and seemed not to have an ounce of
flesh about his face or body. He had large, black whiskers,--coarse
and jet black,--which did not quite meet beneath his chin. And he
wore no other beard, no tuft, no imperial, no moustachios; but when
he was seen before shaving on a morning, he would seem to be black
all over, and his hair was black, short, and harsh; and though black,
round about his ears it was beginning to be tinged with grey. He was
now over fifty years of age; but the hair on his head was as thick
as it had been when he first undertook the hounds. He had great dark
eyes in his head, deep down, so that they seemed to glitter at you
out of caverns. And above them were great, bushy eyebrows, every
hair of which see