When Ulick was seventeen, and a cadet at Sandhurst, he met with an accident that nearly brought his career, and his neck, to an untimely end. One raw winter afternoon the hounds were running not far from Kilmoran. It had been a grand scenting day. Sport was good, and Ulick was out on a new investment--a fine upstanding four-year-old, with grand legs and quarters, but with an ugly fiddle-head and a small pig-like eye. He had, however, a famous pedigree--and with that same pedigree was allied a temper. At first he went kindly, taking all before him with extraordinary flippancy, sailing over places big or little, in a manner that it was a pleasure to witness. A hard-riding cavalry man had already bought him (mentally) and entered him for a couple of steeplechases at Punchestown and Sandown. Suddenly, something put the brown horse out--one never quite knows what upsets a hunter’s temper. Leading the field, he came thundering down to a big boundary-fence, wheeled about sharp on the edge, as if on a pivot--in short, balked before the whole hunt, knocked fifty pounds off his price, and all but shot his rider into the next field. The thrusting followers of the Harkaways stormed the obstacle and galloped on, and Ulick made another effort, put the horse at the ditch, which he again refused; and he not only refused, but reared, and snorted. As the hounds were now far ahead, his rider was determined to get the horse over, so to speak, dead or alive; the brown colt was as positively resolved not to jump. Each, boy and beast, was furious with the other; their blood was up, and it was now a frantic personal affair between them. The beast stood planted, with tucked-in tail, ears laid back, in a lather of sweat and foam, the picture of stubborn strength; the boy, with set white face, was equally dogged, and used every means in his power to conquer the brute--whip, spurs, voice. These were answered by plunges, rearings, and loud snorts of angry defiance. Then Ulick Doran tried peaceful methods, soothing and coaxing, and gentle walkings to and fro. But all to no purpose. The contest had lasted for twenty minutes. The field was empty, save for an old white goat, who stared her astonishment at the proceedings, and a little girl of ten years old, who had been watching the hunt from the top of the boundary-fence, and was the only human witness of the struggle--rather a pretty, slender child, with an amazing quantity of bright red hair; she wore no cap or hat, and was out, so to speak, in her pinafore.