I resisted a strong disposition to shake Miss Bennett by the hand.

"I can't wait," she continued. "I made my mother drive back a

mile--she doesn't know a thing about it--I said I'd left my purse in

the cloak-room. Good-night! Don't tell a soul but Flurry!"

She was off, and upon my incapable shoulders rested the responsibility

of the enterprise.

It was past four o'clock, and the last bars of the last waltz were

being played. At the bar a knot of men, with Flurry in their midst,

were tossing "Odd man out" for a bottle of champagne. Flurry was not

in the least drunk, a circumstance worthy of remark in his present

company, and I got him out into the hall and unfolded my tidings. The

light of battle lit in his eye as he listened.

"I knew by Tomsy he was shaping for mischief," he said coolly; "he's

taken as much liquor as'd stiffen a tinker, and he's only half-drunk

this minute. Hold on till I get Jerome Hickey and Charlie

Knox--they're sober; I'll be back in a minute."

I was not present at the council of war thus hurriedly convened; I was

merely informed when they returned that we were all to "hurry on." My

best evening pumps have never recovered the subsequent proceedings.

They, with my swelled and aching feet inside them, were raced down one

filthy lane after another, until, somewhere on the outskirts of

Drumcurran, Flurry pushed open the gate of a yard and went in. It was

nearly five o'clock on that raw December morning; low down in the sky a

hazy moon shed a diffused light; all the surrounding houses were still

and dark. At our footsteps an angry bark or two came from inside the

stable.

"Whisht!" said Flurry, "I'll say a word to them before I open the door."

At his voice a chorus of hysterical welcome arose; without more delay

he flung open the stable door, and instantly we were all knee-deep in a

rush of hounds. There was not a moment lost. Flurry started at a

quick run out of the yard with the whole pack pattering at his heels.

Charley Knox vanished; Dr. Hickey and I followed the hounds, splashing

into puddles and hobbling over patches of broken stones, till we left

the town behind and hedges arose on either hand.

"Here's the house!" said Flurry, stopping short at a low entrance gate;

"many's the time I've been here when his father had it; it'll be a

queer thing if I can't find a window I can manage, and the old cook he

has is as deaf as the dead."

He and Doctor Hickey went in at the gate with the hounds; I hesitated

ignobly in the mud.

"This isn't an R.M.'s job," said Flurry in a whisper, closing the gate

in my face; "you'd best keep clear of house-breaking."

I accepted his advice, but I may admit that before I turned for home a

sash was gently raised, a light had sprung up in one of the lower

windows, and I heard Flurry's voice saying, "Over, over, over!" to his

hounds.

There seemed to me to be no interval at all between these events and

the moment when I woke in bright sunlight to find Dr. Hickey standing

by my bedside in a red coat with a tall glass in his hand.

"It's nine o'clock," he said. "I'm just after waking Flurry Knox.

There wasn't one stirring in the hotel till I went down and pulled the

'boots' from under the kitchen table! It's well for us the meet's in

the town; and, by-the-bye, your grey horse has four legs on him the

size of bolsters this morning; he won't be fit to go out, I'm afraid.

Drink this anyway, you're in the want of it."

Dr. Hickey's eyelids were rather pink, but his hand was as steady as a

rock. The whisky-and-soda was singularly untempting.

"What happened last night?" I asked eagerly as I gulped it.

"Oh, it all went off very nicely, thank you," said Hickey, twisting his

black beard to a point. "We benched as many of the hounds in Flood's

bed as'd fit, and we shut the lot into the room. We had them just

comfortable when we heard his latchkey below at the door." He broke

off and began to snigger.

"Well?" I said, sitting bolt upright.

"Well, he got in at last, and he lit a candle then. That took him five

minutes. He was pretty tight. We were looking at him over the

banisters until he started to come up, and according as he came up, we

went on up the top flight. He stood admiring his candle for a while on

the landing, and we wondered he didn't hear the hounds snuffing under

the door. He opened it then, and, on the minute, three of them bolted

out between his legs." Dr. Hickey again paused to indulge in

Mephistophelian laughter. "Well, you know," he went on, "when a man in

poor Tomsy's condition sees six dogs jumping out of his bed he's apt to

make a wrong diagnosis. He gave a roar, and pitched the candlestick at

them, and ran for his life downstairs, and all the hounds after him.

'Gone away!' screeches that devil Flurry, pelting downstairs on top of

them in the dark. I believe I screeched too."

"Good heavens!" I gasped, "I was well out of that!"

"Well, you were," admitted the Doctor. "However, Tomsy bested them in

the dark, and he got to ground in the pantry. I heard the cups and

saucers go as he slammed the door on the hounds' noses, and the minute

he was in Flurry turned the key on him. 'They're real dogs, Tomsy, my

buck!' says Flurry, just to quiet him; and there we left him."

"Was he hurt?" I asked, conscious of the triviality of the question.

"Well, he lost his brush," replied Dr. Hickey. "Old Merrylegs tore the

coat-tails off him; we got them on the floor when we struck a light;

Flurry has them to nail on his kennel door. Charley Knox had a

pleasant time too," he went on, "with the man that brought the

barrow-load of meat to the stable. We picked out the tastiest bits and

arranged them round Flood's breakfast table for him. They smelt very

nice. Well, I'm delaying you with my talking----"

Flurry's hounds had the run of the season that day. I saw it admirably

throughout--from Miss Bennett's pony cart. She drove extremely well,

in spite of her strained arm.

III

TRINKET'S COLT

It was Petty Sessions day in Skebawn, a cold, grey day of February. A

case of trespass had dragged its burden of cross summonses and cross

swearing far into the afternoon, and when I left the bench my head was

singing from the bellowings of the attorneys, and the smell of their

clients was heavy upon my palate.

The streets still testified to the fact that it was market day, and I

evaded with difficulty the sinuous course of carts full of soddenly

screwed people, and steered an equally devious one for myself among the

groups anchored round the doors of the public-houses. Skebawn

possesses, among its legion of public-houses, one establishment which

timorously, and almost imperceptibly, proffers tea to the thirsty. I

turned in there, as was my custom on court days, and found the little

dingy den, known as the Ladies' Coffee-Room, in the occupancy of my

friend Mr. Florence McCarthy Knox, who was drinking strong tea and

eating buns with serious simplicity. It was a first and quite

unexpected glimpse of that domesticity that has now become a marked

feature in his character.

"You're the very man I wanted to see," I said as I sat down beside him

at the oilcloth-covered table; "a man I know in England who is not much

of a judge of character has asked me to buy him a four-year-old down

here, and as I should rather be stuck by a friend than a dealer, I wish

you'd take over the job."

Flurry poured himself out another cup of tea, and dropped three lumps

of sugar into it in silence.

Finally he said, "There isn't a four-year-old in this country that I'd

be seen dead with at a pig fair."

This was discouraging, from the premier authority on horse-flesh in the

district.

"But it isn't six weeks since you told me you had the finest filly in

your stables that was ever foaled in the County Cork," I protested:

"what's wrong with her?"

"Oh, is it that filly?" said Mr. Knox with a lenient smile; "she's gone

these three weeks from me. I swapped her and £6 for a three-year-old

Ironmonger colt, and after that I swapped the colt and £19 for that

Bandon horse I rode last week at your place, and after that again I

sold the Bandon horse for £75 to old Welply, and I had to give him back

a couple of sovereigns luck-money. You see I did pretty well with the

filly after all."

"Yes, yes--oh rather," I assented, as one dizzily accepts the

propositions of a bimetallist; "and you don't know of anything

else----?"

The room in which we were seated was closely screened from the shop by

a door with a muslin-curtained window in it; several of the panes were

broken, and at this juncture two voices that had for some time carried

on a discussion forced themselves upon our attention.

"Begging your pardon for contradicting you, ma'am," said the voice of

Mrs. McDonald, proprietress of the tea-shop, and a leading light in

Skebawn Dissenting circles, shrilly tremulous with indignation, "if the

servants I recommend you won't stop with you, it's no fault of mine.

If respectable young girls are set picking grass out of your gravel, in

place of their proper work, certainly they will give warning!"

The voice that replied struck me as being a notable one, well-bred and

imperious.

"When I take a barefooted slut out of a cabin, I don't expect her to

dictate to me what her duties are!"

Flurry jerked up his chin in a noiseless laugh. "It's my grandmother!"

he whispered. "I bet you Mrs. McDonald don't get much change out of

her!"

"If I set her to clean the pig-sty I expect her to obey me," continued

the voice in accents that would have made me clean forty pig-sties had

she desired me to do so.

