chief gala of the year. For those two days, alas! so often rainy, she reserved her freshest gloves, her newest bonnet, her brightest glances and smiles. To the pleasure everybody experiences in witnessing the performances of a good horse, she added the feminine enjoyment of showing her own pretty self in all her native attractions, set off by dress. It was no wonder she should impart to her companion that she wouldn't give up the races even for a trip to Paris. She calculated their delights as equal to a whole month's hunting, and at least twenty balls.

Miss Douglas, too, anticipated no little excitement from the same source. Her trip across the Channel, with its concomitant discipline, a new country, wild scenery, the good humour and cordiality that surrounded her, above all, the prospect of seeing Daisy again, had raised her spirits far above their usual pitch. Her cheek glowed, her eye sparkled, her tongue ran on. She could hardly believe herself the same reserved and haughty dame who was wont to ride from Prince's Gate to Hyde Park Corner, and find nothing worthy to cost her a sigh or win from her a smile.

"Everybody in Ireland goes there, absentees and all," said laughing Norah. "It's such fun, you can't think, with the different turnouts, from the Lord-Lieutenant's half-dozen carriages-and-four to Mr. Murphy's outside car, with Mrs. Murphy and nine children packed all over it. She never goes anywhere else with him; but you shall see her to-morrow in all her glory. We like to be on the course early-it's so amusing to watch the arrivals; and then we get good places on the Stand."

"Can you see well from the Ladies' Stand?" asked Blanche eagerly. "I'm rather interested in one of the races. You'll think me very sporting. I've not exactly got a horse to run, but there's a mare called Satanella going to start, and I confess I want to see her win."

Norah bounded like a young roe. "Satanella!" she repeated. "Why, that's Daisy's mount ! Is it to win, dear? Oh! then, if she dosen't win, or come very near it, I'll be fit to cry my eyes out, and never ask to go to a race again."

Her colour rose, her voice deepened, both gait and accent denoted the sincerity of her good wishes; and Miss Douglas, without quite admitting she had just cause for offence, felt as a dog feels when another dog is sniffing round his dinner.

"I've no doubt the mare will have justice done to her," she said, severely. "He's a beautiful rider."

"A beautiful rider, and a beautiful mare entirely !" exclaimed her

impulsive companion. "Now, to think he should be such a friend of yours, and me never to know it! I can't always make him out," added Miss Norah, pondering. "Sometimes he'll speak up, and sometimes he'll keep things back. You'll wonder to hear me when I tell you I haven't so much as seen this mare they make such a talk about!"

"I have ridden her repeatedly," observed Miss Douglas, with a considerable accession of dignity. "In fact, she is more mine than his, and I had to give him leave before he ever sent her to be trained.”

"Did ye, now?" replied the other, looking somewhat disconcerted. “And does he ride often with you in London-up and down the Park, as they call it? How I'd long for a gallop in a place like that, where they never go out of a walk!”

Blanche was obliged to admit that such rides, though proposed very frequently, came off but rarely, and Norah seemed in no way dissatisfied with this confession.

"When he's here, now," she said, "if there isn't a hunt to be got, we gallop all over the country-side, him and me, the same as if we'd a fox and a pack of hounds before us. It's him that taught me the real right way to hold the bridle, and I never could manage papa's Orville horse till he showed me how. It's not likely I'd forget anything Daisy told me! Here we are at the waterfall. Come off the rock now, or ye'll not have a dry thread on ye in five minutes!"

Miss Douglas, keeping back a good deal of vexation, had the good sense to follow her guide's advice, and leaped lightly down amongst the shingle from a broad flat rock to which she had sprung, as affording a view of the cascade.

It was a fine sight, no doubt. Swelled by the spring rains, and increased by many little tributaries from the neighbouring hills, a considerable volume of water came tumbling over a ledge of bold bare rock, to roar and brawl and circle round a basin fifty feet below, not less than ten feet deep, from which it escaped in sheets of foam over certain shallows, till it was lost in a black narrow gorge crowned by copses already budding and blooming with the first smiles of spring.

"We're mighty proud of the Dabble in these parts," observed Norah Macormac, when she had withdrawn her friend from the showers of spray that quivered in faint and changing rainbows under the sunshine. "There's not such a river for fish anywhere this side the Shannon. And where there's fish there's mostly fishers. See, now; Captain Walters killed one of nine pounds and a half in the bend by the dead stump there. He'd have lost him only for little

Thady Brallaghan and me hurrying to fetch the gaff, and I held it while we landed the beast on the gravel below the rocks."

It was getting unbearable! Blanche had started in such good spirits, full of life and hope, enjoying the air, the scenery, the exercise; but with every word that fell from her companion's lips the landscape faded, the skies turned grey, the very turf beneath her feet seemed to have lost its elasticity. Norah Macormac could not but perceive the change: attributing it, however, to fatigue, and blaming herself severely for thus tempting a helpless London girl into an expedition beyond her strength,-anticipating, at the same time, her mother's displeasure for that which good Lady Mary would consider a breach of the laws of hospitality,-"Sure ye're tired," said she, offering to carry the other's parasol, which might have weighed a pound. "It's myself I blame, to have brought you such a walk as this, and you not used to it, may be, like us that live up here amongst the hills."

