“Well, now,” he said deliberately, “I was sayin’ to meself on the road a while ago, if there was one this side o’ the counthry would know her it’d be yerself.”

The smith took the compliment with a blink of his sore eyes.

“Annyone’d be hard set to know her now,” he said.

There was a pause, during which a leap of sparks answered each thump of the hammer on the white hot iron, and Mr. Fennessy arranged his course of action.

“Well, Larry,” he said, “I’ll tell ye now what no one in this counthry knows but meself and Patsey Crimmeen.  Sure I know it’s as good to tell a thing to the ground as to tell it to yerself!”

He lowered his voice.

“’Twas Mr. Gunning of Streamstown bought that one from Miss Fitzroy at the Dublin Show, and a hundhred pound he gave for her!”

The smith mentally docked this sum by seventy pounds, but said, “By dam!” in polite convention.

“’Twasn’t a week afther that I got her for twinty-five pounds!”

The smith made a further mental deduction equally justified by the facts; the long snore and wheeze of the bellows filled the silence, and the dirty walls flushed and glowed with the steady crescendo and diminuendo of the glow.

The ex-tinker picked up the bottle with the candle.  “Look at that!” he said, lowering the light and displaying a long transverse scar beginning at the mare’s knee and ending in an enlarged fetlock.

“I seen that,” said the smith.

“And look at that!” continued Mr. Fennessy, putting back the shaggy hair on her shoulder.  A wide and shiny patch of black skin showed where the hatter’s plate glass had flayed the shoulder.  “She played the divil goin’ through the streets, and made flitthers of herself this way, in a shop window.  Gunning give the word to shoot her.  The dealer’s boy told Patsey Crimmeen.  ’Twas Patsey was caring her at the show for Miss Fitzroy.  Shtan’ will ye!”—­this to the mare, whose eyes glinted white as she flung away her head from the light of the candle.

“Whatever fright she got she didn’t forget it,” said the smith.

[Illustration:  “MR. GUNNING WAS LOOKIN’ OUT FOR A COB.”]

“I was up in Dublin meself the same time,” pursued Mr. Fennessy.  “Afther I seem’ Patsey I took a sthroll down to Brennan’s yard.  The leg was in two halves, barrin’ the shkin, and the showldher swoll up as big as a sack o’ meal.  I was three or four days goin’ down to look at her this way, and I seen she wasn’t as bad as what they thought.  I come in one morning, and the boy says to me, ‘The boss has three horses comin’ in to-day, an’ I dunno where’ll we put this one.’  I goes to Brennan, and he sitting down to his breakfast, and the wife with him.  ‘Sir,’ says I, ‘for the honour of God sell me that mare!’ We had hard strugglin’ then.  In the latther end the wife says, ’It’s as good for ye to part her, James,’ says she, ’and Mr. Gunning’ll never know what way she went.  This honest man’ll never say where he got her.’  ‘I will not, ma’am,’ says I.  ‘I have a brother in the postin’ line in Belfast, and it’s for him I’m buyin’ her.’”