“Here’s wan of the whips riding hell for leather. Musha! but somethin’ must a’ happened to the houn’s!” Right across the park he was coming, a dingy scarlet figure on a big brown horse. “It’s Billy Croom, the second whip!” cried Mr Mahony, who was standing up in his cart. “Will yiz look at the face of him, white as chalk!” The huntsman took the sunk fence dividing the great lawn from the grasslands, and, full gallop, came, scattering the crowd to right and to left till ten paces from where General Grampound, Dicky Fanshawe and Miss Lestrange were grouped he reined in, bringing the big brown mare on her haunches. “No mate!” cried Billy. “Mr O’Farrell’s tumbled down the stairs and killed hisself—Musha! don’t all be axin’ me at once—He’s fell from the first flure down to the haal—I left the docther settin’ his arum—an’ he won’t be in the saddle agin for a month. ‘Into the saddle wid you, Billy,’ says Mrs O’Farrell, and she near crazy, ‘and aff you go wid my respects and give ’m the news.’ Stan’ clear and don’t be crowdin’ me—mind wid that stick, and don’t be proddin’ it into the mare, or it’s stars she’ll be kickin’ out of you—she ain’t an umbrilla stand. What was you afther sayin’, sir?” “I am asking you, is Mr O’Farrell dead or not?” said General Grampound, who had been vainly endeavouring to make his voice heard in the hubbub. “No, sir; he’s only bruck his arum.” “Then what the deuce do you mean by saying he had killed himself?” “Who’d killed hisself?” asked Billy, unaccustomed to be taken literally, and nettled at the tone of the questioner. “Mr O’Farrell—are you deaf?” “Who’s you talkin’ to?” replied the whip, a man with one of those long, dark, narrow, devilish, fighting faces one meets with sometimes amidst the Irish sporting classes. Before the General could reply—and well for him, perhaps—at this moment up went the cry from the stable-yard: “Paddy’s out!” “Paddy’s out!” yelled the throng, forgetting the disputants and surging towards the stable side of the house. “Brayvo, Paddy! Where is he? Afther him, and let’s chase him! Boys! boys! this’ll be the fun an’ all. Set the houn’s afther him—there ain’t no houn’s—afther him on fut! Crack him on the head if yiz catch him. No quarther, no quarther!—sure, he’s biled babies alive, the blackguyard! There he is, runnin’. Shan’s cotched him! No, he ain’t—he’s free. Afther him, afther him!” A furious crowd surrounded the stable entrance, from which broke the figure of a man running. The extraordinary fact stands, take it how you will, that the crowd who had sympathised and assisted in Mr Murphy’s escape were now, immediately on his enlargement, all against him and eager to catch him. The spirit of pity had vanished with the breaking of the bars, the spirits of pursuit and revenge broke loose, and who knows what might have happened but for Billy Croom, the whip, who, galloping in a semi-circle, faced and herded back the pursuing crowd with his devilish expression and long whip.