"Och sure I'll be wiser," cried Corney; and he made fast a tail rope to a tree, thus enabling him to lower it gently for a short distance at a time.  In slipping it, however, from one tree to another, the sleigh gathered way, but scarcely had it got abreast of the dogs than it sheered off on one side of a small tree, the dogs rolling on the other. The tree--a mere sapling--bent, and the impetus carried the whole train nearly twenty feet out towards its end--the dogs hanging by their traces on one side, counterbalancing the sleigh on the other, where they swayed to and fro in the most ludicrous fashion, yelping, barking, and struggling to get free, and running a great risk of being hanged.