but he did not, and I started for Ballyglass with no other
introduction to any one in the county than that contained in Sir P-'s
promise that I should soon know Mr. Thomas O'Conor.

I had already provided myself with a horse, groom, saddle and bridle,
and these I sent down, en avant, that the Ballyglassians might know
that I was somebody. Perhaps, before I arrived Tom O'Conor might
learn that a hunting man was coming into the neighbourhood, and I
might find at the inn a polite note intimating that a bed was at my
service at Castle Conor. I had heard so much of the free hospitality
of the Irish gentry as to imagine that such a thing might be
possible.

But I found nothing of the kind. Hunting gentlemen in those days
were very common in county Mayo, and one horse was no great evidence
of a man's standing in the world. Men there as I learnt afterwards,
are sought for themselves quite as much as they are elsewhere; and
though my groom's top-boots were neat, and my horse a very tidy
animal, my entry into Ballyglass created no sensation whatever.

In about four days after my arrival, when I was already infinitely
disgusted with the little Pot-house in which I was forced to stay,
and had made up my mind that the people in county Mayo were a
churlish set, I sent my horse on to a meet of the fox-hounds, and
followed after myself on an open car.

No one but an erratic fox-hunter such as I am,--a fox-hunter, I mean,
whose lot it has been to wander about from one pack of hounds to
another,--can understand the melancholy feeling which a man has when
he first intrudes himself, unknown by any one, among an entirely new