The King's Troopers, not specially enlightened, turned their steeds and

went in pursuit of the jocks. A stone gap, flung in ruins among black

hoof-marks, soon gave a more precise indication, and we left the road,

with profound dubiety on my part as to where we were going and how we

were going to get there. The first fence decided the matter for

Irving, D.I. It was a bank on which slices of slatey stone had been

laid, much as in Germany slabs of cold sausage are laid upon bread.

The Meath mare looked at it but once, and fled from it at a tangent;

the grey pony, without looking at it, followed her. Daniel selected an

interval between the slabs, and took me over without comment. Filled

by a radiant hope that I had shaken off both my companions, I was

advancing in the line of the hoof-tracks, when once more I heard behind

me on the wind cries as of a storm-driven sea-gull, and the grey cob

came up under my stirrup, like a runaway steam pinnace laying itself

beside a man-o'-war. Miss McRory was still in the saddle, but minus

reins and stirrup; the wind had again removed her hat, which was

following her at full stretch of its string, like a kite. Had it not

been for her cries I should have said, judging by her face, that she

was thoroughly enjoying herself.

Having achieved Daniel's society the cob pulled up, and her rider, not

without assistance from me, restored her hat, reins, and stirrup to

their proper spheres. I looked back, and saw Irving's mare, still on

the farther side of the fence, her nose pointing to the sky, as if

invoking the protection of heaven, and I knew that for better for worse

Miss McRory was mine until we reached the high road. No doubt the

thing was to be: as one of our own poets has sung of Emer and

Cuchulain, "all who read my name in Erin's story would find its loving

letters linked with" those of McRory. The paraphrase even

rhymed--another finger-mark of Fate. Yet it was hard that, out of all

the possible, and doubtless eager, squires of the hunting-field I

should have been chosen.

The hoof-tracks bent through a long succession of open gaps to a

farmyard, and there were swallowed in the mire of a lane. I worked the

lane out for every inch it was worth, with the misty rain pricking my

face as it were with needles, and the intention to go home at the

earliest possible opportunity perfecting itself in my heart. But the

lane, instead of conducting us to the high road, melted disastrously

into a turf bog. I pulled up, and the long steady booming of the sea

upon the rocks made a deep undertone to the wind. There was no voice

of hound or horn, and I was on the point of returning to the farmhouse

when the mist, in its stagey, purposeful way, again lifted, and laid

bare the sky-line of a low hill on our left. A riderless horse was

limping very slowly along it, led by something that seemed no higher

than a toadstool. Obviously we were on the line of the hunt, and

obviously, also, it was my duty to enquire into the matter of the

horse. I turned aside over a low bank, hotly followed by the grey cob,

and the wail to which I was now becoming inured. As Miss McRory

arrived abruptly at my side, she cried that she would have been off

that time only for the grab she got of his hair. (By which I believe

she meant the mare's mane.)

Fortune favoured us with broken-down fences; we overtook the horse, and

found it was Flurry Knox's brown mare, hobbling meekly in tow of a very

small boy. In one of her hind fetlocks there was a clean, sharp cut

that might have been done with a knife.

In answer to my questions the small boy pointed ahead. I polished my

eyeglass, and, with eyes narrowed against the wind, looked into the

south-west, and there saw, unexpectedly, even awfully near, the

Atlantic Ocean, dingy and angry, with a long line, as of battle-smoke,

marking its assault upon the cliffs. Between the cliffs and the hill

on which we were standing a dark plateau, striped with pale grey walls,

stretched away into the mist.

"There's the huntsman for ye," squeaked the little boy, who looked

about six years old.

I descried at a distance of perhaps a quarter of a mile a figure in a

red coat, on foot, in the act of surmounting one of the walls,

accompanied by a hovering flock of country boys.

"The dogs is out before him," pursued the little boy at the full pitch

of his lungs. "I seen the fox, too. I'll go bail he has himself

housed in the Coosheen Grohogue by now."

"Gracious!" said Miss McRory.

I said he probably had a simpler telegraphic address, and that, no

matter where he was, it was now my duty to overtake Mr. Knox and offer

him my horse; "and you," I added, "had better get this little boy to

show you the way to the road."

Miss McRory replied confidently that she'd sooner stay with me.

I said, as well as I remember, that her preference was highly

flattering, but that she might live to regret it.

Miss McRory answered that she wished I wouldn't be spying at her

through that old glass of mine; she knew well enough she was a show,

and her hair was coming down, and she'd as soon trust herself to the

cat as to that little urchin.

As I made my way downwards over the knife-edged ridges of rock and

along their intervening boggy furrows, I should myself have been

grateful for the guidance of the cat. Even the grey cob accepted the

matter as serious, and kept the brake hard on, accomplishing the last

horrid incident of the descent--a leap from the slant of the hill on to

the summit of a heathery bank--without frivolity, even with anxiety.

We had now arrived at the plateau above the cliffs--a place of brown,

low-growing ling, complicated by boggy runnels, and heavily sprinkled

with round stones. The mist was blowing in thicker than ever, Flurry

and his retinue were lost as though they had never been, and the near

thunder of the breakers, combined with the wind, made an impenetrable

din round me and Miss McRory.

After perhaps a mile, in the course of which I got off several times to

pull down loose walls for the benefit of my companion, I discovered the

rudiments of a lane, which gradually developed into a narrow but

indubitable road. The rain had gone down the back of my neck and into

my boots: I determined that if Flurry had to finish the run on

all-fours, I would stick to the lane until it took me to a road. What

it took me to was, as might have been foreseen in any County Cork

bohireen, a pole jammed across it from wall to wall and reinforced by

furze-bushes--not a very high pole, but not one easy to remove. I

pulled up and looked dubiously from it to Miss McRory.

"D'ye dare me?" she said.

"I bet you sixpence you take a toss if you do," I replied firmly,

preparing to dismount.

"Done with you!" said Miss McRory, suddenly smiting the grey cob with a

venomous little cutting whip (one that probably dated from the sixties,

and had for a handle an ivory greyhound's head with a plaited silver

collar round its neck).

I have seldom seen a pole better and more liberally dealt with, as far

as the grey cob's share of the transaction went, and seldom, indeed,

have I seen a rider sail more freely from a saddle than Miss McRory

sailed. She alighted on her hands and knees, and the cob, with the

sting of the whip still enlivening her movements, galloped on up the

lane and was lost in the mist.

"Well, you won your sixpence," said Miss McRory dauntlessly, as I

joined her. "I suppose you're delighted."

I assured her with entire sincerity that I was very much the reverse,

and proceeded at high speed in pursuit of the cob. The result of this

excursion--a fairly prolonged one--was the discovery that the lane led

into a road, and that it was impossible to decide in which direction

the fugitive had gone. I returned in profound gloom to my young lady,

and found her rubbing herself down with a bunch of heather.

"So you couldn't ketch her!" she called out as I approached. "What'll

we do now?" She was evidently highly amused. "I'll tell the Peeler it

was your fault. You dared me!"

My reply need not be recorded: I only know it was by no means up to the

standard to which Miss McRory was accustomed.

I took what seemed to be the only possible course, and established her

seated sideways on my saddle, with her foot--and it is but fair to say,

a very small foot--in the leather instead of the stirrup, and her right

hand knotted in Daniel's mane. I held the off stirrup, and splashed

beside her in the ruts and mud. The mist was thicker than ever, the

wind was pushing it in from the sea in great masses, and Miss McRory

and I progressed onward in a magic circle of some twenty yards in

diameter, occupied only by herself and me, with Daniel thrown in as

chaperon.

On arriving at the road I relied on the wind for guidance, and turning

to the right, let it blow us in what was, I trusted, our course. It

was by this time past three o'clock, we were at least nine or ten miles

from home, and one of my boots had begun to rub my heel. There was

nothing for it but to keep on as we were going, until we met something,

or some one, or died.

It is worthy of record that in these afflicting circumstances Miss

Larkie McRory showed a staying power, attained, probably, in the long

and hungry bicycle picnics of her tribe, that was altogether

commendable. Not for an instant did she fail to maintain in me the

belief that she found me one of the most agreeable people she had ever

met, a little older, perhaps, than Irving, D.I., but on that very

account the more to be confided in. It was not until the pangs of

hunger recalled to me the existence of my sandwiches that I discovered

she had no food with her, nor, as far as could be gathered, had she had

any breakfast.

"Sure they were all snoring asleep when I started. I just got a cup o'

tea in the kitchen----"

This, I suppose, was a point at which I might suitably have said

something incisive about the feats of her brethren on the previous

night, but with deplorable weakness I merely offered her my sandwiches.

Miss McRory replied that she'd fall off in a minute if she were to let

go the mane, and why wouldn't I eat them myself? I said if there were

any shelter left in Ireland I would wait till I got there, and we could

then decide who should eat them.

AEons of mist and solitude ensued. I must have walked for an hour or

more, without meeting anyone except one old woman, who could only speak

Irish, and I had begun to feel as if my spur were inside my boot

instead of outside, when I became aware of something familiar about the

look of the fences. It was not, however, until I felt shelter rising

blessedly about us, and saw the thorn bush with the rags hanging from

it, that I realised that our luck had turned, and we had blundered our

way back to the holy well under the side of Lonen Hill. The well was

like a tiny dripping cave, about as big as a beehive, with a few inches

of water in it; a great boulder stood guard over it, and above it

stooped the ancient and twisted thorn bush. It seemed indicated as a

place of rest, none the less that my heel was by this time considerably

galled by my boot.

Miss McRory glissaded from my saddle into my arms, and was assisted by

me to deposit herself on a flat stone beside the well, stiff, wet, but

still undefeated. We shared my sandwiches, we drank whisky mixed with

the water of the holy well, and Miss McRory dried her face with her

handkerchief, and her complexion looked better than ever. Daniel,

slowly and deliberately, ate the rags off the thorn bush. I have been

at many picnics that I have enjoyed less.