"Very well, ma'am," retorted Mrs. McDonald, "if that's the way you

treat your servants, you needn't come here again looking for them. I

consider your conduct is neither that of a lady nor a Christian!"

"Don't you, indeed?" replied Flurry's grandmother. "Well, your opinion

doesn't greatly distress me, for, to tell you the truth, I don't think

you're much of a judge."

"Didn't I tell you she'd score?" murmured Flurry, who was by this time

applying his eye to a hole in the muslin curtain. "She's off," he went

on, returning to his tea. "She's a great character! She's

eighty-three if she's a day, and she's as sound on her legs as a

three-year-old! Did you see that old shandrydan of hers in the street

a while ago, and a fellow on the box with a red beard on him like

Robinson Crusoe? That old mare that was on the near side--Trinket her

name is--is mighty near clean bred. I can tell you her foals are worth

a bit of money."

I had heard of old Mrs. Knox of Aussolas; indeed, I had seldom dined

out in the neighbourhood without hearing some new story of her and her

remarkable ménage, but it had not yet been my privilege to meet her.

"Well, now," went on Flurry in his slow voice, "I'll tell you a thing

that's just come into my head. My grandmother promised me a foal of

Trinket's the day I was one-and-twenty, and that's five years ago, and

deuce a one I've got from her yet. You never were at Aussolas? No,

you were not. Well, I tell you the place there is like a circus with

horses. She has a couple of score of them running wild in the woods,

like deer."

"Oh, come," I said, "I'm a bit of a liar myself--"

"Well, she has a dozen of them anyhow, rattling good colts too, some of

them, but they might as well be donkeys for all the good they are to me

or any one. It's not once in three years she sells one, and there she

has them walking after her for bits of sugar, like a lot of dirty

lapdogs," ended Flurry with disgust.

"Well, what's your plan? Do you want me to make her a bid for one of

the lapdogs?"

"I was thinking," replied Flurry, with great deliberation, "that my

birthday's this week, and maybe I could work a four-year-old colt of

Trinket's she has out of her in honour of the occasion."

"And sell your grandmother's birthday present to me?"

"Just that, I suppose," answered Flurry with a slow wink.

A few days afterwards a letter from Mr. Knox informed me that he had

"squared the old lady, and it would be all right about the colt." He

further told me that Mrs. Knox had been good enough to offer me, with

him, a day's snipe shooting on the celebrated Aussolas bogs, and he

proposed to drive me there the following Monday, if convenient. Most

people found it convenient to shoot the Aussolas snipe bog when they

got the chance. Eight o'clock on the following Monday morning saw

Flurry, myself, and a groom packed into a dogcart, with portmanteaus,

gun-cases, and two rampant red setters.

It was a long drive, twelve miles at least, and a very cold one. We

passed through long tracts of pasture country, fraught, for Flurry,

with memories of runs, which were recorded for me, fence by fence, in

every one of which the biggest dog-fox in the country had gone to

ground, with not two feet--measured accurately on the handle of the

whip--between him and the leading hound; through bogs that

imperceptibly melted into lakes, and finally down and down into a

valley, where the fir-trees of Aussolas clustered darkly round a

glittering lake, and all but hid the grey roofs and pointed gables of

Aussolas Castle.

"There's a nice stretch of a demesne for you," remarked Flurry,

pointing downwards with the whip, "and one little old woman holding it

all in the heel of her fist. Well able to hold it she is, too, and

always was, and she'll live twenty years yet, if it's only to spite the

whole lot of us, and when all's said and done goodness knows how she'll

leave it!"

"It strikes me you were lucky to keep her up to her promise about the

colt," I said.

Flurry administered a composing kick to the ceaseless strivings of the

red setters under the seat.

"I used to be rather a pet with her," he said, after a pause; "but mind

you, I haven't got him yet, and if she gets any notion I want to sell

him I'll never get him, so say nothing about the business to her."

The tall gates of Aussolas shrieked on their hinges as they admitted

us, and shut with a clang behind us, in the faces of an old mare and a

couple of young horses, who, foiled in their break for the excitements

of the outer world, turned and galloped defiantly on either side of us.

Flurry's admirable cob hammered on, regardless of all things save his

duty.

"He's the only one I have that I'd trust myself here with," said his

master, flicking him approvingly with the whip; "there are plenty of

people afraid to come here at all, and when my grandmother goes out

driving she has a boy on the box with a basket full of stones to peg at

them. Talk of the dickens, here she is herself!"

A short, upright old woman was approaching, preceded by a white woolly

dog with sore eyes and a bark like a tin trumpet; we both got out of

the trap and advanced to meet the lady of the manor.

I may summarise her attire by saying that she looked as if she had

robbed a scarecrow; her face was small and incongruously refined, the

skinny hand that she extended to me had the grubby tan that bespoke the

professional gardener, and was decorated with a magnificent diamond

ring. On her head was a massive purple velvet bonnet.

"I am very glad to meet you, Major Yeates," she said with an

old-fashioned precision of utterance; "your grandfather was a dancing

partner of mine in old days at the Castle, when he was a handsome young

aide-de-camp there, and I was----you may judge for yourself what I was."

She ended with a startling little hoot of laughter, and I was aware

that she quite realised the world's opinion of her, and was indifferent

to it.

Our way to the bogs took us across Mrs. Knox's home farm, and through a

large field in which several young horses were grazing.

"There now, that's my fellow," said Flurry, pointing to a fine-looking

colt, "the chestnut with the white diamond on his forehead. He'll run

into three figures before he's done, but we'll not tell that to the old

lady!"

The famous Aussolas bogs were as full of snipe as usual, and a good

deal fuller of water than any bogs I had ever shot before. I was on my

day, and Flurry was not, and as he is ordinarily an infinitely better

snipe shot than I, I felt at peace with the world and all men as we

walked back, wet through, at five o'clock.

The sunset had waned, and a big white moon was making the eastern tower

of Aussolas look like a thing in a fairy tale or a play when we arrived

at the hall door. An individual, whom I recognised as the Robinson

Crusoe coachman, admitted us to a hall, the like of which one does not

often see. The walls were panelled with dark oak up to the gallery

that ran round three sides of it, the balusters of the wide staircase

were heavily carved, and blackened portraits of Flurry's ancestors on

the spindle side stared sourly down on their descendant as he tramped

upstairs with the bog mould on his hobnailed boots.

We had just changed into dry clothes when Robinson Crusoe shoved his

red beard round the corner of the door, with the information that the

mistress said we were to stay for dinner. My heart sank. It was then

barely half-past five. I said something about having no evening

clothes and having to get home early.

"Sure the dinner'll be in another half-hour," said Robinson Crusoe,

joining hospitably in the conversation; "and as for evening

clothes----God bless ye!"

The door closed behind him.

"Never mind," said Flurry, "I dare say you'll be glad enough to eat

another dinner by the time you get home." He laughed. "Poor Slipper!"

he added inconsequently, and only laughed again when I asked for an

explanation.

Old Mrs. Knox received us in the library, where she was seated by a

roaring turf fire, which lit the room a good deal more effectively than

the pair of candles that stood beside her in tall silver candlesticks.

Ceaseless and implacable growls from under her chair indicated the

presence of the woolly dog. She talked with confounding culture of the

books that rose all round her to the ceiling; her evening dress was

accomplished by means of an additional white shawl, rather dirtier than

its congeners; as I took her in to dinner she quoted Virgil to me, and

in the same breath screeched an objurgation at a being whose matted

head rose suddenly into view from behind an ancient Chinese screen, as

I have seen the head of a Zulu woman peer over a bush.

Dinner was as incongruous as everything else. Detestable soup in a

splendid old silver tureen that was nearly as dark in hue as Robinson

Crusoe's thumb; a perfect salmon, perfectly cooked, on a chipped

kitchen dish; such cut glass as is not easy to find nowadays; sherry

that, as Flurry subsequently remarked, would burn the shell off an egg;

and a bottle of port, draped in immemorial cobwebs, wan with age, and

probably priceless. Throughout the vicissitudes of the meal Mrs.

Knox's conversation flowed on undismayed, directed sometimes at me--she

had installed me in the position of friend of her youth, and talked to

me as if I were my own grandfather--sometimes at Crusoe, with whom she

had several heated arguments, and sometimes she would make a statement

of remarkable frankness on the subject of her horse-farming affairs to

Flurry, who, very much on his best behaviour, agreed with all she said,

and risked no original remark. As I listened to them both, I

remembered with infinite amusement how he had told me once that "a pet

name she had for him was 'Tony Lumpkin,' and no one but herself knew

what she meant by it." It seemed strange that she made no allusion to

Trinket's colt or to Flurry's birthday, but, mindful of my

instructions, I held my peace.

