child had passed to her son, and Miles Keon, scenting trouble, stood looking anxiously at the handsome gold head in the firelight. His Lordship leaped to his feet. He had not heard

him come in.

"Well, Miley," he said, using the old boyish name, and extending a frank hand. The Whisperer dropped his cap on the floor and met the handshake. The affection in his eyes was as touching as the rapt glance of a dog.

"Sit down, Miley," went on his Lordship, kicking a chair towards him. I'm in a devil of a fix."

"You are ?" said Miles with a keen, fond glance.

"I've planted all I'm worth on a brute that has killed two grooms already, and has made it as much as a man's life is worth to approach him."

He laughed shyly, like a boy owning to an escapade.

"Why did you do it ?" asked Miles.

"Wait till you see him. You'll ask no questions then. What's that English horse they talk about? Eclipse ? Aye, that's the name. Well, I'd back the Blackbird with you up to show Eclipse a clear pair of heels."

"

Would you now?" said Miles slowly. He was never one to get excited, and perhaps this quietness of his was one of the elements in his power with nervous creatures on whom so often our words play like the wind on the harp strings. His cheeks had reddened with pleasure.

"You think you'll be equal to him, Miley? He'll take a powerful strong whisper to make him like a lamb. I'll doubt you'll ever do it, Miley."

"I can but try. Where is he?"

"Coming down the road with half a dozen poltroons leading him and keeping a mile off his heels. The devil was quiet in him when he started, but he'd kicked his box-stall into smithereens the day before."

"Poor beast!" said Miles in the soft voice he had inherited from Mary Keon.

"You haven't asked the price, Miley."

"No, your Lordship?"

"Ten thousand guineas. Ten thousand golden guineas, Miley !"

Miles started.

"'Tis a great fortune, your Lordship. 'Tis what the lawyers are asking for Neville's Court. Neville's Court and Ballaghadamore in a ring would have been a fine property."

He spoke with lingering regret.

"

Ballaghadamore will be outside the ring if my venture

doesn't come off, Miley. It's the security for the price of the Blackbird."

"'Tis a deal of dependence to put in a horse."

"And on you, Miley," said his Lordship eagerly. "The Blackbird with you up. Wait till you see him, Miley."

Miles's face brightened in answer to the appeal in the beloved voice.

"Your Lordship can count on me.”

"I know it, Miley. There never was a faithfuller friend and brother."

Again the two hands met and clasped and fell apart. His Lordship's thoughts took a new turn, and his face became moody as he looked into the fire. Miles had picked up his stable cap from where it lay, and was turning it in his hands mechanically while he waited for his dismissal. His soft, bright eyes still watched the wasted face with a world of concern.

Lord Cashel stood up restlessly, and kicked at a log in the grate. For a minute or two there was silence. Then he turned abruptly.

"I've matched the Blackbird against Wharncliffe's Pegasus for fifty thousand a side. If I win, Miley, it means a clear forty thousand in my pocket, and more than that to me, Miley. More than forty times forty thousand."

He blushed as rosy as a girl, but his face was serious even to tragedy.

Miles looked down at his cap.

"Lady Mabel 'ud never be after thinkin' of the Duke for a husband. There are bad stories to his name."

"His mother is all for the marriage, and Lady Mabel is young. I am a poor man and will be ruined if my stroke for fortune should fail. What chance should I have against the Duke ?" "You won't fail," said Miles, with conviction.

His Lordship's face cleared.

"Not if you can help it, Miley. I know that."

Miles returned to his stables and his Lordship to his brooding. If the latter had but known it, Miles's heart was in a like case to his own. Gracie O'Malley, Lady Mabel's waiting woman, had long been secretly his love. He had never spoken to her. Gracie had many admirers, and had picked up a conquering and capricious way, living in a great house, and poor Miles's heart was often sore with jealousy. His eyes looked devotion at her whenever they met, but he was too humble and simple to believe she could ever care for him.

The Blackbird arrived a few days later. His guard looked as exhausted as if they had been in charge of a tiger, and were full

of sullen anger against the horse. They had spent anxious days and watchful nights on the road, and there was a long bill for my Lord to pay for damages caused by the Blackbird's

tantrums.

The Whisperer was riding with my Lord when the horse arrived. The two rode into the stable-yard to a scene of wild hurly-burly. They were trying to get the Blackbird into his stall, about twenty of them armed for terror of him with sticks, and forks, and broom handles, or anything they could find to their hands to defend themselves in case he should try to kill them. One fellow had the rusty blunderbuss that had hung behind the harness-room door for more years than anyone could remember. Two stout fellows were hanging on to ropes round the horse's head. The Blackbird was rearing on his hind legs, kicking out and making furious rushes at his tormentors. His beautiful coat was covered with sweat, and steaming. His eyes and nostrils were full of blood, and he was half screaming and half sobbing.

At the sight my Lord uttered a shout of rage and pain that made the stable-helpers momentarily forget their terror of the horse. He flung himself out of the saddle like a madman, and rushed into the middle of the group insensible of the danger to himself. But, quick as he was, the Whisperer was quicker. My Lord was caught and pulled back with a force and violence born of terrified love, and the next thing he saw was the Whisperer holding on to the horse's head-collar and shouting to the men at the ropes to let him free.