By the time we had got to the gingerbread biscuits I had discovered

that Mr. Irving thought she had talked too much to me after dinner last

night, and that it was a wonder to her how men could be so cross about

nothing. I said I was sorry she called it nothing, at which she looked

up at me and down again at the gingerbread, and did not reply. After

this I felt emboldened to ask her why she had been called so

inappropriate a name as "Larkie."

Miss McRory agreed that it was indeed a silly old name, and that it was

a friend of one of her brothers, a Mr. Mulcahy, who had said that she

and her sisters were "'Lorky little gurls with lorge dork eyes.' He

had that way of speaking," she added, "because he thought it was grand,

and he always kept his watch at English time. He said he ran over to

London so often it wasn't worth while to change it."

She herself had never been out of Ireland, and she supposed she'd never

get the chance.

I said that when she married Mr. Mulcahy she could keep her watch at

Irish time, so as to equalise things.

Miss McRory suggested that I should give her a watch as a wedding

present, and that, English or Irish time, it would be all hours of the

night before we were home.

I realised with a slight shock that the position had indeed become

inverted when one of the House of McRory had to remind me, after about

four hours in her undiluted society, of the flight of time. It was now

past four, which was bad enough, and a still greater shock awaited me

in the discovery that I was dead lame, the interval of repose having

been fatal to my damaged heel.

I have always asserted, and shall continue to do so to my dying day,

that the way out of the difficulty was suggested by Miss McRory. I

mounted Daniel, Miss McRory ascended the boulder by the holy well,

announcing that she was as stiff as fifty crutches, and that once she

got up she'd be there for life. The thing was done somehow, thanks to

the incomparable forbearance of Daniel, and with Miss McRory seated

behind me on his broad back, and her arms clasped round my waist, I

once more, and very cautiously, took the road.

Daniel continued to conduct himself like a gentleman, but considering

how precarious was the position of Miss McRory, it was unnerving to

feel her shaken by silent and secret laughter.

"You'll fall off," I warned her.

She replied by a further paroxysm, and asked me what size I took in

stays--she supposed about forty inches.

Dusk was now an accomplished fact: thickened with fog and rain, it was

even turning to darkness as we descended the long hill. But, humanly

speaking, the end was in sight. There was, I knew, a public-house a

couple of miles farther on, where a car might be hired, and there I

proposed to bid a long farewell to Miss Larkie McRory, and to send her

home by herself, to have rheumatic fever, as I assured her.

We moved on and on, at a careful foot-pace: we were out in the wind

again, and it was very cold. It was also quite dark. Silence fell

upon us, and, after a time, the sustained pressure of Miss McRory's

hat-brim against my shoulder suggested that it was the silence of

exhaustion, if not of sleep. I thought of her with compassion. I

believe I formulated her to myself as a poor little girl, and found

myself asserting with defiance to imaginary detractors that no one

could say she hadn't pluck, and that, in spite of her family, she

really had a soul to be saved.

Again we found ourselves in shelter, and a greater darkness in the

darkness told that we were in the lee of a wooded hill. I knew where I

was now, and I said to Miss McRory that the pub was just round the

corner, and she replied at once that that was where they always were,

in Dublin anyway. She also said she thought she heard horses' hoofs

coming up behind us. I pushed on.

We turned the corner, and were immediately struck blind by the twin

glare of the lamps of a motor, that lay motionless, as in ambush, at

the side of the road. Even the equanimity of Daniel was shattered; he

swung to one side, he drifted like a blown leaf, and Miss McRory clung

to me like a knapsack. As we curveted in the full glare of the

limelight, I was aware of a figure in a pot-hat and a vast fur coat

standing near the motor. Even as I recognised Lady Knox three or four

muddy hounds trailed wearily into the glare, and a voice behind me

shouted, "'Ware horse!"

Flurry came on into the light: there was just room in me for a

sub-conscious recognition of the fact that he was riding the missing

grey cob, and that this was a typical thing, and one that might have

been expected.

At the hunt dinner that took place soon afterwards some one sang a

song, one that I have ceased to find amusing. The first verse runs as

follows:

"Throttin' to the Fair,

Me and Moll Moloney,

Sittin', I declare,

On a single pony----"

By a singular coincidence, the faces of all those present turned

towards me.

X

THE COMTE DE PRALINES

"I had forgotten how nice London is!" purred Philippa, as we moved

beautifully across the threshold of Bill Cunningham's club, and were

conducted to the lift with a tender deference that was no more than was

due to our best clothes.

The Ladies' Tea-room at Bill's club was a pleasant place, looking

forth, high above the noise, upon trees that were yellow in the hazy

October afternoon. In a very agreeable bow-window were Lady Derryclare

and the tea-table, and with her were her son, and a small and

ornamental young man, who was introduced to us as Mr. Simpson-Hodges.

"Front name John, known to a large circle of admirers as 'Mossoo,'"

supplemented Bill, whose hands were so clean that I found it difficult

to recognise him.

"So called because of the incredible circumstance that he can speak

French, in spite of the best Public School education," said Lady

Derryclare. "When I think of the money that has been wasted on you!

You good for nothing creature!"

"It's more his looks," pursued Bill, "his dark foreign beauty----"

"These humorists!" said Mr. Simpson-Hodges indulgently, showing a set

of white teeth under a diminutive black moustache. "Please, Lady

Derryclare, let's talk of something pleasant."

"Ask him about the chickens you made him get from the Chicken Farmers

for the dance his regiment gave," said Bill to his mother.

"Oh, that was rather a bad business," said Mr. Simpson-Hodges

apologetically, with an eye on Philippa, who, in a new hat, was looking

about five-and-twenty. "I'm sure no one wants to hear about it."

"Mossoo ran the supper and he ordered three brace," said Bill, "but

they never turned up till the week after the show! The postman was

viewed coming up to the Mess towing something after him on a long

painter. The painter was superfluous. The chickens would have

followed him at a trot if he had been kind to them. They kept them for

the drag, I believe. Didn't you, Mossoo? He's one of the Whips, you

know."

"They'd have been quite useful," admitted Mr. Simpson-Hodges.

"How interesting to be a Whip!" said Philippa, looking at him with

egregious respect.

"Rather too interesting, sometimes," replied Simpson-Hodges, expanding

to the glance in a way not unfamiliar to me. "Last time we were out

the fellow with the drag started from the cross-roads where we were

going to meet, and was asinine enough to take it a bit down the road

before he went into the country, and, as it happened, we were bringing

the hounds up to the meet by that particular road. They simply put

down their heads and ran it heel for all they were worth! The First

Whip and I galloped our best, but we couldn't get to their heads, and

we all charged into the middle of the meet full-cry!"

"Oh! I wish I had been there!" said Philippa ardently.

"We wished we were anywhere else," replied Mr. Simpson-Hodges; "the

Brigadier was there, and everybody. We heard all about it afterwards,

I can tell you!"

"That ought to have happened in Mr. Knox's country, Major Yeates!" said

Lady Derryclare, whose interest in fox-hunting was more sympathetic

than technical.

"We don't run drags, Lady Derryclare," I said reproachfully, but Lady

Derryclare had already entered upon another topic.

Simpson-Hodges, however, did not end there.

A week afterwards Philippa and I crept home, third class, with full

trunks and empty pockets, sustained only by the aphorism, evolved by my

wife, that economies, and not extravagances, are what one really

regrets. It was approaching the end of November before we next heard

of Simpson-Hodges. The Derryclares had come down for their first

woodcock shoot, and Bill swooped over one morning in the big Daimler

and whirled us back with him over the forty intervening miles of bog

and mountain, to shoot, and to dance on the carpet after dinner, and to

act charades; to further, in short, the various devices for exercising

and disciplining a house party. Mr. John Simpson-Hodges was there, no

less ornamental than in London, and as useful as he was ornamental. He

shot well, he danced beautifully, and he made of the part of a French

Count in a charade so surprising a work of art that people said--as is

the habit of people--that he ought to be making a hundred a week on the

stage.

Before we left the Derryclares Philippa told me that she had arranged

with "those boys"--by which she referred to Mr. Cunningham and the

French Count--to come over next week and have a hunt with Flurry Knox's

hounds. Something whispered to me that there was more in this than met

the eye, but as they were to provide their own mounts the position was

unassailable, and I contented myself with telling her that a

predilection for the society of the young was one of the surest signs

of old age.

It was not till we were all seated at breakfast on the morning of the

meet (which was to be at Castle Knox), that it was suggested, with all

the spontaneity of a happy thought, by Bill, that "Mossoo" should be

introduced to the members of the Hunt as a Frenchman who was unable to

speak English.

"Call him the Comte de Pralines," said Philippa, with suspicious

promptitude.

"You can call him Napoleon Buonaparte if you like," I said defiantly,

"_I_ shall stay at home!"

"All the Curranhilty people will be there," said Philippa softly.

The thought of introducing the Comte de Pralines to Miss Bobbie Bennett

was certainly attractive.

"I refuse to introduce him to Lady Knox," I said with determination,

and knew that I had yielded.

A meet at Castle Knox always brought out a crowd; there were generally

foxes, and always luncheon, and there was a touch of the G.O.C. about

Lady Knox that added a pleasing edge of anxiety, and raised the meet to

something of the nature of a full-dress parade. I held to my point

about Lady Knox, and did nothing more compromising than tremble in the

background, while Bill Cunningham presented the Comte de Pralines to

the lady of the house, supplementing the presentation with the

statements that this was his first visit to Ireland, and that he spoke

no English.

The Comte de Pralines, in the newest of pink coats, and the whitest of

breeches, and the most glittering of boots and spurs, stood on the step

below Lady Knox, with the bridle of his hireling over his arm, and his

shining silk hat in his hand. Still with his hat in his hand, and

looking, as Miss Larkie McRory whispered to me, "as pretty as a

Christmas card," the Count rippled forth a stream of mellifluous

French, commenting upon the beauty of the day, of the place, of the

scene.