As, at about half-past eight, we drove away in the moonlight, Flurry

congratulated me solemnly on my success with his grandmother. He was

good enough to tell me that she would marry me to-morrow if I asked

her, and he wished I would, even if it was only to see what a nice

grandson he'd be for me. A sympathetic giggle behind me told me that

Michael, on the back seat, had heard and relished the jest.

We had left the gates of Aussolas about half a mile behind when, at the

corner of a by-road, Flurry pulled up. A short squat figure arose from

the black shadow of a furze bush and came out into the moonlight,

swinging its arms like a cabman and cursing audibly.

"Oh murdher, oh murdher, Misther Flurry! What kept ye at all? 'Twould

perish the crows to be waiting here the way I am these two hours----"

"Ah, shut your mouth, Slipper!" said Flurry, who, to my surprise, had

turned back the rug and was taking off his driving coat, "I couldn't

help it. Come on, Yeates, we've got to get out here."

"What for?" I asked, in not unnatural bewilderment.

"It's all right. I'll tell you as we go along," replied my companion,

who was already turning to follow Slipper up the by-road. "Take the

trap on, Michael, and wait at the River's Cross." He waited for me to

come up with him, and then put his hand on my arm. "You see, Major,

this is the way it is. My grandmother's given me that colt right

enough, but if I waited for her to send him over to me I'd never see a

hair of his tail. So I just thought that as we were over here we might

as well take him back with us, and maybe you'll give us a help with

him; he'll not be altogether too handy for a first go off."

I was staggered. An infant in arms could scarcely have failed to

discern the fishiness of the transaction, and I begged Mr. Knox not to

put himself to this trouble on my account, as I had no doubt I could

find a horse for my friend elsewhere. Mr. Knox assured me that it was

no trouble at all, quite the contrary, and that, since his grandmother

had given him the colt, he saw no reason why he should not take him

when he wanted him; also, that if I didn't want him he'd be glad enough

to keep him himself; and finally, that I wasn't the chap to go back on

a friend, but I was welcome to drive back to Shreelane with Michael

this minute if I liked.

Of course I yielded in the end. I told Flurry I should lose my job

over the business, and he said I could then marry his grandmother, and

the discussion was abruptly closed by the necessity of following

Slipper over a locked five-barred gate.

Our pioneer took us over about half a mile of country, knocking down

stone gaps where practicable and scrambling over tall banks in the

deceptive moonlight. We found ourselves at length in a field with a

shed in one corner of it; in a dim group of farm buildings a little way

off a light was shining.

"Wait here," said Flurry to me in a whisper; "the less noise the

better. It's an open shed, and we'll just slip in and coax him out."

Slipper unwound from his waist a halter, and my colleagues glided like

spectres into the shadow of the shed, leaving me to meditate on my

duties as Resident Magistrate, and on the questions that would be asked

in the House by our local member when Slipper had given away the

adventure in his cups.

In less than a minute three shadows emerged from the shed, where two

had gone in. They had got the colt.

"He came out as quiet as a calf when he winded the sugar," said Flurry;

"it was well for me I filled my pockets from grandmamma's sugar basin."

He and Slipper had a rope from each side of the colt's head; they took

him quickly across a field towards a gate. The colt stepped daintily

between them over the moonlit grass; he snorted occasionally, but

appeared on the whole amenable.

The trouble began later, and was due, as trouble often is, to the

beguilements of a short cut. Against the maturer judgment of Slipper,

Flurry insisted on following a route that he assured us he knew as well

as his own pocket, and the consequence was that in about five minutes I

found myself standing on top of a bank hanging on to a rope, on the

other end of which the colt dangled and danced, while Flurry, with the

other rope, lay prone in the ditch, and Slipper administered to the

bewildered colt's hindquarters such chastisement as could be ventured

on.

I have no space to narrate in detail the atrocious difficulties and

disasters of the short cut. How the colt set to work to buck, and went

away across a field, dragging the faithful Slipper, literally

_ventre-à-terre_, after him, while I picked myself in ignominy out of a

briar patch, and Flurry cursed himself black in the face. How we were

attacked by ferocious cur dogs, and I lost my eyeglass; and how, as we

neared the River's Cross, Flurry espied the police patrol on the road,

and we all hid behind a rick of turf, while I realised in fulness what

an exceptional ass I was, to have been beguiled into an enterprise that

involved hiding with Slipper from the Royal Irish Constabulary.

Let it suffice to say that Trinket's infernal offspring was finally

handed over on the high-road to Michael and Slipper, and Flurry drove

me home in a state of mental and physical overthrow.

I saw nothing of my friend Mr. Knox for the next couple of days, by the

end of which time I had worked up a high polish on my misgivings, and

had determined to tell him that under no circumstances would I have

anything to say to his grandmother's birthday present. It was like my

usual luck that, instead of writing a note to this effect, I thought it

would be good for my liver to walk across the hills to Tory Cottage and

tell Flurry so in person.

It was a bright, blustery morning, after a muggy day. The feeling of

spring was in the air, the daffodils were already in bud, and crocuses

showed purple in the grass on either side of the avenue. It was only a

couple of miles to Tory Cottage by the way across the hills; I walked

fast, and it was barely twelve o'clock when I saw its pink walls and

clumps of evergreens below me. As I looked down at it the chiming of

Flurry's hounds in the kennels came to me on the wind; I stood still to

listen, and could almost have sworn that I was hearing again the clash

of Magdalen bells, hard at work on May morning.

The path that I was following led downwards through a larch plantation

to Flurry's back gate. Hot wafts from some hideous caldron at the

other side of a wall apprised me of the vicinity of the kennels and

their cuisine, and the fir-trees round were hung with gruesome and

unknown joints. I thanked Heaven that I was not a master of hounds,

and passed on as quickly as might be to the hall door.

I rang two or three times without response; then the door opened a

couple of inches and was instantly slammed in my face. I heard the

hurried paddling of bare feet on oilcloth, and a voice, "Hurry,

Bridgie, hurry! There's quality at the door!"

Bridgie, holding a dirty cap on with one hand, presently arrived and

informed me that she believed Mr. Knox was out about the place. She

seemed perturbed, and she cast scared glances down the drive while

speaking to me.

I knew enough of Flurry's habits to shape a tolerably direct course for

his whereabouts. He was, as I had expected, in the training paddock, a

field behind the stable-yard, in which he had put up practice jumps for

his horses. It was a good-sized field with clumps of furze in it, and

Flurry was standing near one of these with his hands in his pockets,

singularly unoccupied. I supposed that he was prospecting for a place

to put up another jump. He did not see me coming, and turned with a

start as I spoke to him. There was a queer expression of mingled guilt

and what I can only describe as divilment in his grey eyes as he

greeted me. In my dealings with Flurry Knox, I have since formed the

habit of sitting tight, in a general way, when I see that expression.

"Well, who's coming next, I wonder!" he said, as he shook hands with

me; "it's not ten minutes since I had two of your d--d peelers here

searching the whole place for my grandmother's colt!"

"What!" I exclaimed, feeling cold all down my back; "do you mean the

police have got hold of it?"

"They haven't got hold of the colt anyway," said Flurry, looking

sideways at me from under the peak of his cap, with the glint of the

sun in his eye. "I got word in time before they came."

"What do you mean?" I demanded; "where is he? For Heaven's sake don't

tell me you've sent the brute over to my place!"

"It's a good job for you I didn't," replied Flurry, "as the police are

on their way to Shreelane this minute to consult you about it. _You_!"

He gave utterance to one of his short diabolical fits of laughter.

"He's where they'll not find him, anyhow. Ho! ho! It's the funniest

hand I ever played!"

"Oh yes, it's devilish funny, I've no doubt," I retorted, beginning to

lose my temper, as is the manner of many people when they are

frightened; "but I give you fair warning that if Mrs. Knox asks me any

questions about it, I shall tell her the whole story."

"All right," responded Flurry; "and when you do, don't forget to tell

her how you flogged the colt out on to the road over her own bounds

ditch."

"Very well," I said hotly, "I may as well go home and send in my

papers. They'll break me over this----"

"Ah, hold on, Major," said Flurry soothingly, "it'll be all right. No

one knows anything. It's only on spec the old lady sent the bobbies

here. If you'll keep quiet it'll all blow over."

"I don't care," I said, struggling hopelessly in the toils; "if I meet

your grandmother, and she asks me about it, I shall tell her all I

know."

