“I beg your pardin’,” said he, touching his hat, “I didn’t see you at first for the sut.” Mr Mahony took his short pipe from his mouth, put it back upside down, shoved his old hat further back on his head, rested his elbows on his knees and contemplated Shan. “But it’s glad I am,” went on Shan, “you’ve come to the meet and brought a mimber of the family with you.” Fate was against Bob Mahony, for at that moment Norah, scenting another of her species in a field near by, curled her lip, stiffened her legs, projected her head, rolled her eyes, and “let a bray out of her” that almost drowned the howls of laughter from the exulting mob. But Shan Finucane did not stir a muscle of his face, and Bob Mahony’s fixed sneer did not flicker or waver. “Don’t mention it, mum,” said Shan, taking off his old cap when the last awful, rasping, despairing note of the bray had died down into silence. Another howl from the onlookers, which left Mr Mahony quite unmoved. “They get on well together,” said he, addressing an imaginary acquaintance in the crowd. “Whisht and hould your nize, and let’s hear what else they have to say to wan another.” Suddenly, and before Shan Finucane could open his lips, a boy who had been looking over the rails into the park, yelled: “Here’s the Mimber of Parlyment—here they come—Hurroo!” “Now, then,” said the huntsman, dropping repartee and seizing the sweep’s donkey by the bridle, “sweep yourselves off, and don’t be disgracin’ the hunt wid your sut-bags and your dirty faces—away wid yiz!” “The hunt!” yelled Mahony, with a burst of terrible laughter. “Listen to him and his ould rat-tarriers callin’ thim a hunt! Lave go of the dunkey!” “Away wid yiz!” “Lave go of the dunkey, or I’ll batter the head of you in wid me stick! Lave go of the dunkey!” Suddenly seizing the long flue brush beside him, and disengaging it from the bundle of sticks with which it was bound, he let fly with the bristle end of it at Shan, and Shan, catching his heel on a stone, went over flat on his back in the road. In a second he was up, whip in hand; in a second Mr Mahony was down, a bag half filled with soot—a terrible weapon of assault—in his fist. “Harns! harns!” yelled Mahony, mad with the spirit of battle, and unconsciously chanting the fighting cry of long-forgotten ancestors. “Who says cruckeder than a ram’s harn!” “Go it, Shan!” yelled the onlookers. “Give it him, Bob—sut him in the face—Butt-end the whip, y’ idgit—Hurroo! Hurroo! Holy Mary! he nearly landed him then—Mind the dogs——” Armed with the soot bag swung like a club, and the old hunting whip butt-ended, the two combatants formed the centre of a circle of yelling admirers. “Look!” said Miss Lestrange, as the party from the house came in view of the road. “Look at the crowd and the two men!” “They’re fighting!” cried the General. “I believe the ruffians have dared to have the impudence to start fighting!”