Lady Knox's face deepened to so apoplectic a crimson, and her eyes

became so fixed that I, watching the scene apprehensively, doubted if

it were not my duty to rush at her and cut open her hunting-stock.

When the Count ceased, having, as far as I could gather, enquired as to

when she had last been to Auteuil, and if she had ever hunted in

France, Lady Knox paused, and said very slowly:

"Er--_j'espere que nous aurons un bon jour aujourdhui_." Then,

rapidly, to me, "Take your friend in for a drink, Major Yeates."

My heart bled for her, and also quaked for myself, but I was into it

now, up to my chin.

During the next ten minutes Bill Cunningham, feebly abetted by me,

played the game remorselessly, sparing neither age nor sex. In the

hall, amidst the sloe-gins and the whiskies and sodas (to which the

Count, for a foreigner, took remarkably kindly), introductions slipped

between cup and lip, poisoning the former and paralysing the latter.

The victims took it variously; some sought refuge in bright smiles and

large foreign gestures; some, in complete mental overthrow, replied in

broken English to Mossoo's sugared periods; all were alike in one

point, they moved as swiftly as might be, and as far as possible, out

of the immediate neighbourhood of the Comte de Pralines. Philippa,

who, without any solid attainment, can put up a very good bluff in

French, joined spasmodically in these encounters, alternately goading

Mossoo to fresh outrages, and backing out when the situation became too

acute. I found her, affecting to put her sandwiches into the case on

her saddle, and giving way to her feelings, with her face pressed

against her mare's shoulder.

"I introduced him to Bobbie Bennett," she said brokenly; "and he asked

her if she spoke French. She looked at me as if she were drowning, and

said, '_Seulement tres petit_'!"

I said, repressively, that Lady Knox could see her, and that people

would think, firstly, that she was crying, and secondly, that she was

mad.

"But I am mad, darling!" replied my wife, turning a streaming face to

me.

I informed her of my contempt for her, and, removing myself from her

vicinity, collected myself for the introduction of the Count to Flurry

Knox and Dr. Hickey. By this time most of the Field were mounted, and

the Comte de Pralines bent to his horse's mane as he uncovered with

grave courtesy on his presentation to the Master and the First Whip,

and proceeded to express the profundity of his gratification at meeting

an Irish Master of Hounds. The objects of the attention were palpably

discomposed by it; Flurry put a finger to his cap, with a look at me

expressive of No Surrender; Dr. Hickey, in unconscious imitation of the

Count, bowed low, but forgot about his cap.

"He has no English, I'm told," said Flurry, eyeing the Count

suspiciously.

I stopped myself on the verge of bowing assent, so infectious was the

grace of the Pralines manner.

"Is he come to buy horses for the German Army?" went on Flurry. (It

need hardly be said that this occurred before the War.)

I explained that he was French.

"You wouldn't know what these foreigners might be up to," returned Mr.

Knox, quite unconvinced. "I'm going on now----"

He too moved expeditiously out of the danger zone.

The Field straggled down the avenue, and progressed over tracts of

tussocky grass in the wake of the hounds, towards the plantation that

was the first draw. The Keeper was outside the wood, with the

assurance that there was a score of foxes in it, and that they had the

country ate.

"Maybe they'll eat the hounds, so," said Flurry. "Let you all stay

outside. You can be talking French now for a bit----"

I looked round to see who were availing themselves of this permission.

The Count had by this time been introduced to Miss Larkie McRory;

Philippa was apparently acting as interpreter, and Miss McRory was

showing no disposition to close the interview. The Field had

withdrawn, and had formed itself into a committee-meeting on the Count.

[Illustration: Miss Larkie McRory.]

It was warm and sunny in the shelter of the wood. Although the time

was November there were still green leaves on some of the trees; it was

a steamy day after a wet night, and I thought to myself that if the

hounds _did_ run--Here came a challenge from the wood, answered

multitudinously, and the next minute they were driving through the

laurels towards the entrance gates, with a cry that stimulated even the

many-wintered Daniel to capers quite unbefitting his time of life, or

mine. The Castle Knox demesne is a large one, and being surrounded by

a prohibitively high and coped wall, it is easier to find a fox there

than to get away with one. Mighty galloping on the avenues followed,

with interludes in the big demesne fields, where every gate had been

considerately left open, and in which every horse with any pretensions

to _savoir faire_ stiffened his neck, and put up his back, and pulled.

The hounds, a choir invisible, carried their music on through the

plantations, with whimpering, scurrying pauses, with strophe and

anti-strophe of soprano and bass. Sometimes the cry bore away to the

demesne wall, and some one would shout "They're away!" and the question

of the Front Gate versus the Western Gate would divide us like a sword.

Twice, in the undergrowth, above the sunk fence that separated us from

the wood, the quick, composed face of the fox showed itself; at last,

when things were getting too hot in the covert, he sprang like a cat

over the ditch, and flitted across the park with that gliding gait that

dissimulates its own speed, while I and my fellows offered a painful

example of the discordance of the human voice when compared with that

of the hound, and five or six couple pitched themselves out of the wood

and stretched away over the grass.

It was fortunate for the Comte de Pralines that his entirely British

view-holloa was projected for the most part into my ear (the drum of

which it nearly split) and was merged in the general enthusiasm as we

let ourselves go.

"For God's sake, Major Yeates!" said Michael, the Second Whip,

thundering up beside me as we neared the covert on the further side of

the park, "come into the wood with me and turn them hounds! Mr.

Flurry's back on another fox with the body of the pack, and he's very

near his curse!"

I followed Michael into the covert, and was myself followed by a

section of the Field, who might, with great advantage, have remained

outside. In the twinkling of an eye Michael was absorbed into the

depths of the wood; so also were the six couple, but not so my retinue,

who pursued me like sleuth-hounds, as I traversed the covert at such

speed as the narrow rides permitted. I made at length the negative

discovery that it contained nothing save myself and my followers, a

select party, consisting of the Comte de Pralines, Miss McRory, Miss

Bobbie Bennett, Lady Knox's coachman on a three-year-old, and a little

boy in knickerbockers, on a midget pony with the bearing of a war-horse

and a soul to match. We had come to a baffled pause at the cross-ways,

when faint and far away, an indisputable holloa was borne to us.

"They've gone out the West Gate," said the coachman, from among the

tree-trunks into which he had considerately manoeuvred the kicking end

of the three-year-old. "It must be they ran him straight out into the

country----"

We made for the West Gate, reached it without sight or sound of Flurry

or anyone else, and, on the farm road outside it, pulled up to listen.

The holloa was repeated; half a mile ahead a gesticulating figure

signalled to us to come on. I wish to put it on record that I said I

could not hear the hounds. The Comte de Pralines (excitable, like all

Frenchmen) spurred his hireling at the opposite bank, saying, as he

shot past me:

"It's no damned use humbugging here any longer!"

As I turned Daniel to follow him, my eyes met those of Miss Larkie

McRory, alight with infernal intelligence; they challenged, but at the

same time they offered confederacy. I jumped into the field after the

Count; Miss McRory followed.

"I'll tell Lady Knox on you!" she murmured, as she pounded beside me on

the long-legged spectre, who, it may be remembered, had been described

as "the latther end of a car-horse."

The holloa had come to us from the side of a smooth green hill, and

between us and it was a shallow valley, neatly fenced with banks that

did credit to Sir Valentine Knox's farming. The horses were fresh, the

valley smiled in the conventional way, and spread sleek pastures before

us; we took the down grade at a cheerful pace, and the banks a shade

faster than was orthodox, and the coachman's three-year-old made up in

enthusiasm what he lacked in skill, and the pony, who from the first

was running away, got over everything by methods known only to itself.

The Comte de Pralines held an undeviating line for the spot whence the

holloa had proceeded; when we reached it there was no one to be seen,

but there was another holloa further on. The pursuit of this took us

on to a road, and here the Castle Knox coachman, who had scouted on

ahead, yelled something to the effect that he saw a rider out before

him, accompanying the statement by an application of the spurs to the

dripping but undaunted three-year-old. A stretching gallop up the road

ensued, headed by the little boy and the coachman, who had both secured

a commanding lead. The pace held for about a hundred yards, when the

road bent sharply to the left, more sharply indeed than was anticipated

by the leaders, who, as their mounts skidded as it were on one wheel

round the corner, sailed from their saddles with singular unanimity and

landed in the ditch. At the same moment the rider we had been

following came into view; he was a priest, in immaculate black coat and

top-hat, seated on a tall chestnut horse, and proceeding at a tranquil

footpace on his own affairs.

He had seen the fox, he admitted (I am inclined to think he had headed

him), and he had heard a man shouting, but no hounds had come his way.

He was entirely sympathetic, and, warm as I was at the moment, a chill

apprehension warned me that we might presently need sympathy.

"It's my belief," said Miss Bennett, voicing that which I had not put

into words, "we've been riding after the fox, and the hounds didn't

leave the covert at all!"

An elaborate French oath from the Count fell, theatrical as a

drop-scene, on the close of the first act. Miss Larkie McRory looked

at him admiringly, and allowed just the last rays of her glance to

include me.

It was when we had retraced our steps to the bend of the road that we

had a full view of the Castle Knox coverts, crowning in gold and brown

those pleasant green slopes, easy as the descent to Avernus, down which

we had galloped with such generous ardour some fifteen minutes ago.

Outside the West Gate, through which we had emerged from the demesne,

were three motionless figures in scarlet; Lady Knox and her grey horse

were also recognisable; a few hounds were straying undecidedly in the

first of the grass fields that we had traversed.

A note of the horn leaped to us across the valley, an angry and

peremptory note. One of the scarlet figures started at a canter and

turned the hounds. Another and longer blast followed. As if in

obedience to its summoning, the coachman's three-year-old came ramping,

riderless, down the road; he passed us with his head high in air and

his flashing eye fixed upon the distant group, and, with a long shrill

neigh, put his tail over his back and directed his flight for his owner

and her grey horse.

