On the open heath behind the stalls they are selling horses by auction. Enormous cart-horses plunge out of the groups of men and animals and carry a little man suspended from their necks; stout men in grey gaiters and black hats bobble after. Or more decorously the animals are trotted up and down between rows of men away from the auctioneer and back again, their price in guineas mingling with the statement that they are real workers, while a small boy hustles them with whip and shout from behind, and a big stiff man leads them and, to turn them at the end of the run, shoves his broad back into their withers. The Irish dealers traffic apart and try to sell without auction. Their horses and ponies, braided with primrose and scarlet, stand in a quiet row. Suddenly a boy leads out one on a halter, a hard, plump, small-headed beast bucking madly, and makes it circle rapidly about him, stopping it abruptly and starting it again, with a stiff pink flag which he flaps in its face or pokes into its ribs; if the beast refuses he raises a high loud “whoo-hoop” and curses or growls like an animal. For perhaps five minutes this goes on, the boy never abating his oaths and growls and whoops and flirtings of the pink flag. The horse is led back; a muttering calm follows; another horse is led out. Here and there are groups of cart-mares with huge pedestalled feet and their colts, or of men bending forward over long ash-sticks and talking in low tones. Horses race or walk or are backed into the crowd. Droves of bullocks are driven through the furze. Rows of bulls, sweating but silent and quiet, bow their heads and wait as on a frieze. Again the pink flags are flourished, and the dealer catches a horsy stranger by the arm and whispers and shows him the mare’s teeth. This dealer is a big Irishman with flattened face and snaky nose, his voice deep and laughing. He smiles continually, but when he sees a possible buyer he puts on an artful expression so transparent that his merry face shines clearly underneath and remains the same in triumph or rebuke--is the same at the end of the day when he leads off his horses and stopping at a wayside inn drinks on the kerb, but first gives the one nearest him a gulp from the tankard. * * * * *