Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/207

 To that end the stud was sentenced to sale and dispersion; many a descendant of the lamented Cornborough went to enrich the paddocks of friends and well-wishers. I think Mr. Hastings Cunningham bought the greater number of the brood mares and young stock, at an average rate per head.

Now, Dermot was the old gentleman's hack. (Was he old, or, perhaps, only about forty-five? We were decided then as to the time of life when decay of all the faculties was presumed to set in.) I many a time and oft admired the swell, dark bay, striding along the South Yarra tracks with aristocratic elegance, or, more becomingly arrayed, carrying a lady in the front of a joyous riding-party. His owner was un galant uomo, and the gentle yet spirited steed was always at the service of his lady friends.

So when, one day at the club, he suggested to me to buy Dermot—more than one lady's horse being required in our family at that time, and only fifty pounds named as the price—I promptly closed.

Dead and buried is he years agone; but I still recall, with memory's aid, the dark bay horse, blood-like, symmetrical, beauteous in form as aristocratic in bearing. 'Hasn't he the terrifyin' head on him?' queried an Irish sympathiser, somewhat incongruously, as he gazed with rapt air and admiring eyes at the tapering muzzle, large, soft eyes, and Arab frontal.

Delicate, deer-like, strictly Eastern was the head referred to, beautifully set on a perfectly-arched neck, which again joined oblique, truly perfect shoulders. Their mechanism must have been such, inasmuch as never did I know any living horse with such liberty of forehand action.

Walking or cantering down an incline, shut but your eyes, and you were unable to tell by bodily sensation whether you were on level ground or otherwise. He 'pulled up' in a way different from any other horse. Apparently, he put out his legs, and, lo! you were again at a walk. No prop, shake, or jar was perceptible. It was a magical transformation. An invalid recovering from a fever could have ridden him a day's journey. No one could fall off him in fact.

amid the green forest parks of Trawalla, at no great distance from Buninyong, or the historic goldfield of Ballarat.