"God help poor Tierney!" said Miss Bennett, in a stricken voice, "and

ourselves too! I believe they saw us all the time, and we galloping

away on the line of the fox!"

"I'm going home," I said. "Will you kindly make my apologies to the

Master?"

"I'll kindly do no such thing," replied Miss Bennett. "I'll let Flurry

Knox cool off a bit before I meet him again, and that won't be this

side of Christmas, if _I_ can help it! Good-bye, dear friends!"

She turned her mare, and set her face for her own country.

There now remained only the Count, Miss McRory, and myself, and to

remove ourselves from the field of vision of the party at the gate was

our first care. We had, no doubt, been thoroughly identified,

nevertheless the immediate sensation of getting a furzy hill between us

and Flurry was akin to that of escaping from the rays of a

burning-glass. In shelter we paused and surveyed each other.

The Comte de Pralines, with his shiny hat very much on the back of his

head, put down his reins, shoved his crop under his knee, and got out

his cigarette case.

"Well," he began philosophically, striking a match, "our luck ain't

in----!"

He broke off, the match went out, and a lively glow suffused his

unsheltered countenance.

"_Vous voyez mon cher--_" he resumed, very rapidly. "_J'ai appris

quelques petits mots----_"

"What a lovely English accent he has!" interrupted Miss McRory

rapturously; "it's a lot nicer than his French one. To look at him

you'd never think he was so clever. It's a pity he wouldn't try to

pick up a little more."

"Now, that's hitting a man when he's down," said the Comte de Pralines.

"I want some one to be kind to me. I've had a poor day of it; no one

would talk to me. I stampeded them wherever I went."

"I didn't notice Miss McRory stampeding to any great extent," I said.

"Wait awhile!" rejoined Miss McRory. "Maybe the stampeding will be

going the other way when you and he meet Lady Knox!"

"I shan't wait an instant," said the Comte de Pralines, "you and Major

Yeates will explain."

The horses had been moving on, and the covert was again in sight, about

a quarter of a mile away on our left. There was nothing to be seen,

but hounds were hunting again in the demesne; their cry drove on

through the woods inside the grey demesne wall; they were hunting in a

body, and they were hunting hard.

At each moment the cry was becoming more remote, but it was still

travelling on inside the wall. The fear of Flurry fell from us as a

garment, and the only question that presented itself was whether to

return to the West Gate or to hold on outside. It was a long-accepted

theory at Castle Knox that the demesne wall was not negotiable, and

that the foxes always used the gates, like Christians; bearing this in

mind, I counselled the Front Gate and the outside of the wall. A

couple of lanes favoured us; we presently found ourselves in a series

of marshy fields, moving along abreast of the invisible hounds in the

wood. They were in the thickest and least accessible part of it, and

Flurry's voice and horn came faintly as from a distance.

I explained that it was impossible to ride that part of the wood, but

that, if they held on as they were going, the Front Gate would make it

all right for us, and of course Flurry would----

"Oh! look, look, look!" shrieked Miss McRory, snatching at my arm and

pointing with her whip.

A short way ahead of us a huge elm tree had fallen upon the wall; the

greenish-yellow leaves still clinging to its branches showed that the

catastrophe was recent. It had broken down the wall to within five or

six feet of the ground, and was reclining in the breach that it had

made, with its branches sprawling in the field. I followed the line of

Miss Larkie's whip, and was just in time to see a fox float like a red

leaf from one of these to the ground, and glide straight across our

front. He passed out of sight over a bank, and the Count stood up in

his stirrups, put his finger in his ear, and screamed in a way that

must have been heard in the next county. I contributed a not

ineffective bellow, and Miss McRory decorated the occasion with long

thin squeals.

The hounds, inside the wall, answered in an agony that was only allayed

by the discovery that the trunk of the tree formed as handy a bridge

for them as for the fox. They came dropping like ripe fruit through

the branches, and, under our rejoicing eyes, swarmed to the fox's line,

and flung on, in the fullest of full-cry, over the bank on which we had

last seen him. I have not failed to assure Flurry Knox that anything

less suggestive of "sneaking away with the hounds" than the manner of

our departure could hardly be conceived, but Mr. Knox has not withdrawn

the phrase.

It may be conceded that Flurry had grounds for annoyance. Had I had

the fox in one hand and the Ordnance Map in the other, I could hardly

have improved on the course steered by our pilot. Up hill for a bit,

when the horses were fresh, with gradients just steep enough to temper

Daniel's well-sustained tug of war, yet not so steep as to make a

three-foot bank look like a house, or to guarantee a big knee at each

"stone gap." Then high and dry country, with sheep huddled in

defensive positions in the corners of the fields, and grass like a

series of putting-greens, minus the holes, and fat, comely banks, and

thin walls, from which the small round stones rattled harmlessly as

Miss McRory's car-horse swept through them. Down into a long valley,

with little sky-blue lakes, set in yellow sedge; and there was a

helpful bog road there, that nicked nicely with the bending line of the

hounds through the accompanying bog, and allayed a spasm of acute

anxiety as to whether we should ever get near them again. Then upwards

once more, deviously, through rougher going, with patches of

low-growing furze sprouting from blackened tracts where the hillside

had been set on fire, with the hounds coming to their noses among

brakes of briars and bracken; finally, in the wind and sun of the

hill-top, a well-timed check.

We looked back for the first time, half in fear that we might find

Flurry hot on our track, half in hope that he and his horn were coming

to our help; but neither in the green country nor in the brown valley

was there any sign or sound of him. There was nothing to be seen but a

couple of men standing on a fence to watch us, nothing to be heard

except cur dogs vociferating at every cottage.

"Fifteen couple on," said the Count professionally. "How many does

Knox usually have out?"

"All he's got," I said, mopping my brow.

"I don't see the two that have no hair on their backs," said Miss

McRory, whose eyes, much enhanced by the radiant carmine of her cheeks,

beamed at us through wisps and loops of hair. "I know them, they're

always scratching, the poor things!"

That Miss McRory and her steed kept, as they did, their place in what

is known to history as the Great Castle Knox Run, is a matter that I do

not pretend to explain. Some antiquarian has unearthed the fact that

the car-horse had three strains of breeding, and had twice been second

in a Point-to-Point; but I maintain that credit must be ascribed to

Miss Larkie, about whom there is something inevitable; some street-boy

quality of being in the movement.

We were now on a heathery table-land, with patches of splashy, rushy

ground, from which the snipe flickered out as the hounds cast

themselves through it. Presently, on the top of a hard, peaty bank, a

hound spoke, hesitatingly, yet hopefully, and plunged down on the other

side; the pack crowded over, and drove on through the heather. Daniel

changed feet on a mat of ling with a large stone in it, and therefrom

ramped carefully out over a deep cut in the peat, unforeseen, and

masked by tufts of heather. The hireling of the Comte de Pralines had,

up to this, done his work blamelessly, if without originality; he had

an anxiousness to oblige that had been matured during a dread winter

when he had been the joint property of three subalterns, but he

reserved to himself a determination to drop economically off his banks,

and boggy slits were not in his list of possibilities.

How the matter occurred I do not know, but, when I looked round, his

head alone was visible, and the Count was standing on his in the

heather. Miss McRory's car-horse, who had pulled up in the act of

following the Count, with a suddenness acquired, no doubt, in the

shafts of a Cork covered-car, was viewing the scene with horror from

the summit of the bank. The hounds were by this time clear of the

heather, and were beginning to run hard; it was not until I was on the

further side of the next bank that I cast another fleeting look back;

this time the Count was standing on his feet, but the hireling was

still engulfed, and Miss McRory was still on the wrong side of the

slit. After that I forgot them, wholly and heartlessly, as is

invariable in such cases.

As a matter of fact, I had no attention to spare for anyone but myself,

even though we went, for the first twenty minutes or so, as on rubber

tyres, through bland dairy farms wherein the sweet influences of the

dairy-cow had induced gaps in every fence, and gates into every road.

The scent, mercifully for Daniel, was not quite what it had been; the

fox had run through cattle, and also through goats (a small and odorous

party, on whose behalf, indeed, some slight intervention on my part was

required), and it was here, when crossing a road, that a donkey and her

foal, moved by some mysterious attraction akin to love at first sight,

attached themselves to me. Undeterred by the fact that the mother's

foreleg was fettered to her hind, the pair sped from field to field in

my wake; at the checks, which just then were frequent, they brayed

enthusiastically. I thought to elude them at a steep drop into a road,

but they toboganned down it without an effort; when they overtook me

the fetter-chain was broken, and clanked from the mother's hind-leg as

if she were a family ghost.

There came at length a moment, outside a farm-house, when it seemed as

if the fox had beaten us. Here, on the farther side of Castle Knox, I

was well out of my own country, and what the fox's point might be was

represented by the letter X. Nevertheless it was here that I lifted

the hounds and brought off the cast of a life-time; I am inclined to

think that he had lain down under a hayrick and was warned of our

approach by the voices of my attendant jackasses; my cast was probably

not much more of a fluke than such inspirations usually are, but the

luck was with me. Old Playboy, sole relic of my deputy Mastership,

lifted his white head and endorsed my suggestion with a single bass

note; Rally, Philippa's prize puppy, uttered a soprano cadenza, and the

pack suddenly slid away over the pasture fields, with the smoothness

and unanimity of the _Petits Chevaux_ over their green cloth.

It was now becoming for Daniel and me something of an effort to keep

our proud and lonely place in or about the next field to the hounds.

The fields were coming smaller, the gaps fewer; Daniel had no intention

of chucking it, but he gave me to understand that he meant to take the

hills on the second speed. And, unfortunately, the hills were coming.

