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"Well, Frank," said Blake, "the cock has crowed; I must away. I suppose you'll ride down to Igoe's, and see Brien: but think of what I've said, and," he added, whispering "remember that I will do the best I can for the animals, if you put them into my stables. They shall be made second to nothing, and shall only and always run to win."
Then, as they came in sight of the famous plain itself, a man struck up: Where will they have their camp? Says the Shan Van Voct When, as if moved by one impulse, all joined in: On the Curragh of Kildare, And the boys will all be there, With their pikes in good repair Says the Shan Van Voct! "Igoe's porter!" a cynic might say.
So Pierre said he'd go out and get some. He was gone about half an hour; when he came back, he had a carton, and some hot pork sandwiches. He'd gotten them at the same place as the cigarettes Art Igoe's lunch-stand." "Could Igoe verify that?" "It wouldn't help if he did. Igoe's place isn't a five-minute drive from Rivers's, farther down the road." "Has Pierre a lawyer?" Rand asked. "No. Not yet.
They continued, however, appearing in the Curragh lists in Lord Ballindine's name, as a part of Igoe's string; and running for Queen's whips, Wellingtons and Madrids, sometimes with good and sometimes with indifferent success. Nothing more, however, could be done; and it was trusted that when the day of the wedding should come, he would be found minus the animals.
"Well; I would like a nag out of our stables to do the trick on the downs, and av' we does it iver, it'll be now. Mr Igoe's standing a deal of cash on him. I wonder is Mr Blake standing much on him, my lord?" "You'd be precious deep, Grady, if you could find what he's doing in that way." "That's thrue for you, my lord; but av' he, or your lordship, wants to get more on, now's the time.
Poor Frank! he was ashamed to go to take a last look at his dear favourites, and tell his own trainer that he had sold his own horses. The next morning saw him, with his servant, on the Ballinasloe coach, travelling towards Kelly's Court; and, also, saw Brien Boru, Granuell, and Finn M'Goul led across the downs, from Igoe's stables to Handicap Lodge.
Frank pooh-poohed at the hounds, said that horses cost nothing in Connaught, and dogs less, and that he could not well do there without them; but promised to turn in his mind what Lord Cashel had said about the turf; and, at last, went so far as to say that when a good opportunity offered of backing out, he would part with Finn M'Coul and Granuell as the two nags at Igoe's were patriotically denominated.
Tom had put in this bit of "local colouring" about Igoe's to show the good fellowship between us, but as their sons were both teetotalers, the old people knew that this could not be true, and the rest of his story was somewhat discredited in consequence. Igoe's was a public house just on the corner of the road leading from the Curragh to Suncroft.
"Aye, indeed," he said, "Barney and John are lodging in the one house with me, with a decent widow woman, and many a glass we had together at Igoe's."
By the time that he was half a mile from Igoe's stables he had determined that, as the girl was gone it would be a pity to throw the horses after her; he would finish this year on the turf; and then, if Fanny Wyndham was still her own mistress after Christmas, he would again ask her her mind.
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