"Please God you'll not meet her! After all, it's not once in a blue

moon that she--" began Flurry. Even as he said the words his face

changed. "Holy fly!" he ejaculated, "isn't that her dog coming into

the field? Look at her bonnet over the wall! Hide, hide for your

life!" He caught me by the shoulder and shoved me down among the furze

bushes before I realised what had happened.

"Get in there! I'll talk to her."

I may as well confess that at the mere sight of Mrs. Knox's purple

bonnet my heart had turned to water. In that moment I knew what it

would be like to tell her how I, having eaten her salmon, and capped

her quotations, and drunk her best port, had gone forth and helped to

steal her horse. I abandoned my dignity, my sense of honour; I took

the furze prickles to my breast and wallowed in them.

Mrs. Knox had advanced with vengeful speed; already she was in high

altercation with Flurry at no great distance from where I lay; varying

sounds of battle reached me, and I gathered that Flurry was not--to put

it mildly--shrinking from that economy of truth that the situation

required.

"Is it that curby, long-backed brute? You promised him to me long ago,

but I wouldn't be bothered with him!"

The old lady uttered a laugh of shrill derision. "Is it likely I'd

promise you my best colt? And still more, is it likely that you'd

refuse him if I did?"

"Very well, ma'am." Flurry's voice was admirably indignant. "Then I

suppose I'm a liar and a thief."

"I'd be more obliged to you for the information if I hadn't known it

before," responded his grandmother with lightning speed; "if you swore

to me on a stack of Bibles you knew nothing about my colt I wouldn't

believe you! I shall go straight to Major Yeates and ask his advice.

I believe _him_ to be a gentleman, in spite of the company he keeps!"

I writhed deeper into the furze bushes, and thereby discovered a sandy

rabbit run, along which I crawled, with my cap well over my eyes, and

the furze needles stabbing me through my stockings. The ground shelved

a little, promising profounder concealment, but the bushes were very

thick, and I laid hold of the bare stem of one to help my progress. It

lifted out of the ground in my hand, revealing a freshly-cut stump.

Something snorted, not a yard away; I glared through the opening, and

was confronted by the long, horrified face of Mrs. Knox's colt,

mysteriously on a level with my own.

Even without the white diamond on his forehead I should have divined

the truth; but how in the name of wonder had Flurry persuaded him to

couch like a woodcock in the heart of a furze brake? For a full minute

I lay as still as death for fear of frightening him, while the voices

of Flurry and his grandmother raged on alarmingly close to me. The

colt snorted, and blew long breaths through his wide nostrils, but he

did not move. I crawled an inch or two nearer, and after a few seconds

of cautious peering I grasped the position. They had buried him.

A small sandpit among the furze had been utilised as a grave; they had

filled him in up to his withers with sand, and a few furze bushes,

artistically disposed round the pit, had done the rest. As the depth

of Flurry's guile was revealed, laughter came upon me like a flood; I

gurgled and shook apoplectically, and the colt gazed at me with serious

surprise, until a sudden outburst of barking close to my elbow

administered a fresh shock to my tottering nerves.

Mrs. Knox's woolly dog had tracked me into the furze, and was now

baying the colt and me with mingled terror and indignation. I

addressed him in a whisper, with perfidious endearments, advancing a

crafty hand towards him the while, made a snatch for the back of his

neck, missed it badly, and got him by the ragged fleece of his

hind-quarters as he tried to flee. If I had flayed him alive he could

hardly have uttered a more deafening series of yells, but, like a fool,

instead of letting him go, I dragged him towards me, and tried to

stifle the noise by holding his muzzle. The tussle lasted engrossingly

for a few seconds, and then the climax of the nightmare arrived.

Mrs. Knox's voice, close behind me, said, "Let go my dog this instant,

sir! Who are you----"

Her voice faded away, and I knew that she also had seen the colt's head.

I positively felt sorry for her. At her age there was no knowing what

effect the shock might have on her. I scrambled to my feet and

confronted her.

"Major Yeates!" she said. There was a deathly pause. "Will you kindly

tell me," said Mrs. Knox slowly, "am I in Bedlam, or are you? And

_what is that_?"

She pointed to the colt, and that unfortunate animal, recognising the

voice of his mistress, uttered a hoarse and lamentable whinny. Mrs.

Knox felt around her for support, found only furze prickles, gazed

speechlessly at me, and then, to her eternal honour, fell into wild

cackles of laughter.

So, I may say, did Flurry and I. I embarked on my explanation and

broke down; Flurry followed suit and broke down too. Overwhelming

laughter held us all three, disintegrating our very souls. Mrs. Knox

pulled herself together first.

"I acquit you, Major Yeates, I acquit you, though appearances are

against you. It's clear enough to me you've fallen among thieves."

She stopped and glowered at Flurry. Her purple bonnet was over one

eye. "I'll thank you, sir," she said, "to dig out that horse before I

leave this place. And when you've dug him out you may keep him. I'll

be no receiver of stolen goods!"

She broke off and shook her fist at him. "Upon my conscience, Tony,

I'd give a guinea to have thought of it myself!"

IV

THE WATERS OF STRIFE

I knew Bat Callaghan's face long before I was able to put a name to it.

There was seldom a court day in Skebawn that I was not aware of his

level brows and superfluously intense expression somewhere among the

knot of corner-boys who patronised the weekly sittings of the bench of

magistrates. His social position appeared to fluctuate: I have seen

him driving a car; he sometimes held my horse for me--that is to say,

he sat on the counter of a public-house while the Quaker slumbered in

the gutter; and, on one occasion, he retired, at my bidding, to Cork

gaol, there to meditate upon the inadvisability of defending a friend

from the attentions of the police with the tailboard of a cart.

He next obtained prominence in my regard at a regatta held under the

auspices of "The Sons of Liberty," a local football club that justified

its title by the patriot green of its jerseys and its free

interpretation of the rules of the game. The announcement of my name

on the posters as a patron--a privilege acquired at the cost of a

reluctant half-sovereign--made it incumbent on me to put in an

appearance, even though the festival coincided with my Petty Sessions

day at Skebawn; and at some five of the clock on a brilliant September

afternoon I found myself driving down the stony road that dropped in

zigzags to the borders of the lake on which the races were to come off.

I believe that the selection of Lough Lonen as the scene of the regatta

was not unconnected with the fact that the secretary of the club owned

a public-house at the cross roads at one end of it; none the less, the

president of the Royal Academy could scarcely have chosen more

picturesque surroundings. A mountain towered steeply up from the

lake's edge, dark with the sad green of beech-trees in September; fir

woods followed the curve of the shore, and leaned far over the

answering darkness of the water; and above the trees rose the toppling

steepnesses of the hill, painted with a purple glow of heather. The

lake was about a mile long, and, tumbling from its farther end, a

fierce and narrow river fled away west to the sea, some four or five

miles off.

I had not seen a boat race since I was at Oxford, and the words still

called up before my eyes a vision of smart parasols, of gorgeous

barges, of snowy-clad youths, and of low slim outriggers, winged with

the level flight of oars, slitting the water to the sway of the line of

flat backs. Certainly undreamed-of possibilities in aquatics were

revealed to me as I reined in the Quaker on the outskirts of the crowd,

and saw below me the festival of the Sons of Liberty in full swing.

Boats of all shapes and sizes, outrageously overladen, moved about the

lake, with oars flourishing to the strains of concertinas. Black

swarms of people seethed along the water's edge, congesting here and

there round the dingy tents and stalls of green apples; and the club's

celebrated brass band, enthroned in a wagonette, and stimulated by the

presence of a barrel of porter on the box-seat, was belching forth "The

Boys of Wexford," under the guidance of a disreputable ex-militia

drummer, in a series of crashing discords.

Almost as I arrived a pistol-shot set the echoes clattering round the

lake, and three boats burst out abreast from the throng into the open

water. Two of the crews were in shirt-sleeves, the third wore the

green jerseys of the football club; the boats were of the heavy

sea-going build, and pulled six oars apiece, oars of which the looms

were scarcely narrower than the blades, and were, of the two, but a

shade heavier. None the less the rowers started dauntlessly at

thirty-five strokes a minute, quickening up, incredible as it may seem,

as they rounded the mark boat in the first lap of the two-mile course.

The rowing was, in general style, more akin to the action of beating up

eggs with a fork than to any other form of athletic exercise; but in

its unorthodox way it kicked the heavy boats along at a surprising

pace. The oars squeaked and grunted against the thole-pins, the

coxswains kept up an unceasing flow of oratory, and superfluous little

boys in punts contrived to intervene at all the more critical

turning-points of the race, only evading the flail of the oncoming oars

by performing prodigies of "waggling" with a single oar at the stern.