The hounds, by this time three fences ahead, flung over a bank on the

upgrade, a bank that would give pause for reflection at the beginning

of a run. I tried back, scrambled into a lane, followed it up the

hill, with the cry of the hounds coming fainter each minute, dragged a

cart wheel and a furze bush out of a gap with my crop, found myself in

a boggy patch of turnips, surrounded by towering fuchsia hedges, and

realised that the pack had passed in music out of sight.

I stood still and looked at my watch. It was already an hour and

twenty minutes from the word "Go!" and the hounds were not only gone

but were still going. A man who has lost hounds inevitably follows the

line of least resistance. I retired from the turnip field, and

abandoned myself to the lane, which seemed not disinclined to follow

the direction in which the hounds had been heading. Since the hayrick

episode they had been running right-handed, and the lane bent

right-handed over the end of the hill, and presently deposited me on a

road. It was one of the moments when the greatness of the world is

borne in upon the wayfarer. There was a spacious view from the

hill-side; three parishes, at least, offered themselves for my

selection, and I surveyed them, solitary and remote as the evening

star, and with no more reason than it for favouring one more than

another. A harrowing, and, by this time, but too familiar cry, broke

on my ear, an undulating cry as of a thing that galloped as it roared.

My admirers were still on my trail; I gave Daniel a touch of the spurs

and trotted on to the right.

No human being was visible, but some way ahead there was a slated house

at a cross-roads; there, at all events, I could get my bearings. There

were porter-barrels outside it, and from some distance I heard two

voices, male and female, engaged in loud and ferocious argument; I had

no difficulty in diagnosing a public-house. When Daniel and I darkened

the doorway the shouting ceased abruptly, and I saw a farmer, in his

Sunday clothes, making an unsteady retreat through a door at the back

of the shop. The other disputant, a large, middle-aged woman, remained

entrenched behind the counter, and regarded me with a tranquil and

commanding eye. She informed me, as from a pulpit, that I was six

miles from Castle Knox, and with dignity, as though leaving a pulpit,

she moved from behind the counter, and advanced to the door to indicate

my road. I asked her if she had seen anything of the hounds.

"There was one of your dogs looked in the door to me a while ago," she

replied, "but he got a couple of boxes from the cat that have kittens;

I d'no what way he went. Indeed I was bothered at the time with that

poor man that came in to thank me for the compliment I paid him in

going to his sister's funeral."

I said that he certainly seemed to feel it very much. At which she

looked hard at me and said that he was on his way to a wedding, and

that it might be he had a drop taken to rise his heart. "He was after

getting a half a crown from a gentleman--a huntsman like yourself," she

added, "that was striving to get his horse out of a ditch."

"Was there a lady with him?" I asked.

"There was, faith! And the two o' them legged it away then through the

country, and they galloping like the deer!"

So, in all love, we parted; before I reached the next turning renewed

sounds of battle told me that the compliment was still being pressed

home.

My road, bending ever to the right, strolled through an untidy

nondescript country, with little bits of bog, and little lumps of hill,

and little rags of fields. I had jogged a mile or so when I saw a

hound, a few fields away to my right, poking along on what appeared to

be a line; he flopped into a boggy ditch, and scrambled from it on to a

fence. He stood there undecidedly, like any human being, reviewing the

situation, and then I saw his head and stern go up. The next moment I

also heard what he had heard, a faint and far-away note of the horn.

It came again, a long and questing call.

The road was flat and fairly straight; far away upon it something was

moving gradually into my scope of vision, something with specks of red

in it. It advanced upon me, firmly, and at a smart pace; heading it,

like the ram of a battleship, was Mr. Knox. With him, "of all his

halls had nursed," remained only the two hounds with the hairless

backs, the two who, according to Miss McRory, were always scratching.

Behind him was a small and unsmiling selection from those who, like

him, had lost the hunt. Lady Knox headed them; my wife and Bill

brought up the rear. The hound whom I had seen in the bog had preceded

me, and was now joining himself to his two comrades, putting the best

face he could upon it, with a frowning brow and his hackles up. The

comrades, in their official position of sole representatives of the

pack, received him with orthodox sternness, and though unable, for

obvious reasons, to put their hackles up, the bald places on their

backs were of an intimidating pink.

My own reception followed the same lines.

"Where are the hounds?" barked Flurry, in the awful tones of a parent

addressing a governess who, through gross neglect, has mislaid her

charges.

Before I had had time to make up my mind whether to be truculent or

pacific, there was a shout away on our left. At some little distance

up a by-road, a man was standing on a furze-plumed bank, beckoning to

us with a driving-whip. Flurry stood in his stirrups, and held up his

cap. The man yelled information that was wholly unintelligible, but

the driving-whip indicated a point beyond him, and Flurry's brown mare

jumped from a standstill to a gallop, and swung into the by-road.

The little band of followers swung after him. When Lady Knox was well

ahead, I followed, and found myself battering between high banks behind

Philippa and Bill Cunningham.

"Where's Mossoo?" my wife said breathlessly, as Daniel's head drew

level with her sandwich case. "We met the man who pulled him out of

the ditch--up in the hills there----"

"Yes, by Jove!" said Bill, "Flurry asked him if it was a Frenchman, and

the chap said, 'French or German, he had curses as good as yourself!'

I told Flurry it must have been you!"

"I don't mind Flurry, it's Lady Knox----" began Philippa.

Here we all came to a violent full-stop. Flurry's advance had been

arrested by a covered-car and horse drawn across the road; the horse

was eating grass, the driver, with the reins in his hand, was standing

with his back to us on the top of the bank from which he had hailed us,

howling plaudits, as if he were watching a race. There were distant

shouts, and barking dogs, and bellowing cattle, and blended with them

was the unmistakable baying of hounds.

I daresay that what Flurry said to the driver did him good--did Flurry

good, I mean. The car lurched to one side, and, as we squeezed past

it, we saw between its black curtains a vision of a scarlet-faced

bride, embedded in female relatives; two outside cars, driverless, and

loaded with wedding guests, were drawn up a little farther on. Flurry,

still exploding like a shell, thundered on down the lane; the high bank

ended at a gateway, he turned in, and as we crushed in after him we

were greeted by a long and piercing "Who-whoop!"

We were in a straggling field with furzy patches in it. At the farther

end of it was a crowd of country people on horses and on foot,

obviously more wedding-guests; back of all, on a road below, was a

white-washed chapel, and near it, still on the chestnut horse, was the

priest who had headed the morning fox. Close to one of the clumps of

furze the Comte de Pralines was standing, knee-deep in baying hounds,

holding the body of the fox high above his head, and uttering scream

upon scream of the most orthodox quality. He flung the fox to the

hounds, the onlookers cheered, Miss McRory, seated on the car-horse,

waved the brush above her head, and squealed at the top of her voice

something that sounded like "Yoicks!" Her hair was floating freely

down her back; a young countryman, in such sacrificial attire as

suggested the bridegroom, was running across the field with her hat in

his hand.

Flurry pulled up in silence; so did we. We were all quite outside the

picture, and we knew it.

"Oh, the finest hunt ever you see!" cried the bridegroom as he passed

us; "it was Father Dwyer seen him shnaking into the furze, the villyan!"

"Worry, worry, worry! Tear him and eat him, old fellows!" shouted the

Comte de Pralines. "Give the hounds room, can't you, you chaps! I

suppose you never saw them break up a fox before!" This to the wedding

guests, who had crowded in, horse and foot, on top of the scuffling,

growling pack.

Flurry turned an iron face upon me. His eye was no bigger than a pin's

head.

"I suppose it's from Larkie McRory he got the English?" he said; "he

learnt it quick."

"The McRorys don't speak English!" said Lady Knox, in a voice like a

north-east wind.

"_Seulement tres petit!_" Philippa murmured brazenly.

Whether Lady Knox heard her or not, I am unable to say. Her face was

averted from me, and remained as inflexible as a profile on a coin--a

Roman coin, for choice.

The faculty of not knowing when you are beaten is one that has, I

think, been lauded beyond its deserving. Napoleon the Great has

condemned manoeuvring before a fixed position, and Lady Knox was

clearly a fixed position. Accepting these tenets, I began an

unostentatious retirement, in which I was joined by Philippa. We were

nearing safety and the gate of the field, when a yearning, choking wail

came to us from the lane.

"The Bride?" queried my wife hysterically.

It was repeated; in the same instant my admirers, the jackasses, _mere

et fils_, advanced upon the scene at a delirious gallop, and, sobbing

with the ecstasy of reunion, resumed their attendance upon Daniel.

For a moment the attention of the field, including even that of the

Roman coin, was diverted from the Comte de Pralines, and was

concentrated upon our retreat.

XI

THE SHOOTING OF SHINROE

Mr. Joseph Francis M'Cabe rose stiffly from his basket chair, picked up

the cushion on which he had been seated, looked at it with animosity,

hit it hard with his fist, and, flinging it into the chair, replaced

himself upon it, with the single word:

"Flog!"

I was aware that he referred to the flock with which the cushions in

the lounge of Reardon's Hotel were stuffed.

"They have this hotel destroyed altogether with their improvements,"

went on Mr. M'Cabe between puffs, as he lit his pipe. "God be with the

time this was the old smoking-room, before they knocked it and the hall

into one and spoilt the two of them! There were fine solid chairs in

it that time, that you'd sleep in as good as your bed, but as for these

wicker affairs, I declare the wind 'd whistle through them the same as

a crow's nest." He paused, and brought his heel down heavily on the

top of the fire. "And look at that for a grate! A Well-grate they

call it,--_I'd_ say, 'Leave Well alone!' Thirty years I'm coming to

Sessions here, and putting up in this house, and in place of old Tim

telling me me own room was ready for me, there's a whipper-snapper of a

snapdragon in a glass box in the hall, asking me me name in broken

English" (it may be mentioned that this happened before the War), "and

'Had I a Cook's ticket?' and down-facing me that I must leave my key in

what he called the 'Bew-ro.'"