Twice he was swung from his feet as the horse reared; twice he was flung back on the stones of the yard with violence, but he held to his grip, quite unconscious that my Lord, struggling to be by his side, was held back by his old huntsman and a couple of grooms.

Suddenly the horse trembled and came down on his forefeet with a crash. It happened so suddenly that no one could tell the moment when his passion was quelled. The Whisperer was now stroking his disordered coat, and murmuring against his ears with a sound softer than the wind in the leaves in summer. The horse was still trembling and turning wild eyes of fear on the the man, but every minute he grew quieter. When a few minutes had passed, Miles led him into his stall, and presently, when my Lord followed, he found him rubbing down the beautiful coat, humming between his teeth after the fashion of grooms, while the horse, as quiet as Brown Bess, the mother of many foals, stood turning grateful eyes upon him.

"A miracle, Miley, a miracle!" cried my Lord. "Good God,

67

what an escape! If the accursed fools had injured him! Every man of them goes to-night."

"They are not to be blamed," said Miles. cruel by nature, but the fear makes them mad. dumb beast."

66

They are not They are like the

After this the Blackbird's reformation seemed to be an assured thing. True, Miles was never long absent from him, and the friendship between the man and the horse was a beautiful thing to see. That the Blackbird had been wicked and had done evil only made the man's pity the greater. As he stood currycombing him, he used to think upon the sufferings the horse must have had to endure. He had belonged to old Carden of Kilnamessan, a fire-eater and a bully, and reputed the cruellest man of a day when people were not particular. It was told of him that he had burnt a young mare to death because she had a trick of stopping with him. He had secured her by stakes to the ground, and had lit a fire under her, and had kept her there roasting till even his own tools had turned on him, Lacy, a drunken groom, having fetched a pair of horse-pistols and put the beast out of her misery in despite of him.

Miles had heard this and many another story, and could guess that the Blackbird had been tortured to the utmost extent compatible with keeping him alive and sound in wind and limb. And his pity for the creature was like a flood in his heart that he could hardly endure.

Now with tender treatment and a quiet life the beauty and value of the horse showed themselves day by day. He looked like a creature of air and fire, too fine to be held on earth. Who could believe that he, gently whinnying for his friend in his absence, or standing with a caressing head in his breast, when he had come, was the Blackbird of terrible reputation?

My Lord's spirits went higher every day. Every morning he was out to see Miles exercising the horse, and as many times he swore that the Blackbird had never been equalled in the history of horseflesh.

"We shall make his Grace dance to the tune of fifty thousand, Miles," he would say, rubbing his hands.

It was autumn when the Blackbird came to Ballaghadamore, and in May the great race was to be ridden. A match between the Duke of Wharncliffe's Pegasus and Lord Cashel's Blackbird for fifty thousand guineas a side was bound to make a bit of a stir, even though it was to be run under the shadow of a purple Irish hill. Then a whisper had been circulated in one of the gossiping fashionable sheets in London that there was more at issue between the gentlemen than a mere matter of horseflesh or gold

guineas, and so fashionable circles were doubly interested in the matter.

The Duke was at his house in the neighbourhood in the early spring of that year, which was 1798. Lady Mabel, who had not yet had a London season, or a Dublin one for the matter of that, was with her mother at Shelton. Her Ladyship guarded the child like the apple of her eye, foreseeing the time when all Europe should ring with her beauty. She would have been just as well pleased if suitors had held aloof, and given her girl time to grow. Even the Duke's strawberry leaves stirred no elation in her breast. How much higher did the woman look? To the royal blood itself perhaps, for her pride was boundless. But certainly she would have preferred not to yield her girl till conquering beauty had at least one campaign, and had seen noble hearts and noble names lie before her thick as autumn leaves.

Meanwhile Lady Mabel was what the shut bud is to the rose. She sat by her mother as meek as the Verginella nel Tempio of a Florentine painter; and Beauty brooded above her moonlight face like a star. It was "Yes, your Grace," or "No, my Lord," no more than that, in speech softer than silver. But it was this very exquisite promise of growth, this still maidenhood, that rapt the hearts of the two men towards her.

Her mother would have sworn that she had no preference, that the beginning of a separate will was hardly born in her. Else she might have forbidden my Lord Cashel the door. But then Wharncliffe had had no rival, and the pleasure that the contest between the two was to her would have ceased.

But once as the two gentlemen sat fingering their sword knobs and making fine speeches with the slightest threatening of hate and jealousy beneath, and while the elder lady laughed and applauded the combat of wits, Lady Mabel bent her eyes an instant on Lord Cashel. For the minute the Duke was paying a flowery compliment to her mother, and neither was looking. It was for the merest shadow of time, but the gaze was so full of sweetness and joy in him that the man's senses reeled with the delight of it. He turned a little pale, and soon afterwards took his leave, but as he rode homeward he shouted and sang in the Spring evening, and the song he sung was an old one :

"O my Love, my Love is young."

Meanwhile more momentous matters than horse-racing were stirring the country. In the spring of that year the leaders of the United Irishmen were arrested, and immediately the land was in the throes of premature rebellion. The enrolling in the country