Now along all the four roads horsemen could be seen converging towards Castle Knock cross. All sorts of nags, good, bad, and indifferent, ridden by all sorts of people, small farmers, sporting squireens from Tullagh, a sprinkling of gentry, so that in five minutes the space of the cross-roads presented a lively enough picture; and you could scarcely hear yourself speak, for every one seemed to know every one else, and the shouting and the laughing was enough to have raised the old malefactors who for centuries had been buried at the cross-roads with stakes through their middles. Suddenly the talking and the laughing ceased, for away down the road leading to Kilgobbin might be seen the hounds coming along like a moving furze bush and the pink-clad figures of the master and the two whips. “Here they come!” cried Patsy, who had been endeavouring to keep the hog-maned pony from the vicious attentions of the sweep’s donkey. “Misther Mahony, will yiz keep your dunkey to yourself, for he’s tryin’ to bite the pony’s nose off. Miss Doris, sit back a bit and trim the cart, for it’s kickin’ us in flinders he’ll be if the shoulderstrap presses too hard on him.” Patsy was well able to drive; for the matter of that, he could sit a horse bare-backed that many a good horseman could not sit saddled. It was the proudest moment of his life to be driving Lord Gawdor and Miss Doris (Selina was not of the party, having developed a snuffling cold during the night); and his satisfaction was not decreased by the fact that Widow Finnegan’s son was present. The latter was leaning against the sign-post, and every now and then his evil eye would fall upon the governess-cart and Patsy, and he would address some remark to the two boys he was talking to, boys as ill-looking as himself, and then the three would burst into a guffaw of laughter. “It’ll be a bad year this for the crops, Mr Rafferty,” cried Patsy, addressing a stout farmer on a skew-bald nag a few yards away, and speaking in such a loud voice that every one could hear him, Micky Finnegan included. “And how’s that, Patsy?” asked the farmer, touching his hat to Lord Gawdor and Doris. “All the scarecrows have struck bisiness,” said Patsy, nodding towards Micky and his followers. “Not that it matters much, for the crows had ceased to be afeared of them.” “Dustpans and brums!” yelled Micky to an acquaintance across the road. “Mr Moriarty, will you lend me a dustpan and brum?” “Faith,” said Patsy, still addressing Mr Rafferty, “it’s the first time in me life I’ve ever heard rubbish cryin’ out for a broom. Sure, it’s late in the day he is, for he ought to have been swep’ up long ago.” “Patsy,” said Mr Fanshawe, ranging up beside the governess-cart, “what are you doing? Remember who you are driving.” “Don’t stop him, Mr Fanshawe,” said little Lord Gawdor; “he’s always giving that long boy no end beans—cheeky beast!”