I said I knew of a lady who always took a Cook's ticket when she went

abroad, because when she got to Paris there would be an Englishman on

the platform to meet her, or at all events a broken Englishman.

Mr. M'Cabe softened to a temporary smile, but held on to his grievance

with the tenacity of his profession. (I don't think I have mentioned

that he is a Solicitor, of a type now, unfortunately, becoming

obsolete.) He had a long grey face, and a short grey moustache; he

dyed his hair, and his age was known to no man.

"There was one of Cook's tourists sat next me at breakfast," he

resumed, "and he asked me was I ever in Ireland before, and how long

was I in it. 'Wan day,' says I!"

"Did he believe you?" I asked.

"He did," replied Mr. M'Cabe, with something that approached compassion.

I have always found old M'Cabe a mitigating circumstance of Sessions at

Owenford, both in Court and out of it. He was a sportsman of the

ingrained variety that grows wild in Ireland, and in any of the

horse-coping cases that occasionally refresh the innermost soul of

Munster, it would be safe to assume that Mr. M'Cabe's special gifts had

ensured his being retained, generally on the shady side. He fished

when occasion served, he shot whether it did or not. He did not

exactly keep horses, but he always knew some one who was prepared to

"pass on" a thoroughly useful animal, with some infirmity so

insignificant that until you tried to dispose of him you did not

realise that he was yours, until his final passing-on to the next

world. He had certain shooting privileges in the mountains behind the

town of Owenford (bestowed, so he said, by a grateful client), and it

had often been suggested by him that he and I should anticipate some

November Sessions by a day, and spend it "on the hill." We were now in

the act of carrying out the project.

"Ah, these English," M'Cabe began again, mixing himself a glass of

whisky and water, "they'd believe anything so long as it wasn't the

truth. Talking politics these lads were, and by the time they had

their ham and eggs swallowed they had the whole country arranged. 'And

look,' says they--they were anglers, God help us!--'look at all the

money that's going to waste for want of preserving the rivers!' 'I beg

your pardon,' says I, 'there's water-bailiffs on the most of the

rivers. I was defending a man not long since, that was cot by the

water-bailiff poaching salmon on the Owen. 'And what proof have you?'

says I to the water-bailiff. 'How do you know it was a salmon at all?'

'Is it how would I know?' says the bailiff, 'didn't I gaff the fish for

him meself!'"

"What did your anglers say to that?" I enquired.

"Well, they didn't quite go so far as to tell me I was a liar," said

Mr. M'Cabe tranquilly. "Ah, telling such as them the truth is wasting

what isn't plenty! Then they'll meet some fellow that lies like a

tooth-drawer, and they'll write to the English _Times_ on the head of

him!" He stretched forth a long and bony hand for the tumbler of

whisky and water. "And talking of tooth-drawers," he went on, "there's

a dentist comes here once a fortnight, Jeffers his name is, and a great

sportsman too. I was with him to-day"--he passed his hand consciously

over his mouth, and the difference that I had dimly felt in his

appearance suddenly, and in all senses of the word, flashed upon

me--"and he was telling me how one time, in the summer that's past,

he'd been out all night, fishing in the Owen. He was going home before

the dawn, and he jumped down off a bank on to what he took to be a

white stone--and he aimed for the stone, mind you, because he thought

the ground was wet--and what was it but a man's face!" M'Cabe paused

to receive my comment. "What did he do, is it? Ran off for his life,

roaring out, 'There's a first-rate dentist in Owenford!' The fellow

was lying asleep there, and he having bundles of spurge with him to

poison the river! He had taken drink, I suppose."

"Was he a water-bailiff too?" said I. "I hope the conservators of the

river stood him a set of teeth."

"If they did," said M'Cabe, with an unexpected burst of feeling, "I

pity him!" He rose to his feet, and put his tumbler down on the

chimney-piece. "Well, we should get away early in the morning, and

it's no harm for me to go to bed."

He yawned--a large yawn that ended abruptly with a metallic click. His

eyes met mine, full of unspoken things; we parted in a silence that

seemed to have been artificially imposed upon Mr. M'Cabe.

The wind boomed intermittently in my chimney during the night, and a

far and heavy growling told of the dissatisfaction of the sea. Yet the

morning was not unfavourable. There was a broken mist, with shimmers

of sun in it, and the carman said it would be a thing of nothing, and

would go out with the tide. The Boots, a relic of the old _regime_,

was pessimistic, and mentioned that there were two stars squez up agin

the moon last night, and he would have no dependence on the day.

M'Cabe offered no opinion, being occupied in bestowing in a species of

dog-box beneath the well of the car a young red setter, kindly lent by

his friend the dentist. The setter, who had formed at sight an

unfavourable opinion of the dog-box, had resolved himself into an

invertebrate mass of jelly and lead, and was with difficulty

straightened out and rammed home into it.

"Have we all now?" said M'Cabe, slamming the door in the dog's face.

"Take care we're not like me uncle, old Tom Duffy, that was going

shooting, and was the whole morning slapping his pockets and saying,

'Me powder! me shot! me caps! me wads!' and when he got to the bog, 'O

tare an' ouns!' says he, 'I forgot the gun!'"

There are still moments when I can find some special and

not-otherwise-to-be-attained flavour in driving on an outside car; a

sense of personal achievement in sitting, by some method of instinctive

suction, the lurches and swoops peculiar to these vehicles. Reardon's

had given us its roomiest car and its best horse, a yellow mare, with a

long back and a slinging trot, and a mouth of iron.

"Where did Mr. Reardon get the mare, Jerry?" asked M'Cabe, as we

zigzagged in successive hairbreadths through the streets of Owenford.

"D-Dublin, sir," replied the driver, who, with both fists extended in

front of him and both heels planted against his narrow footboard,

seemed to find utterance difficult.

"She's a goer!" said M'Cabe.

"She is--she killed two men," said Jerry, in two jerks.

"That's a great credit to her. What way did she do it?"

"P-pulled the lungs out o' them!" ejaculated Jerry, turning the last

corner and giving the mare a shade more of her head, as a tribute,

perhaps, to her prowess.

She swung us for some six miles along the ruts of the coast road at the

same unflinching pace, after which, turning inland and uphill, we began

the climb of four miles into the mountains. It was about eleven

o'clock when we pulled up beside a long and reedy pool, high up in the

heather; the road went on, illimitably it seemed, and was lost, with

its attendant telegraph posts, in cloud.

"Away with ye now, Jerry," said M'Cabe; "we'll shoot our way home."

He opened the back of the dog-box, and summoned its occupant. The

summons was disregarded. Far back in the box two sparks of light and a

dead silence indicated the presence of the dog.

"How, snug you are in there!" said M'Cabe; "here, Jerry, pull him out

for us. What the deuce is this his name is? Jeffers told me

yesterday, and it's gone from me."

"I d'no would he bite me?" said Jerry, taking a cautious observation

and giving voice to the feelings of the party. "Here, poor fellow!

Here, good lad!"

The good lad remained immovable. The lure of a sandwich produced no

better result.

"We can't be losing our day with the brute this way," said M'Cabe.

"Tip up the car. He'll come out then, and no thanks to him."

As the shafts rose heavenwards, the law of gravitation proved too many

for the setter, and he slowly slid to earth.

"If I only knew your dam name we'd be all right now," said M'Cabe.

The carman dropped the shafts on to the mare, and drove on up the pass,

with one side of the car turned up and himself on the other. The

yellow mare had, it seemed, only begun her day's work. A prophetic

instinct, of the reliable kind that is strictly founded on fact, warned

me that we might live to regret her departure.

The dentist's setter had, at sight of the guns, realised that things

were better than he had expected, and now preceded us along the edge of

the lake with every appearance of enthusiasm. He quartered the ground

with professional zeal, he splashed through the sedge, and rattled

through thickets of dry reeds, and set successively a heron, a

water-hen, and something, unseen, that I believe to have been a

water-rat. After each of these efforts he rushed in upon his quarry,

and we called him by all the gun-dog names we had ever heard of, from

Don to Grouse, from Carlo to Shot, coupled with objurgations on a

rising scale. With none of them did we so much as vibrate a chord in

his bosom. He was a large dog, with a blunt stupid face, and a faculty

for excitement about nothing that impelled him to bound back to us as

often as possible, to gaze in our eyes in brilliant enquiry, and to

pant and prance before us with all the fatuity of youth. Had he been

able to speak, he would have asked idiotic questions, of that special

breed that exact from their victim a reply of equal imbecility.

The lake and its environs, for the first time in M'Cabe's experience,

yielded nothing; we struck up on to the mountain side, following the

course of an angry stream that came racing down from the heights. We

worked up through ling and furze, and skirted flocks of pale stones

that lay in the heather like petrified sheep, and the dog, ranging

deliriously, set water-wagtails and anything else that could fly; I

believe he would have set a blue-bottle, and I said so to M'Cabe.

"Ah, give him time; he'll settle down," said M'Cabe, who had a

thankfulness for small mercies born of a vast experience of makeshifts;

"he might fill the bag for us yet."

We laboured along the flank of the mountain, climbing in and out of

small ravines, jumping or wading streams, sloshing through yellow

sedgery bog; always with the brown heather running up to the misty

skyline, and always with the same atrocious luck. Once a small pack of

grouse got up, very wild, and leagues out of range, thanks to the

far-reaching activities of the dog, and once a hermit woodcock exploded

out of a clump of furze, and sailed away down the slope, followed by

four charges of shot and the red setter, in equally innocuous pursuit.

And this, up to luncheon time, was the sum of the morning's sport.

We ate our sandwiches on a high ridge, under the lee of a tumbled pile

of boulders, that looked as if they had been about to hurl themselves

into the valley, and had thought better of it at the last moment.