I took out my watch and counted the strokes when they were passing the

mark boat for the second time; they were pulling a fraction over forty;

one of the shirt-sleeved crews was obviously in trouble, the other,

with humped backs and jerking oars, was holding its own against the

green jerseys amid the blended yells of friends and foes. When for the

last time they rounded the green flag there were but two boats in the

race, and the foul that had been imminent throughout was at length

achieved with a rattle of oars and a storm of curses. They were clear

again in a moment, the shirt-sleeved crew getting away with a distinct

lead, and it was at about this juncture that I became aware that the

coxswains had abandoned their long-handled tillers, and were standing

over their respective "strokes," shoving frantically at their oars, and

maintaining the while a ceaseless bawl of encouragement and defiance.

It looked like a foregone conclusion for the leaders, and the war of

cheers rose to frenzy. The word "cheering," indeed, is but an

euphuism, and in no way expresses the serrated yell, composed of

epithets, advice, and imprecations, that was flung like a live thing at

the oncoming boats. The green jerseys answered to this stimulant with

a wild spurt that drove the bow of their boat within a measurable

distance of their opponents' stroke oar. In another second a

thoroughly successful foul would have been effected, but the cox of the

leading boat proved himself equal to the emergency by unshipping his

tiller, and with it dealing "bow" of the green jerseys such a blow over

the head as effectually dismissed him from the sphere of practical

politics.

A great roar of laughter greeted this feat of arms, and a voice at my

dogcart's wheel pierced the clamour--

"More power to ye, Larry, me owld darlin'!"

I looked down and saw Bat Callaghan, with shining eyes, and a face

white with excitement, poising himself on one foot on the box of my

wheel in order to get a better view of the race. Almost before I had

time to recognise him, a man in a green jersey caught him round the

legs and jerked him down. Callaghan fell into the throng, recovered

himself in an instant, and rushed, white and dangerous, at his

assailant. The Son of Liberty was no less ready for the fray, and what

is known in Ireland as "the father and mother of a row" was imminent.

Already, however, one of those unequalled judges of the moral

temperature of a crowd, a sergeant of the R.I.C., had quietly

interposed his bulky person between the combatants, and the coming

trouble was averted.

Elsewhere battle was raging. The race was over, and the committee boat

was hemmed in by the rival crews, supplemented by craft of all kinds.

The "objection" was being lodged, and in its turn objected to, and I

can only liken the process to the screaming warfare of seagulls round a

piece of carrion. The tumult was still at its height when out of its

very heart two four-oared boats broke forth, and a pistol shot

proclaimed that another race had begun, the public interest in which

was specially keen, owing to the fact that the rowers were stalwart

country girls, who made up in energy what they lacked in skill. It was

a short race, once round the mark boat only, and, like a successful

farce, it "went with a roar" from start to finish. Foul after foul,

each followed by a healing interval of calm, during which the crews,

who had all caught crabs, were recovering themselves and their oars,

marked its progress; and when the two boats, locked in an inextricable

embrace, at length passed the winning flag, and the crews, oblivious of

judges and public, fell to untrammelled personal abuse and to doing up

their hair, I decided that I had seen the best of the fun, and prepared

to go home.

It was, as it happened, the last race of the day, and nothing remained

in the way of excitement save the greased pole with the pig slung in a

bag at the end of it. My final impression of the Lough Lonen Regatta

was of Callaghan's lithe figure, sleek and dripping, against the yellow

sky, as he poised on the swaying pole with the broken gold of the water

beneath him.

Limited as was my experience of the Southwest of Ireland, I was in no

way surprised to hear on the following afternoon from Peter Cadogan

that there had been "sthrokes" the night before, when the boys were

going home from the regatta, and that the police were searching for one

Jimmy Foley.

"What do they want him for?" I asked.

"Sure it's according as a man that was bringing a car of bogwood was

tellin' me, sir," answered Peter, pursuing his occupation of washing

the dogcart with unabated industry; "they say Jimmy's wife went roaring

to the police, saying she could get no account of her husband."

"I suppose he's beaten some fellow and is hiding," I suggested.

"Well, that might be, sir," asserted Peter respectfully. He plied his

mop vigorously in intricate places about the springs, which would, I

knew, have never been explored save for my presence.

"It's what John Hennessy was saying, that he was hard set to get his

horse past Cluin Cross, the way the blood was sthrewn about the road,"

resumed Peter; "sure they were fighting like wasps in it half the

night."

"Who were fighting?"

"I couldn't say, indeed, sir. Some o' thim low rakish lads from the

town, I suppose," replied Peter with virtuous respectability.

When Peter Cadogan was quietly and intelligently candid, to pursue an

inquiry was seldom of much avail.

Next day in Skebawn I met little Murray, the district inspector, very

alert and smart in his rifle-green uniform, going forth to collect

evidence about the fight. He told me that the police were pretty

certain that one of the Sons of Liberty, named Foley, had been

murdered, but, as usual, the difficulty was to get any one to give

information; all that was known was that he was gone, and that his wife

had identified his cap, which had been found, drenched with blood, by

the roadside. Murray gave it as his opinion that the whole business

had arisen out of the row over the disputed race, and that there must

have been a dozen people looking on when the murder was done; but so

far no evidence was forthcoming, and after a day and a night of search

the police had not been able to find the body.

"No," said Flurry Knox, who had joined us, "and if it was any of those

mountainy men did away with him you might scrape Ireland with a

small-tooth comb and you'll not get him!"

That evening I smoked an after-dinner cigarette out of doors in the

mild starlight, strolling about the rudimentary paths of what would, I

hoped, some day be Philippa's garden. The bats came stooping at the

red end of my cigarette, and from the covert behind the house I heard

once or twice the delicate bark of a fox. Civilisation seemed a

thousand miles off, as far away as the falling star that had just drawn

a line of pale fire half-way down the northern sky. I had been nearly

a year at Shreelane House by myself now, and the time seemed very long

to me. It was slow work putting by money, even under the austerities

of Mrs. Cadogan's _régime_, and though I had warned Philippa I meant to

marry her after Christmas, there were moments, and this was one of

them, when it seemed an idle threat.

"Pether!" the strident voice of Mrs. Cadogan intruded upon my

meditations. "Go tell the Major his coffee is waitin' on him!"

I went gloomily into the house, and, with a resignation born of

adversity, swallowed the mixture of chicory and liquorice which my

housekeeper possessed the secret of distilling from the best and most

expensive coffee. My theory about it was that it added to the illusion

that I had dined, and moreover, that it kept me awake, and I generally

had a good deal of writing to do after dinner.

Having swallowed it I went downstairs and out past the kitchen regions

to my office, a hideous whitewashed room, in which I interviewed

policemen, and took affidavits, and did most of my official writing.

It had a door that opened into the yard, and a window that looked out

in the other direction, among lanky laurels and scrubby hollies, where

lay the cats' main thoroughfare from the scullery window to the rabbit

holes in the wood. I had a good deal of work to do, and the time

passed quickly. It was Friday night, and from the kitchen at the end

of the passage came the gabbling murmur, in two alternate keys, that I

had learned to recognise as the recital of a litany by my housekeeper

and her nephew Peter. This performance was followed by some of those

dreary and heart-rending yawns that are, I think, peculiar to Irish

kitchens, then such of the cats as had returned from the chase were

loudly shepherded into the back scullery, the kitchen door shut with a

slam, and my retainers retired to repose.

It was nearly half-an-hour afterwards when I finished the notes I had

been making on an adjourned case of "stroke-hauling" salmon in the

Lonen River. I leaned back in my chair and lighted a cigarette

preparatory to turning in; my thoughts had again wandered on a

sentimental journey across the Irish Channel, when I heard a slight

stir of some kind outside the open window. In the wilds of Ireland no

one troubles themselves about burglars; "more cats," I thought, "I must

shut the window before I go to bed."

Almost immediately there followed a faint tap on the window, and then a

voice said in a hoarse and hurried whisper, "Them that wants Jim Foley,

let them look in the river!"

If I had kept my head I should have sat still and encouraged a further

confidence, but unfortunately I acted on the impulse of the natural

man, and was at the window in a jump, knocking down my chair, and

making noise enough to scare a far less shy bird than an Irish

informer. Of course there was no one there. I listened, with every

nerve as taut as a violin string. It was quite dark; there was just

breeze enough to make a rustling in the evergreens, so that a man might

brush through them without being heard; and while I debated on a plan

of action there came from beyond the shrubbery the jar and twang of a

loose strand of wire in the paling by the wood. My informant, whoever

he might be, had vanished into the darkness from which he had come as

irrecoverably as had the falling star that had written its brief

message across the sky, and gone out again into infinity.

