'Twas at that moment the Blessed Saints gave me wisdom.
"Mikeen," I says, "drag the mascot out before them; we'll see sport this day."
"Hoult your whisht," says I, "and come on." With that we dragged me bowld goat out before the dogs and let go the chain.
The dogs sniffed up the strong blast of ody-koloney and let a yowl out of them like all the banshees in the nation of Ireland, and the billy legged it for his life--small blame to him!
Meself and Mikeen climbed a double to see the sport.
"They have him," says Mikeen. "They have not," says I; "the crature howlds them by two lengths."
"He has doubled on them," says Mikeen; "he is as sly as a Jew."
"He is forninst the rabbit holes now," I says. "I thank the howly Saints he cannot burrow."
"He has tripped up--they have him bayed," says Mikeen.
And that was the mortal truth, the dogs had him.
Oh, but it was a bowld billy! He went in among those hounds like a lad to a fair, you could hear his horns lambastin' their ribs a mile away. But they were too many for him and bit the grand silky hair off him by the mouthful. The way it flew you'd think it was a snowstorm.
At the moment the huntsman leps his harse up on the double beside us; he was phlastered with muck from his hair to his boots.
"What have they out there?" says he, blinkin' through the mud and not knowin' rightly what his hounds were coursin' out before him, whether it would be a stag or a Bengal tiger.
"'Tis her ladyship's Rile Imperial Mascot Goat," says I; "an' God save your honour for she'll have your blood in a bottle for this day's worrk."
The huntsman lets a curse out of his stummick and rides afther them, flat on his saddle, both spurs tearin'. In the wink of an eye he is down among the dogs, larruppin' them with his whip and drawin' down curses on them that would wither ye to hear him--he had great eddication, that orficer.
"Come now," says I to Mikeen, the poor lad, "let you and me bear the cowld corpse of the diseased back to Herself; mebbe she'll have a shillin' handy in her hand, the way she'd reward us for saving the body from the dogs," says I.
But was me bowld mascot dead? He was not. He was alive and well, the thickness of his wool had saved him. For all that he had not a hair of it left to him, and when he stood up before you you wouldn't know him; he was that ordinary without his fleece, he was no more than a common poor man's goat, he was no more to look at than a skinned rabbit, and that's the truth.