Between the looming, elephant-grey mountains the mist yielded glimpses

of the far greenness of the sea, the only green thing in sight in this

world of grey and brown. The dog sat opposite to me, and willed me to

share my food with him. His steady eyes were charged with the

implication that I was a glutton; personally I abhorred him, yet I

found it impossible to give him less than twenty-five per cent. of my

sandwiches.

"I wonder did Jeffers take him for a bad debt," said M'Cabe

reflectively, as he lit his pipe.

I said I should rather take my chance with the bad debt.

"He might have treated me better," M'Cabe grumbled on, "seeing that I

paid him seven pound ten the day before yesterday, let alone that it

was me that was the first to put him up to this--this bit of Shinroe

Mountain that never was what you might call strictly preserved. When

he came here first he didn't as much as know what cartridges he'd want

for it. 'Six and eight,' says I, 'that's a lawyer's fee, so if you

think of me you'll not forget it!' And now, if ye please," went on Mr.

Jeffers' preceptor in sport, "he's shooting the whole country and

selling all he gets! And he wouldn't as much as ask me to go with him;

and the excuse he gives, he wouldn't like to have an old hand like me

connyshooring his shots! How modest he is!"

I taunted M'Cabe with having been weak enough thus to cede his rights,

and M'Cabe, who was not at all amused, said that after all it wasn't so

much Jeffers that did the harm, but an infernal English Syndicate that

had taken the Shinroe shooting this season, and paid old Purcell that

owned it ten times what it was worth.

"It might be as good for us to get off their ground now," continued

M'Cabe, rising slowly to his feet, "and try the Lackagreina Valley.

The stream below is their bounds."

This, I hasten to say, was the first I had heard of the Syndicate, and

I thought it tactless of M'Cabe to have mentioned it, even though the

wrong that we had done them was purely technical. I said to him that I

thought the sooner we got off their ground the better, and we descended

the hill and crossed the stream, and M'Cabe said that he could always

shoot this next stretch of country when he liked. With this assurance,

we turned our backs on the sea and struck inland, tramping for an hour

or more through country whose entire barrenness could only be explained

on the hypothesis that it has been turned inside out to dry. So far it

had failed to achieve even this result.

The weather got thicker, and the sport, if possible, thinner; I had

long since lost what bearings I possessed, but M'Cabe said he knew of a

nice patch of scrub in the next valley that always held a cock. The

next valley came at last, not without considerable effort, but no patch

of scrub was apparent. Some small black and grey cattle stood and

looked at us, and a young bull showed an inclination to stalk the dog;

it seemed the only sport the valley was likely to afford. M'Cabe

looked round him, and looked at his watch, and looked at the sky, which

did not seem to be more than a yard above our heads, and said without

emotion:

"Did ye think of telling the lad in the glass box in the hall that we

might want some dinner kept hot for us? I d'no from Adam where we've

got to!"

There was a cattle track along the side of the valley which might,

though not necessarily, lead somewhere. We pursued it, and found that

it led, in the first instance, to some blackfaced mountain sheep. A

cheerful interlude followed, in which the red setter hunted the sheep,

and we hunted the setter, and what M'Cabe said about the dentist in the

intervals of the chase was more appropriate to the occasion than to

these pages.

When justice had been satiated, and the last echo of the last yell of

the dog had trembled into silence among the hills, we resumed the

cattle-track, which had become a shade more reliable, and, as we

proceeded, began to give an impression that it might lead somewhere.

The day was dying in threatening stillness. Lethargic layers of mist

bulged low, like the roof of a marquee, and cloaked every outline that

could yield us information. The dog, unchastened by recent events, and

full of an idiot optimism, continued to range the hillside.

"I suppose I'll never get the chance to tell Jeffers my opinion of that

tom-fool," said M'Cabe, following with an eye of steel the

perambulations of the dog; "the best barrister that ever wore a wig

couldn't argue with a dentist! He has his fist half way down your

throat before you can open your mouth; and in any case he'll tell me we

couldn't expect any dog would work for us when we forgot his name.

What's the brute at now?"

The brute was high above us on the hillside, setting a solitary furze

bush with convincing determination, and casting backward looks to see

if he were being supported.

"It might be a hare," said M'Cabe, cocking his gun, with a revival of

hope that was almost pathetic, and ascending towards the furze bush.

I neither quickened my pace nor deviated from the cattle track, but I

may admit that I did so far yield to the theory of the hare as to slip

a cartridge into my gun.

M'Cabe put his gun to his shoulder, lowered it abruptly, and walked up

to the furze bush. He stooped and picked up something.

"He's not such a fool after all!" he called out; "ye said he'd set a

blue-bottle, and b' Jove ye weren't far out!"

He held up a black object that was neither bird nor beast.

I took the cartridge out of my gun as unobtrusively as possible, and

M'Cabe and the dog rejoined me with the product of the day's sport. It

was a flat-sided bottle, high shouldered, with a short neck; M'Cabe

extracted the cork and took a sniff.

"Mountain dew no less!" (Mr. M'Cabe adhered faithfully to the stock

phrases of his youth.) "This never paid the King a shilling! Give me

the cup off your flask, Major, till we see what sort it is."

It was pretty rank, and even that seasoned vessel, old M'Cabe, admitted

that it might be drinkable in another couple of years, but hardly in

less; yet as it ran, a rivulet of fire, through my system, it seemed to

me that even the water in my boots became less chill.

"In the public interest we're bound to remove it," said M'Cabe, putting

the bottle into his game bag; "any man that drank enough of that 'd rob

a church! Well, anyway, we're not the only people travelling this

path," he continued; "whoever put his afternoon tea to hide there will

choose a less fashionable promenade next time. But indeed the poor man

couldn't be blamed for not knowing such a universal genius of a dog was

coming this way! Didn't I tell you he'd fill the bag for us!"

He extracted from his pockets a pair of knitted gloves, and put them

on; it was equivalent to putting up the shutters.

It was shortly after this that we regained touch with civilisation.

Above the profile of a hill a telegraph post suddenly showed itself

against the grey of the misty twilight. We made as bee-like a line for

it as the nature of the ground permitted, and found ourselves on a

narrow road, at a point where it was in the act of making a hairpin

turn before plunging into a valley.

"The Beacon Bay road, begad!" said M'Cabe; "I didn't think we were so

far out of our way. Let me see now, which way is this we'd best go."

He stood still and looked round him, taking his bearings; in the

solitude the telegraph posts hummed to each other, full of information

and entirely reticent.

The position was worse than I thought. By descending into the valley

we should, a couple or three miles farther on, strike the coast road

about six miles from home; by ascending the hill and walking four

miles, we should arrive at the station of Coppeen Road, and, with luck,

there intercept the evening train for Owenford.

"And that's the best of our play, but we'll have to step out,"

concluded M'Cabe, shortening the strap of his game-bag, and settling it

on his back.

"If I were you," I said, "I'd chuck that stuff away. Apart from

anything else, it's about half a ton extra to carry."

"There's many a thing, Major, that you might do that I might not do,"

returned M'Cabe with solemnity, "and in the contrairy sense the

statement is equally valid."

He faced the hill with humped shoulders, and fell with no more words

into his poacher's stride, and I followed him with the best imitation

of it that I could put up after at least six hours of heavy going.

M'Cabe is fifteen years older than I am, and I hope that when I am his

age I shall have more consideration than he for those who are younger

than myself.

It was now nearly half-past five o'clock, and by the time we had

covered a mile of puddles and broken stones it was too dark to see

which was which. I felt considerable dubiety about catching the train

at Coppeen Road, all the more that it was a flag station, demanding an

extra five minutes in hand. Probably the engine-driver had long since

abandoned any expectation of passengers at Coppeen Road, and, if he

even noticed the signal, would treat it as a practical joke. It was

after another quarter of an hour's trudge that a distant sound entered

into the silence that had fallen upon M'Cabe and me, an intermittent

grating of wheels upon patches of broken stone, a steady hammer of

hoofs.

M'Cabe halted.

"That car's bound to be going to Owenford," he said; "I wonder could

they give us a lift."

A single light (the economical habit of the South of Ireland) began to

split the foggy darkness.

"Begad, that's like the go of Reardon's mare!" said M'Cabe, as the

light swung down upon us.

We held the road like highwaymen, we called upon the unseen driver to

stop, and he answered to the name of Jerry. This is not a proof of

identity in a province where every third man is dignified by the name

of Jeremiah, but as the car pulled up it was Reardon's yellow mare on

which the lamplight fell, and we knew that the fates had relented.

We should certainly not catch the train at Coppeen Road, Jerry assured

us; "she had," he said, "a fashion of running early on Monday nights,

and in any case if you'd want to catch that thrain, you should make

like an amber-bush for her."

We agreed that it was too late for the preparation of an ambush.

"If the Sergeant had no objections," continued Jerry, progressing

smoothly towards the tip that would finally be his, "it would be no

trouble at all to oblige the gentlemen. Sure it's the big car I have,

and it's often I took six, yes, and seven on it, going to the races."

I was now aware of two helmeted presences on the car, and a decorous

voice said that the gentlemen were welcome to a side of the car if they

liked.

"Is that Sergeant Leonard?" asked M'Cabe, who knew every policeman in

the country. "Well, Sergeant, you've a knack of being on the spot when

you're wanted!"

"And sometimes when he's not!" said I.

There was a third and unhelmeted presence on the car, and something of

stillness and aloofness in it had led me to diagnose a prisoner.

The suggested dispositions were accomplished. The two policemen and

the prisoner wedged themselves on one side of the car, M'Cabe and I

mounted the other, and put the dog on the cushion of the well behind us

(his late quarters in the dog-box being occupied by half a mountain

sheep, destined for the hotel larder). The yellow mare went gallantly

up to her collar, regardless of her augmented load; M'Cabe and the

Sergeant leaned to each other across the back of the car, and fell into

profound and low-toned converse; I smoked, and the dog, propping his

wet back against mine, made friends with the prisoner. It may be the

Irish blood in me that is responsible for the illicit sympathy with a

prisoner that sometimes incommodes me; I certainly bestowed some of it

upon the captive, sandwiched between two stalwarts of the R.I.C., and

learning that the strong arm of the Law was a trifle compared with the

rest of its person.