I got up very early next morning and drove to Skebawn to see Murray,

and offer him my mysterious information for what it was worth.

Personally I did not think it worth much, and was disposed to regard it

as a red herring drawn across the trail. Murray, however, was not in a

mood to despise anything that had a suggestion to make, having been out

till nine o'clock the night before without being able to find any clue

to the hiding-place of James Foley.

"The river's a good mile from the place where the fight was," he said,

straddling his compasses over the Ordnance Survey map, "and there's no

sort of a road they could have taken him along, but a tip like this is

always worth trying. I remember in the Land League time how a man came

one Saturday night to my window and told me there were holes drilled in

the chapel door to shoot a boycotted man through while he was at mass.

The holes were there right enough, and you may be quite sure that chap

found excellent reasons for having family prayers at home next day!"

I had sessions to attend on the extreme outskirts of my district, and

could not wait, as Murray suggested, to see the thing out. I did not

get home till the following day, and when I arrived I found a letter

from Murray awaiting me.

"Your pal was right. We found Foley's body in the river, knocking

about against the posts of the weir. The head was wrapped in his own

green jersey, and had been smashed in by a stone. We suspect a fellow

named Bat Callaghan, who has bolted, but there were a lot of them in

it. Possibly it was Callaghan himself who gave you the tip; you never

can tell how superstition is going to take them next. The inquest will

be held to-morrow."

The coroner's jury took a cautious view of the cause of the

catastrophe, and brought in a verdict of "death by misadventure," and I

presently found it to be my duty to call a magisterial inquiry to

further investigate the matter. A few days before this was to take

place, I was engaged in the delicate task of displaying to my landlord,

Mr. Flurry Knox, the defects of the pantry sink, when Mrs. Cadogan

advanced upon us with the information that the Widow Callaghan from

Cluin would be thankful to speak to me, and had brought me a present of

"a fine young goose."

"Is she come over here looking for Bat?" said Flurry, withdrawing his

arm and the longest kitchen-ladle from the pipe that he had been

probing; "she knows you're handy at hiding your friends, Mary; maybe

it's he that's stopping the drain!"

Mrs. Cadogan turned her large red face upon her late employer.

"God knows I wish yerself was stuck in it, Master Flurry, the way ye'd

hear Pether cursin' the full o' the house when he's striving to wash

the things in that unnatural little trough."

"Are you sure it's Peter does all the cursing?" retorted Flurry. "I

hear Father Scanlan has it in for you this long time for not going to

confession."

"And how can I walk two miles to the chapel with God's burden on me

feet?" demanded Mrs. Cadogan in purple indignation; "the Blessed Virgin

and Docthor Hickey knows well the hardship I gets from them. If it

wasn't for a pair of the Major's boots he gave me, I'd be hard set to

thravel the house itself!"

The contest might have been continued indefinitely, had I not struck up

the swords with a request that Mrs. Callaghan might be sent round to

the hall door. There we found a tall, grey-haired countrywoman waiting

for us at the foot of the steps, in the hooded blue cloak that is

peculiar to the south of Ireland; from the fact that she clutched a

pocket-handkerchief in her right hand I augured a stormy interview, but

nothing could have been more self-restrained and even imposing than the

reverence with which she greeted Flurry and me.

"Good-morning to your honours," she began, with a dignified and

extremely imminent snuffle. "I ask your pardon for troubling you,

Major Yeates, but I haven't a one in the counthry to give me an adwice,

and I have no confidence only in your honour's experiments."

"Experience, she means," prompted Flurry. "Didn't you get advice

enough out of Mr. Murray yesterday?" he went on aloud. "I heard he was

at Cluin to see you."

"And if he was itself, it's little adwantage any one'd get out of that

little whipper-shnapper of a shnap-dhragon!" responded Mrs. Callaghan

tartly; "he was with me for a half-hour giving me every big rock of

English till I had a reel in me head. I declare to ye, Mr. Flurry,

after he had gone out o' the house, ye wouldn't throw three farthings

for me!"

The pocket-handkerchief was here utilised, after which, with a heavy

groan, Mrs. Callaghan again took up her parable.

"I towld him first and last I'd lose me life if I had to go into the

coort, and if I did itself sure th' attorneys could rip no more out o'

me than what he did himself."

"Did you tell him where was Bat?" inquired Flurry casually.

At this Mrs. Callaghan immediately dissolved into tears.

"Is it Bat?" she howled. "If the twelve Apostles came down from heaven

asking me where was Bat, I could give them no satisfaction. The divil

a know I know what's happened him. He came home with me sober and

good-natured from the rogatta, and the next morning he axed a fresh egg

for his breakfast, and God forgive me, I wouldn't break the score I was

taking to the hotel, and with that he slapped the cup o' tay into the

fire and went out the door, and I never got a word of him since, good

nor bad. God knows 'tis I got throuble with that poor boy, and he the

only one I have to look to in the world!"

I cut the matter short by asking her what she wanted me to do for her,

and sifted out from amongst much extraneous detail the fact that she

relied upon my renowned wisdom and clemency to preserve her from being

called as a witness at the coming inquiry. The gift of the goose

served its intended purpose of embarrassing my position, but in spite

of it I broke to the Widow Callaghan my inability to help her. She did

not, of course, believe me, but she was too well-bred to say so. In

Ireland one becomes accustomed to this attitude.

As it turned out, however, Bat Callaghan's mother had nothing to fear

from the inquiry. She was by turns deaf, imbecile, garrulously candid,

and furiously abusive of Murray's principal witness, a frightened lad

of seventeen, who had sworn to having seen Bat Callaghan and Jimmy

Foley "shaping at one another to fight," at an hour when, according to

Mrs. Callaghan, Bat was "lying sthretched on the beddeen with a sick

shtomach" in consequence of the malignant character of the porter

supplied by the last witness's father. It all ended, as such cases so

often do in Ireland, in complete moral certainty in the minds of all

concerned as to the guilt of the accused, and entire impotence on the

part of the law to prove it. A warrant was issued for the arrest of

Bartholomew Callaghan; and the clans of Callaghan and Foley fought

rather more bloodily than usual, as occasion served; and at intervals

during the next few months Murray used to ask me if my friend the

murderer had dropped in lately, to which I was wont to reply with

condolences on the failure of the R.I.C. to find the Widow Callaghan's

only son for her; and that was about all that came of it.

Events with which the present story has no concern took me to England

towards the end of the following March. It so happened that my old

regiment, the ----th Fusiliers, was quartered at Whincastle, within a

couple of hours by rail of Philippa's home, where I was staying, and,

since my wedding was now within measurable distance, my former

brothers-in-arms invited me over to dine and sleep, and to receive a

valedictory silver claret jug that they were magnanimous enough to

bestow upon a backslider. I enjoyed the dinner as much as any man can

enjoy his dinner when he knows he has to make a speech at the end of

it; through much and varied conversation I strove, like a nervous

mother who cannot trust her offspring out of her sight, to keep before

my mind's eye the opening sentences that I had composed in the train; I

felt that if I could only "get away" satisfactorily I might trust the

Ayala ('89) to do the rest, and of that fount of inspiration there was

no lack. As it turned out, I got away all right, though the sight of

the double line of expectant faces and red mess jackets nearly

scattered those precious opening sentences, and I am afraid that so far

as the various subsequent points went that I had intended to make, I

stayed away; however, neither Demosthenes, nor a Nationalist member at

a Cork election, could have been listened to with more gratifying

attention, and I sat down, hot and happy, to be confronted with my own

flushed visage, hideously reflected in the glittering paunch of the

claret jug.

Once safely over the presentation, the evening mellowed into frivolity,

and it was pretty late before I found myself settled down to whist, at

sixpenny points, in the ancient familiar way, while most of the others

fell to playing pool in the billiard-room next door. I have played

whist from my youth up; with the preternatural seriousness of a

subaltern, with the self-assurance of a senior captain, with the

privileged irascibility of a major; and my eighteen months of

abstinence at Shreelane had only whetted my appetite for what I

consider the best of games. After the long lonely evenings there, with

rats for company, and, for relaxation, a "deck" of that specially

demoniacal American variety of patience known as "Fooly Ann," it was

wondrous agreeable to sit again among my fellows, and "lay the longs"

on a severely scientific rubber of whist, as though Mrs. Cadogan and

the Skebawn Bench of Magistrates had never existed.

