Finally she returned, third-class, to her home in Ireland, with nothing to show for the expedition except a new and very smart habit, and a vague assurance that Captain Carteret would give her a mount now and then with Freddy Alexander’s hounds.  Captain Carteret was to be on detachment at Enniscar.

PART II

Mr. William Fennessy, lately returned from America, at present publican in Enniscar and proprietor of a small farm on its outskirts, had taken a grey mare to the forge.

It was now November, and the mare had been out at grass for nearly three months, somewhat to the detriment of her figure, but very much to her general advantage.  Even in the south-west of Ireland it is not usual to keep horses out quite so late in the year, but Mr. Fennessy, having begun his varied career as a travelling tinker, was not the man to be bound by convention.  He had provided the mare with the society of a donkey and two sheep, and with the shelter of a filthy and ruinous cowshed.  Taking into consideration the fact that he had only paid seven pounds ten shillings for her, he thought this accommodation was as much as she was entitled to.

She was now drooping and dozing in a dark corner of the forge, waiting her turn to be shod, while the broken spring of a car was being patched, as shaggy and as dirty a creature as had ever stood there.

“Where did you get that one?” inquired the owner of the car of Mr. Fennessy, in the course of much lengthy conversation.

“I got her from a cousin of my own that died down in the County Limerick,” said Mr. Fennessy in his most agreeable manner. “’Twas himself bred her, and she was near deshtroyed fallin’ back on a harra’ with him.  It’s for postin’ I have her.”

“She’s shlack enough yet,” said the carman.

“Ah, wait awhile!” said Mr. Fennessy easily, “in a week’s time when I’ll have her clipped out, she’ll be as clean as amber.”

The conversation flowed on to other themes.

It was nearly dark when the carman took his departure, and the smith, a silent youth with sore eyes, caught hold of one of the grey mare’s fetlocks and told her to “lift!” He examined each hoof in succession by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, raked his fire together, and then, turning to Mr. Fennessy, remarked:—­

“Ye’d laugh if ye were here the day I put a slipper on this one, an’ she afther comin’ out o’ the thrain—­last June it was.  ’Twas one Connolly back from Craffroe side was taking her from the station; him that thrained her for Miss Fitzroy.  She gave him the two heels in the face.”  The glow from the fire illumined the smith’s sardonic grin of remembrance.  “She had a sandcrack in the near fore that time, and there’s the sign of it yet.”

The Cinderella-like episode of the slipper had naturally not entered into Mr. Fennessy’s calculations, but he took the unforeseen without a change of countenance.