"What sport had you, Major?" enquired Jerry, as we slackened speed at a

hill.

I was sitting at the top of the car, under his elbow, and he probably

thought that I was feeling neglected during the heart-to-heart

confidences of M'Cabe and the Sergeant.

"Not a feather," I replied.

"Sure the birds couldn't be in it this weather," said Jerry

considerately; he had in his time condoled with many sportsmen. "I'm

after talking to a man in Coppeen Road station, that was carrying the

game bag for them gentlemen that has Mr. Purcell's shooting on Shinroe

Mountain, and what had the four o' them after the day--only one

jack-snipe!"

"They went one better than we did," I said, but, as was intended, I

felt cheered--"what day were they there?"

"To-day, sure!" answered Jerry, with faint surprise, "and they hadn't

their luncheon hardly ate when they met one on the mountain that told

them he seen two fellas walking it, with guns and a dog, no more than

an hour before them. 'That'll do!' says they, and they turned about

and back with them to Coppeen Road to tell the police."

"Did they see the fellows?" I asked lightly, after a panic-stricken

pause.

"They did not. Sure they said if they seen them, they'd shoot them

like rooks," replied Jerry, "and they would too. It's what the man was

saying if they cot them lads to-day they'd have left them in the way

they'd be given up by both doctor and priest! Oh, they're fierce

altogether!"

I received this information in a silence that was filled to bursting

with the desire to strangle M'Cabe.

Jerry leaned over my shoulder, and lowered his voice.

"They were saying in Coppeen Road that there was a gentleman that came

on a mothor-bike this morning early, and he had Shinroe shot out by ten

o'clock, and on with him then up the country; and it isn't the first

time he was in it. It's a pity those gentlemen couldn't ketch _him_!

_They'd_ mothor-bike him!"

It was apparent that the poaching of the motor-bicycle upon the

legitimate preserves of carmen was responsible for this remarkable

sympathy with the law; I, at all events, had it to my credit that I had

not gone poaching on a motor-bicycle.

Just here M'Cabe emerged from the heart-to-heart, and nudged me in the

ribs with a confederate elbow. I did not respond, being in no mood for

confederacy, certainly not with M'Cabe.

"The Sergeant is after telling me this prisoner he has here is

prosecuted at the instance of that Syndicate I was telling you about,"

he whispered hoarsely in my ear, "for hunting Shinroe with greyhounds.

He was cited to appear last week, and he didn't turn up; he'll be

before you to-morrow. I hope the Bench will have a fellow-feeling for

a fellow-creature!"

The whisper ended in the wheezy cough that was Mr. M'Cabe's equivalent

for a laugh. It was very close to my ear, and it had somewhere in it

the metallic click that I had noticed before.

I grunted forbiddingly, and turned my back upon M'Cabe, as far as it is

possible to do so on an outside car, and we hammered on through the

darkness. Once the solitary lamp illumined the prolonged countenance

of a donkey, and once or twice we came upon a party of sheep lying on

the road; they melted into the night at the minatory whistle that is

dedicated to sheep, and on each of these occasions the dentist's dog

was shaken by strong shudders, and made a convulsive attempt to spring

from the car in pursuit. We were making good travelling on a long

down-grade, a smell of sea-weed was in the mist, and a salt taste was

on my lips. It was very cold; I had no overcoat, my boots had plumbed

the depths of many bogholes, and I found myself shivering like the dog.

It was at this point that I felt M'Cabe fumbling at his game-bag, that

lay between us on the seat. By dint of a sympathy that I would have

died rather than betray, I divined that he was going to tap that fount

of contraband fire that he owed to the dentist's dog. It was,

apparently, a matter of some difficulty; I felt him groping and tugging

at the straps.

I said to myself, waveringly: "Old blackguard! I won't touch it if he

offers it to me."

M'Cabe went on fumbling:

"Damn these woolly gloves! I can't do a hand's turn with them."

In the dark I could not see what followed, but I felt him raise his

arm. There was a jerk, followed by a howl.

"Hold on!" roared M'Cabe, with a new and strange utterance, "Thtop the

horth! I've dropped me teeth!"

The driver did his best, but with the push of the hill behind her the

mare took some stopping.

"Oh, murder! oh, murder!" wailed M'Cabe, lisping thickly, "I pulled

them out o' me head with the glove, trying to get it off!" He scrambled

off the car. "Give me the lamp! Me lovely new teeth----"

I detached the lamp from its socket with all speed, and handed it to

M'Cabe, who hurried back on our tracks. From motives of delicacy I

remained on the car, as did also the rest of the party. A minute or

two passed in awed silence, while the patch of light went to and fro on

the dark road. It seemed an intrusion to offer assistance, and an

uncertainty as to whether to allude to the loss as "them," or "it,"

made enquiries a difficulty.

"For goodneth'ake have none o' ye any matcheth, that ye couldn't come

and help me?" demanded the voice of M'Cabe, in indignation blurred

pathetically by his gosling-like lisp.

I went to his assistance, and refrained with an effort from suggesting

the employment of that all-accomplished setter, the dentist's dog, in

the search; it was not the moment for pleasantry. Not yet.

We crept along, bent double, like gorillas; the long strips of broken

stones yielded nothing, the long puddles between them were examined in

vain.

"What the dooth will I do to-morrow?" raged M'Cabe, pawing in the

heather at the road's edge. "How can I plead when I haven't a blathted

tooth in me head?"

"I'll give you half a crown this minute, M'Cabe," said I brutally, "if

you'll say 'Sessions'!"

Here the Sergeant joined us, striking matches as he came. He worked

his way into the sphere of the car-lamp, he was most painstaking and

sympathetic, and his oblique allusions to the object of the search were

a miracle of tact.

"I see something white beyond you, Mr. M'Cabe,"' he said respectfully,

"might that be them?"

M'Cabe swung the lamp as indicated.

"No, it might not. It's a pebble," he replied, with pardonable

irascibility.

Silence followed, and we worked our way up the hill.

"What's that, sir?" ventured the Sergeant, with some excitement,

stopping again and pointing. "I think I see the gleam of the gold!"

"Ah, nonthenth, man! They're vulcanite!" snapped M'Cabe, more

irascibly than ever.

The word nonsense was a disastrous effort, and I withdrew into the

darkness to enjoy it.

"What colour might vulcanite be, sir?" murmured a voice beside me.

Jerry had joined the search-party; he lighted, as he spoke, an inch of

candle. On hearing my explanation he remarked that it was a bad

chance, and at the same instant the inch of candle slipped from his

fingers and fell into a puddle.

"Divil mend ye for a candle! Have ye a match, sir? I haven't a one

left!"

As it happened, I had no matches, my only means of making a light being

a patent tinder-box.

"Have you a match there?" I called out to the invisible occupants of

the car, which was about fifteen or twenty yards away, advancing

towards it as I spoke. The constable politely jumped off and came to

meet me.

As he was in the act of handing me his match-box, the car drove away

down the hill.

I state the fact with the bald simplicity that is appropriate to great

disaster. To be exact, the yellow mare sprang from inaction into a

gallop, as if she had been stung by a wasp, and had a start of at least

fifty yards before either the carman or the constable could get under

weigh. The carman, uttering shrill and menacing whistles, led the

chase, the constable, though badly hampered by his greatcoat, was a

good second, and the Sergeant, making the best of a bad start, followed

them into the night.

The yellow mare's head was for home, and her load was on its own legs

on the road behind her; hysterical yelps from the dentist's dog

indicated that he also was on his own legs, and was, in all human

probability, jumping at the mare's nose. As the rapturous beat of her

hoofs died away on the down-grade, I recalled the assertion that she

had pulled the lungs out of two men, and it seemed to me that the

prisoner had caught the psychological moment on the hop.

"They'll not ketch him," said M'Cabe, with the flat calm of a broken

man, "not to-night anyway. Nor for a week maybe. He'll take to the

mountains."

The silence of the hills closed in upon us, and we were left in our

original position, plus the lamp of the car, and minus our guns, the

dentist's dog, and M'Cabe's teeth.

Far, far away, from the direction of Coppeen Road, that sinister

outpost, where evil rumours were launched, and the night trains were

waylaid by the amber-bushes, a steady tapping sound advanced towards

us. Over the crest of the hill, a quarter of a mile away, a blazing

and many-pointed star sprang into being, and bore down upon us. "A

motor-bike!" ejaculated M'Cabe. "Take the light and thtop him--he

wouldn't know what I wath thaying--if he ran over them they're done

for! For the love o' Merthy tell him to keep the left thide of the

road!"

I took the lamp, and ran towards the bicyclist, waving it as I ran.

The star, now a moon of acetylene ferocity, slackened speed, and a

voice behind it said:

"What's up?"

I stated the case with telegraphic brevity, and the motor-bicycle slid

slowly past me. Its rider had a gun slung across his back, my lamp

revealed a crammed game-bag on the carrier behind him.

"Sorry I can't assist you," he called back to me, keeping carefully at

the left-hand side of the road, "but I have an appointment." Then, as

an afterthought, "There's a first-rate dentist in Owenford!"

The red eye of the tail light glowed a farewell and passed on, like all

the rest, into the night.

I rejoined M'Cabe.

He clutched my arm, and shook it.

"That wath Jefferth! _Jefferth_, I tell ye! The dirty poacher! And

hith bag full of our birdth!"

It was not till the lamp went out, which it did some ten minutes

afterwards, that I drew M 'Cabe from the scene of his loss, gently, as

one deals with the bereaved, and faced with him the six-mile walk to

Owenford.

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_BY THE SAME AUTHORS_

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