God save your
honour for she'll have your blood in a bottle for this day's worrk."

The huntsman lets a curse out of his stummick and rides afther them, flat
on his saddle, both spurs tearin'. In the wink of an eye he is down among
the dogs, larruppin' them with his whip and drawin' down curses on them
that would wither ye to hear him--he had great eddication, that orficer.

"Come now," says I to Mikeen, the poor lad, "let you and me bear the cowld
corpse of the diseased back to Herself; mebbe she'll have a shillin' handy
in her hand, the way she'd reward us for saving the body from the dogs,"
says I.

But was me bowld mascot dead? He was not. He was alive and well, the
thickness of his wool had saved him. For all that he had not a hair of it
left to him, and when he stood up before you you wouldn't know him; he was
that ordinary without his fleece, he was no more than a common poor man's
goat, he was no more to look at than a skinned rabbit, and that's the
truth.

He walked home with meself and Mikeen as meek as a young gerrl.

Herself came runnin' out, all fluttery, to look at him.

"Ah, but that's not _my_ mascot," says she.

"It is, Marm," says I; and I swore to it by the whole Calendar--Mikeen too.

"Bah! how disgustin'. Take it to the cow-house," says she, and stepped
indoors without another word.

We led the billy away, him hangin' his head for shame at his nakedness.

"Ye'll do no more mascottin' avic," says I to him. "Sorra luck you would
bring to a blind beggar-man the way you are now--you'll never step along
again with the drums and tambourines."

And that was the true word, for though Herself had Mikeen rubbing him daily
with bear's-grease and hair-lotion he never grew the same grand fleece
again, and he'd stand about in the back-field, brooding for hours together,
the divilment clane gone out of his system; and if, mebbe, you'd draw the
stroke of an ash-plant across his ribs to hearten him, he'd only just look
at you sad-like and pass no remarks.

* * * * *

TOP-O'-THE-MORNING.

Top-o'-the-Morning's shoes are off;
He runs in the orchard, rough, all day;
Chasing the hens for a turn at the trough,
Fighting the cows for a place at the hay;
With a coat where the Wiltshire mud has dried,
With brambles caught in his mane and tail--
Top-o'-the-Morning, pearl and pride
Of the foremost flight of the White Horse Vale!

The master he carried