But Blanche clung to her parasol, and repudiated the notion of fatigue. She had never enjoyed a walk so much. It was lovely scenery, and a magnificent waterfall. She had no idea there was anything so fine in Ireland. She would have gone twice the distance to see it. Tired! She wasn't a bit tired, and believed she might be quite as good a walker as Miss Macormac.

There were times when Miss Douglas felt her nickname not altogether undeserved. She became Satanella now to the core.

Luncheon was on the table when the young ladies got back to the castle, and although several of the guests had absented themselves, the General took his place with those who remained. St. Josephs was not in the best of humours for a solitary walk in a strange district which had failed in its object. He sat, as it would seem, purposely a long way from Miss Douglas, and the servants were already clearing away before he tried to catch her eye. What he saw, or how he gathered from an instantaneous glance that his company was more welcome now than it had been at breakfast, is one of those mysteries on which it seems useless to speculate; but he never left her side again during the afternoon.

The General was true to his colours, and seldom ventured on the slightest act of disloyalty. When he returned, as in the present instance, to his allegiance, he always found himself more under authority than ever for his weak attempt at insubordination.

CHAPTER XIII.

PUNCHESTOWN.

"I TELL ye, I bred her myself, and it's every hair in her skin I know, when I kept her on the farm till she was better than three year old. Will ye not step in here and take a dandy o' punch, Mr. Sullivan ?"

The invitation was promptly accepted, and its originator, none other than the breeder of Satanella, dressed in his best clothes, with an alarming waistcoat and an exceedingly tall hat, conducted his friend into a crowded canvas booth, on the outside of which heavy rain was beating, while its interior steamed with wet garments and hot whisky punch.

Mr. Sullivan was one of those gentlemen who are never met with but in places where there is money to be made, by the laying against, backing, buying, or selling of horses. From his exterior the uninitiated might have supposed him a land-steward, a watch-maker, or a schoolmaster in reduced circumstances; but to those versed in such matters there was something indisputably horsy about the tie of his neckcloth, the sit of his well-brushed hat, and the shape of his clean, weather-beaten hands. He looked like a man who could give you full particulars of the noble animal, tell you its price, its pedigree, its defects, its performances, and buy it for you on commission cheaper than you could yourself. While his friend drank in gulps that denoted considerable enjoyment, Mr. Sullivan seemed to absorb his punch insensibly and as a matter of course.

"There's been good beasts bred in Roscommon beside your black mare, Denis," observed this worthy; "and it's the pick of the world for harses comes into Kildare this day. Whisper now. Old Sir Giles offered four hundred pounds ready money for Shaneen in Dublin last night. I seen him meself!"

"Is it Shaneen ?" returned Denis, with another pull at the punch. "I'll not deny he's a nate little harse, and an illegant lepper, but he wouldn't be in such a race as this. He'll niver see it wan, Mr. Sullivan, no more nor a Quaker'll never see heaven! Mat should have taken the four hundred!"

"Mat knows what he's doing," said Mr. Sullivan; "the boy's been forty years and more running harses at the Curragh. Maybe they're keeping Shaneen to lead the Englishman over his leps; and why wouldn't he take the second money or run for a place annyways?"

"An' where would the black mare be?" demanded her former

owner. "Is it the likes of her ye'd see coming in at the tail of the hunt, and the Captain ridin' and all? I wonder to hear you then, Mr. Sullivan."

"In my opinion the race lies betwixt three," replied the great authority, looking wise and dropping his voice. "There's your own mare, Denis, that you sold the Captain; there's Leprauchan, the big chesnut they brought up here from Limerick; there's the English horse-St. George they call him—that's been trainin' all the time in Kilkenny. Wait till I tell ye. If he gets first over the big double, he'll take as much catching as a flea in an ould blanket; and when thim's all racing home together, why wouldn't little Shaneen come in and win on the post?"

Denis looked disconcerted, and finished his punch at a gulp. He had not before taken so comprehensive a view of the general contest as affecting the chance of his favourite. Pushing back the tall hat, he scratched his head and pondered. "I'd be thinkin' better of it, av' the Captain wouldn't have changed the mare's name," said he. "What ailed him at 'Molly Bawn' that he'd go an' call the likes of such a baste as that Satanella? Hurry now, Mr. Sullivan, take another taste of punch, and come out of this. You and me'll go and see them saddle, annyways."

Leaving the booth, therefore, with many "God save ye's" and greetings from acquaintances crowding in, they emerged on the course close to the Grand Stand, at a spot that commanded an excellent view of the finish, and afforded a panorama of such scenery as, in the sportsman's eye, is unequalled by any part of the world.

The rain had cleared off. White fleecy clouds, drifting across the sky before a soft west wind, threw alternate lights and shadows over a wild expanse of country that stretched to the horizon, in range on range of undulating pastures, broken only by scattered copses, square patches of gorse, and an occasional gully, marking the course of some shallow stream from the distant uplands, coyly unveiling, as the mist that rested on their brows rolled heavily away. Far as sight could reach, the landscape was intersected by thick irregular lines, denoting those formidable fences, of which the nature was to be ascertained by inspecting the leaps that crossed the steeple-chase These were of a size to require great power and courage the competing animals, while the width of the ditches from which the banks were thrown up necessitated that repetition of his effort by which the Irish hunter gets safely over these difficulties much as a retriever jumps a gate. A very gallant horse might indeed fly the

course.

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