We were in the first game of the second rubber, and I was holding a

very nice playing hand; I had early in the game moved forth my trumps

to battle, and I was now in the ineffable position of scoring with the

small cards of my long suit. The cards fell and fell in silence, and

Ballantyne, my partner, raked in the tricks like a machine. The

concentrated quiet of the game was suddenly arrested by a sharp,

unmistakable sound from the barrack yard outside, the snap of a

Lee-Metford rifle.

"What was that?" exclaimed Moffat, the senior major.

Before he had finished speaking there was a second shot.

"By Jove, those were rifle-shots! Perhaps I'd better go and see what's

up," said Ballantyne, who was captain of the week, throwing down his

cards and making a bolt for the door.

He had hardly got out of the room when the first long high note of the

"assembly" sang out, sudden and clear. We all sprang to our feet, and

as the bugle-call went shrilly on, the other men came pouring in from

the billiard-room, and stampeded to their quarters to get their swords.

At the same moment the mess sergeant appeared at the outer door with a

face as white as his shirt-front.

"The sentry on the magazine guard has been shot, sir!" he said

excitedly to Moffat. "They say he's dead!"

We were all out in the barrack square in an instant; it was clear

moonlight, and the square was already alive with hurrying figures

cramming on clothes and caps as they ran to fall in. I was a free

agent these times, and I followed the mess sergeant across the square

towards the distant corner where the magazine stands. As we doubled

round the end of the men's quarters, we nearly ran into a small party

of men who were advancing slowly and heavily in our direction.

"'Ere he is, sir!" said the mess sergeant, stopping himself abruptly.

They were carrying the sentry to the hospital. His busby had fallen

off; the moon shone mildly on his pale, convulsed face, and foam and

strange inhuman sounds came from his lips. His head was rolling from

side to side on the arm of one of the men who was carrying him; as it

turned towards me I was struck by something disturbingly familiar in

the face, and I wondered if he had been in my old company.

"What's his name, sergeant?" I said to the mess sergeant.

"Private Harris, sir," replied the sergeant; "he's only lately come up

from the depôt, and this was his first time on sentry by himself."

I went back to the mess, and in process of time the others straggled

in, thirsting for whiskies-and-sodas, and full of such information as

there was to give. Private Harris was not wounded; both the shots had

been fired by him, as was testified by the state of his rifle and the

fact that two of the cartridges were missing from the packet in his

pouch.

"I hear he was a queer, sulky sort of chap always," said Tomkinson, the

subaltern of the day, "but if he was having a try at suicide he made a

bally bad fist of it."

"He made as good a fist of it as you did of putting on your sword,

Tommy," remarked Ballantyne, indicating a dangling white strap of

webbing, that hung down like a tail below Mr. Tomkinson's mess jacket.

"Nerves, obviously, in both cases!"

The exquisite satisfaction afforded by this discovery to Mr.

Tomkinson's brother officers found its natural outlet in a bear fight

that threatened to become more or less general, and in the course of

which I slid away unostentatiously to bed in Ballantyne's quarters, and

took the precaution of barricading my door.

Next morning, when I got down to breakfast, I found Ballantyne and two

or three others in the mess room, and my first inquiry was for Private

Harris.

"Oh, the poor chap's dead," said Ballantyne; "it's a very queer

business altogether. I think he must have been wrong in the top

storey. The doctor was with him when he came to out of the fit, or

whatever it was, and O'Reilly--that's the doctor y' know, Irish of

course, and, by the way, poor Harris was an Irishman too--says that he

could only jibber at first, but then he got better, and he got out of

him that when he had been on sentry-go for about half-an-hour, he

happened to look up at the angle of the barrack wall near where it

joins the magazine tower, and saw a face looking at him over it. He

challenged and got no answer, but the face just stuck there staring at

him; he challenged again, and then, as O'Reilly said, he 'just oop with

his royfle and blazed at it.'" Ballantyne was not above the common

English delusion that he could imitate an Irish brogue.

"Well, what happened then?"

"Well, according to the poor devil's own story, the face just kept on

looking at him and he had another shot at it, and 'My God Almighty,' he

said to O'Reilly, 'it was there always!' While he was saying that to

O'Reilly he began to chuck another fit, and apparently went on chucking

them till he died a couple of hours ago."

"One result of it is," said another man, "that they couldn't get a man

to go on sentry there alone last night. I expect we shall have to

double the sentries there every night as long as we're here."

"Silly asses!" remarked Tomkinson, but he said it without conviction.

After breakfast we went out to look at the wall by the magazine. It

was about eleven feet high, with a coped top, and they told me there

was a deep and wide dry ditch on the outside. A ladder was brought,

and we examined the angle of the wall at which Harris said the face had

appeared. He had made a beautiful shot, one of his bullets having

flicked a piece off the ridge of the coping exactly at the corner.

"It's not the kind of shot a man would make if he had been drinking,"

said Moffat, regretfully abandoning his first simple hypothesis; "he

must have been mad."

"I wish I could find out who his people are," said Brownlow, the

adjutant, who had joined us; "they found in his box a letter to him

from his mother, but we can't make out the name of the place. By Jove,

Yeates, you're an Irishman, perhaps you can help us."

He handed me a letter in a dirty envelope. There was no address given,

the contents were very short, and I may be forgiven if I transcribe

them:--

"My dear Son, I hope you are well as this leaves me at present, thanks

be to God for it. I am very much unaisy about the cow. She swelled up

this morning, she ran in and was frauding and I did not do but to run

up for torn sweeney in the minute. We are thinking it is too much

lairels or an eirub she took. I do not know what I will do with her.

God help one that's alone with himself I had not a days luck since ye

went away. I am thinkin' them that wants ye is tired lookin' for ye.

And so I remain,

"YOUR FOND MOTHER."

"Well, you don't get much of a lead from the cow, do you? And what the

deuce is an eirub?" said Brownlow.

"It's another way of spelling herb," I said, turning over the envelope

abstractedly. The postmark was almost obliterated, but it struck me it

might be construed into the word Skebawn.

"Look here," I said suddenly, "let me see Harris. It's just possible I

may know something about him."

The sentry's body had been laid in the dead-house near the hospital,

and Brownlow fetched the key. It was a grim little whitewashed

building, without windows, save a small one of lancet shape, high up in

one gable, through which a streak of April sunlight fell sharp and

slender on the whitewashed wall. The long figure of the sentry lay

sheeted on a stone slab, and Brownlow, with his cap in his hand, gently

uncovered the face.

I leaned over and looked at it--at the heavy brows, the short nose, the

small moustache lying black above the pale mouth, the deep-set eyes

sealed in appalling peacefulness. There rose before me the wild dark

face of the young man who had hung on my wheel and yelled encouragement

to the winning coxswain at the Lough Lonen Regatta.

"I know him," I said, "his name is Callaghan."

V

LISHEEN RACES, SECOND-HAND

It may or may not be agreeable to have attained the age of

thirty-eight, but, judging from old photographs, the privilege of being

nineteen has also its drawbacks. I turned over page after page of an

ancient book in which were enshrined portraits of the friends of my

youth, singly, in David and Jonathan couples, and in groups in which I,

as it seemed to my mature and possibly jaundiced perception, always

contrived to look the most immeasurable young bounder of the lot. Our

faces were fat, and yet I cannot remember ever having been considered

fat in my life; we indulged in low-necked shirts, in "Jemima" ties with

diagonal stripes; we wore coats that seemed three sizes too small, and

trousers that were three sizes too big; we also wore small whiskers.

I stopped at last at one of the David and Jonathan memorial portraits.

Yes, here was the object of my researches; this stout and earnestly

romantic youth was Leigh Kelway, and that fatuous and chubby young

person seated on the arm of his chair was myself. Leigh Kelway was a

young man ardently believed in by a large circle of admirers, headed by

himself and seconded by me, and for some time after I had left Magdalen

for Sandhurst, I maintained a correspondence with him on large and

abstract subjects. This phase of our friendship did not survive; I

went soldiering to India, and Leigh Kelway took honours and moved

suitably on into politics, as is the duty of an earnest young Radical

with useful family connections and an independent income. Since then I

had at intervals seen in the papers the name of the Honourable Basil

Leigh Kelway mentioned as a speaker at elections, as a writer of

thoughtful articles in the reviews, but we had never met, and nothing

could have been less expected by me than the letter, written from Mrs.

Raverty's Hotel, Skebawn, in which he told me he was making a tour in

Ireland with Lord Waterbury, to whom he was private secretary. Lord

Waterbury was at present having a few days' fishing near Killarney, and

he himself, not being a fisherman, was collecting statistics for his

chief on various points connected with the Liquor Question in Ireland.

