dressing Shiana and the big tinker were getting.
"It is a very just deed," said she, "that it should happen to you as it did, and even if it had happened to you seven times worse. It was easy for you to know when you were offered sixty pounds for your ragged, starved, badly-bred little colt, that it was not an honest man that ever offered such a sum for him. You could not help it. The greed was too strong in your heart. Sixty pounds for a little shaggy colt without shape or form, with no more breeding in him than an old sheep! Confound you, you miserable, mean little wretch! How finely you can talk!"
"Hush, Sive!" said he of the colt, "don't be uneasy. There have been so many senseless people at this fair to-day that I am quite sure that somewhere among them there will very soon be found a fool who will marry you without a fortune."
She made a spring, and before he knew what was coming she had her two hands fixed in his beard and was pulling it hard. She pulled it one way and she pulled it the other. He gave three or four groans, like a bull-calf when the knife is being put to his throat. He did not strike her, though it took all his patience to refrain. He put out both hands, and flung her from him, and ran away. Her fingers did not come away empty. You would think they would all fall dead with laughter when they saw the choking the man of the colt had got, and when they saw the beard on Sive's fingers.
Meanwhile more of the people were returning from chasing the thieves. According as they came each asked what caused the fun, or what was going on. They soon lost sight of their own troubles,
