‘That’s the fruits of being too lazy to put on a crupper and surcingle, as any man that calls himself a horsebreaker ought to do. Suppose I’d hurt myself, it would have been all your fault, Windsor!’ Then he arose deliberately and shook himself, whereupon they all burst into a great fit of laughter at his rueful and injured air, as if being shot over a vicious colt’s head, after ten minutes’ buck-jumping, was a trifling annoyance, that the least care might have prevented. Mr. Neuchamp walked over to the saddle, which he carefully examined. ‘Why, the girths are still buckled on each side!’ he exclaimed with astonishment. ‘How the deuce _could_ the brute have got the saddle over his head as he did—as he certainly did?’ ‘Bedad he did! eh, Charley, me boy? and that’s a trick of rapid horsemanship _I_ never saw performed before with my own two eyes,’ said Mr. Barrington. ‘There’s many a man, now, in my country, if I were to tell this story, wouldn’t believe me on my oath. They’d say it was unreasonable. You might stick them, and they’d never give in.’ ‘I wish one of them was on that brute’s back,’ said Mr. Banks, rubbing a portion of his frame. ‘I thought I was as right as ninepence, and then to be slewed that way, and all for the want of a strap or two. I hate carelessness.’ ‘Never mind, Banks, you sat him magnificently,’ said Ernest cheeringly. ‘I never saw such a bit of riding in my life. It will be many a day before any of us can exhibit in the same way. I consider you fairly won your bet. But still I remain unsatisfied about the saddle coming off without breaking the girths. How _did_ it?’ ‘Well, it’s this way,’ said Mr. Windsor, bracing himself for explanation. ‘It’s not a common thing, though I’ve seen young ones do it more than once or twice before. You see, first the horse sticks down his head with his nose on the ground, as if he was jumping down a well. Then he plants his feet right out before him, so as his hoofs and his nose are almost touching; his legs and his neck are all of a line. Young ones generally have a roundish, lumpy shoulder. If the saddle slips over it, and the girths over the elbows, down it must go; and when the horse draws his head backwards out of it, then you have the saddle, like this one here, popped on the ground, with never a girth or buckle broke.’ ‘So that’s the way it’s done, Jack, is it?’ inquired Mr. Barrington. ‘Well, if I’m forgiven for riding that divil once, I’ll never tempt Providence again by crossing him as long as I stay at Garrandilla. I’d like to take him home and exhibit him. There’s many a bold rider in Clare and County Roscommon, but the divil a one would stay on him for five minutes, I’ll go bail.’ ‘Every man to his trade,’ said Jack Windsor. ‘Mr. Banks and me have been riding ever since we were born, and it isn’t easy to get from under us, I’ll allow. But I daresay there’s some other games as we shouldn’t be quite so smart at.’