She rose to the jump when she was a good six feet from it.  I knew she would not put an iron on it, and I sat down for the drop.  It came with a vengeance.  I had a glimpse of a thatched roof below me, and the next instant we were on it or in it—­I don’t know which.  It gave way with a crash of rafters, the mare’s forelegs went in, and I was shot over her head, rolled over the edge of the roof, and fell on my face into a manure heap.  A yell and a pig burst simultaneously from the door, a calf followed, and while I struggled up out of my oozy resting-place, I was aware of the filly’s wild face staring from the door of the shed in which she so unexpectedly found herself.  The broken reins trailed round her legs, she was panting and shivering, and blood was trickling down the white blaze on her nose.  I got her out through the low doorway with a little coaxing, and for a moment hardly dared to examine as to the amount of damage done.  She was covered with cobwebs and dirt out of the roof, and, as I led her forward, she went lame on one foreleg; but beyond this, and a good many scratches, there was nothing wrong.  My own appearance need not here be dilated upon.  I was cleaning off what they call in Ireland “the biggest of the filth” with a bunch of heather, when from a cottage a little bit down the lane in which I was standing a small barelegged child emerged.  It saw me, uttered one desperate howl, and fled back into the house.  I abandoned my toilet and led the mare to the cottage door.

“Is any one in?” I said to the house at large.

A fresh outburst of yells was the sole response; there was a pattering of bare feet, and somewhere in the smoky gloom a door slammed.  It was clearly a case of “Not at Home” in its conventional sense.  I scribbled Robert Trinder’s name on one of my visiting cards, laid it and half a sovereign on a table by the door, and started to make my way home.

The south of Ireland is singularly full of people.  I do not believe you can go a quarter of a mile on any given road without meeting some one, and that some one is sure to be conversationally disposed and glad of the chance of answering questions.  By dint of asking a good many, I eventually found myself on the high road, with five miles between me and Lisangle.  The mare’s lameness had nearly worn off, and she walked beside me like a dog.  After all, I thought, I had had the best of the day, had come safely out of what might have been a nasty business, and was supplied with a story on which to dine out for the rest of my life.  My only anxiety was as to whether I could hope for a bath when I got in—­a luxury that had been hideously converted by the locale of my fall into a necessity.  I led the filly in the twilight down the dark Lisangle drive, feeling all the complacency of a man who knows he has gone well in a strange country, and was just at the turn to the yard when I came upon an extraordinary group.  All the women of the household were there, gathered in a tight circle round some absorbing central fact; all were shrieking at the tops of their voices, and the turkey cock in the yard gobbled in response to each shriek.