He had heard that I was in the neighbourhood, and was kind enough to

add that it would give him much pleasure to meet me again.

With a stir of the old enthusiasm I wrote begging him to be my guest

for as long as it suited him, and the following afternoon he arrived at

Shreelane. The stout young friend of my youth had changed

considerably. His important nose and slightly prominent teeth

remained, but his wavy hair had withdrawn intellectually from his

temples; his eyes had acquired a statesmanlike absence of expression,

and his neck had grown long and bird-like. It was his first visit to

Ireland, as he lost no time in telling me, and he and his chief had

already collected much valuable information on the subject to which

they had dedicated the Easter recess. He further informed me that he

thought of popularising the subject in a novel, and therefore intended

to, as he put it, "master the brogue" before his return.

During the next few days I did my best for Leigh Kelway. I turned him

loose on Father Scanlan; I showed him Mohona, our champion village,

that boasts fifteen public-houses out of twenty buildings of sorts and

a railway station; I took him to hear the prosecution of a publican for

selling drink on a Sunday, which gave him an opportunity of studying

perjury as a fine art, and of hearing a lady, on whom police suspicion

justly rested, profoundly summed up by the sergeant as "a woman who had

th' appairance of having knocked at a back door."

The net result of these experiences has not yet been given to the world

by Leigh Kelway. For my own part, I had at the end of three days

arrived at the conclusion that his society, when combined with a

note-book and a thirst for statistics, was not what I used to find it

at Oxford. I therefore welcomed a suggestion from Mr. Flurry Knox that

we should accompany him to some typical country races, got up by the

farmers at a place called Lisheen, some twelve miles away. It was the

worst road in the district, the races of the most grossly unorthodox

character; in fact, it was the very place for Leigh Kelway to collect

impressions of Irish life, and in any case it was a blessed opportunity

of disposing of him for the day.

In my guest's attire next morning I discerned an unbending from the

role of cabinet minister towards that of sportsman; the outlines of the

note-book might be traced in his breast pocket, but traversing it was

the strap of a pair of field-glasses, and his light grey suit was smart

enough for Goodwood.

Flurry was to drive us to the races at one o'clock, and we walked to

Tory Cottage by the short cut over the hill, in the sunny beauty of an

April morning. Up to the present the weather had kept me in a more or

less apologetic condition; any one who has entertained a guest in the

country knows the unjust weight of responsibility that rests on the

shoulders of the host in the matter of climate, and Leigh Kelway, after

two drenchings, had become sarcastically resigned to what I felt he

regarded as my mismanagement.

Flurry took us into the house for a drink and a biscuit, to keep us

going, as he said, till "we lifted some luncheon out of the Castle Knox

people at the races," and it was while we were thus engaged that the

first disaster of the day occurred. The dining-room door was open, so

also was the window of the little staircase just outside it, and

through the window travelled sounds that told of the close proximity of

the stable-yard; the clattering of hoofs on cobble stones, and voices

uplifted in loud conversation. Suddenly from this region there arose a

screech of the laughter peculiar to kitchen flirtation, followed by the

clank of a bucket, the plunging of a horse, and then an uproar of

wheels and galloping hoofs. An instant afterwards Flurry's chestnut

cob, in a dogcart, dashed at full gallop into view, with the reins

streaming behind him, and two men in hot pursuit. Almost before I had

time to realise what had happened, Flurry jumped through the

half-opened window of the dining-room like a clown at a pantomime, and

joined in the chase; but the cob was resolved to make the most of his

chance, and went away down the drive and out of sight at a pace that

distanced every one save the kennel terrier, who sped in shrieking

ecstasy beside him.

"Oh merciful hour!" exclaimed a female voice behind me. Leigh Kelway

and I were by this time watching the progress of events from the

gravel, in company with the remainder of Flurry's household. "The

horse is desthroyed! Wasn't that the quare start he took! And all in

the world I done was to slap a bucket of wather at Michael out the

windy, and 'twas himself got it in place of Michael!"

"Ye'll never ate another bit, Bridgie Dunnigan," replied the cook, with

the exulting pessimism of her kind. "The Master'll have your life!"

Both speakers shouted at the top of their voices, probably because in

spirit they still followed afar the flight of the cob.

Leigh Kelway looked serious as we walked on down the drive. I almost

dared to hope that a note on the degrading oppression of Irish

retainers was shaping itself. Before we reached the bend of the drive

the rescue party was returning with the fugitive, all, with the

exception of the kennel terrier, looking extremely gloomy. The cob had

been confronted by a wooden gate, which he had unhesitatingly taken in

his stride, landing on his head on the farther side with the gate and

the cart on top of him, and had arisen with a lame foreleg, a cut on

his nose, and several other minor wounds.

"You'd think the brute had been fighting the cats, with all the

scratches and scrapes he has on him!" said Flurry, casting a vengeful

eye at Michael, "and one shaft's broken and so is the dashboard. I

haven't another horse in the place; they're all out at grass, and so

there's an end of the races!"

We all three stood blankly on the hall-door steps and watched the wreck

of the trap being trundled up the avenue.

"I'm very sorry you're done out of your sport," said Flurry to Leigh

Kelway, in tones of deplorable sincerity; "perhaps, as there's nothing

else to do, you'd like to see the hounds----?"

I felt for Flurry, but of the two I felt more for Leigh Kelway as he

accepted this alleviation. He disliked dogs, and held the newest views

on sanitation, and I knew what Flurry's kennels could smell like. I

was lighting a precautionary cigarette, when we caught sight of an old

man riding up the drive. Flurry stopped short.

"Hold on a minute," he said; "here's an old chap that often brings me

horses for the kennels; I must see what he wants."

The man dismounted and approached Mr. Knox, hat in hand, towing after

him a gaunt and ancient black mare with a big knee.

"Well, Barrett," began Flurry, surveying the mare with his hands in his

pockets, "I'm not giving the hounds meat this month, or only very

little."

"Ah, Master Flurry," answered Barrett, "it's you that's pleasant! Is

it give the like o' this one for the dogs to ate! She's a vallyble

strong young mare, no more than shixteen years of age, and ye'd sooner

be lookin' at her goin' under a side-car than eatin' your dinner."

"There isn't as much meat on her as 'd fatten a jackdaw," said Flurry,

clinking the silver in his pockets as he searched for a matchbox.

"What are you asking for her?"

The old man drew cautiously up to him.

"Master Flurry," he said solemnly, "I'll sell her to your honour for

five pounds, and she'll be worth ten after you give her a month's

grass."

Flurry lit his cigarette; then he said imperturbably, "I'll give you

seven shillings for her."

Old Barrett put on his hat in silence, and in silence buttoned his coat

and took hold of the stirrup leather. Flurry remained immovable.

"Master Flurry," said old Barrett suddenly, with tears in his voice,

"you must make it eight, sir!"

"Michael!" called out Flurry with apparent irrelevance, "run up to your

father's and ask him would he lend me a loan of his side-car."

Half-an-hour later we were, improbable as it may seem, on our way to

Lisheen races. We were seated upon an outside-car of immemorial age,

whose joints seemed to open and close again as it swung in and out of

the ruts, whose tattered cushions stank of rats and mildew, whose

wheels staggered and rocked like the legs of a drunken man. Between

the shafts jogged the latest addition to the kennel larder, the

eight-shilling mare. Flurry sat on one side, and kept her going at a

rate of not less than four miles an hour; Leigh Kelway and I held on to

the other.

"She'll get us as far as Lynch's anyway," said Flurry, abandoning his

first contention that she could do the whole distance, as he pulled her

on to her legs after her fifteenth stumble, "and he'll lend us some

sort of a horse, if it was only a mule."

"Do you notice that these cushions are very damp?" said Leigh Kelway to

me, in a hollow undertone.

"Small blame to them if they are!" replied Flurry. "I've no doubt but

they were out under the rain all day yesterday at Mrs. Hurly's funeral."

Leigh Kelway made no reply, but he took his note-book out of his pocket

and sat on it.

We arrived at Lynch's at a little past three, and were there confronted

by the next disappointment of this disastrous day. The door of Lynch's

farmhouse was locked, and nothing replied to our knocking except a

puppy, who barked hysterically from within.

"All gone to the races," said Flurry philosophically, picking his way

round the manure heap. "No matter, here's the filly in the shed here.

I know he's had her under a car."

An agitating ten minutes ensued, during which Leigh Kelway and I got

the eight-shilling mare out of the shafts and the harness, and Flurry,

with our inefficient help, crammed the young mare into them. As Flurry

had stated that she had been driven before, I was bound to believe him,

but the difficulty of getting the bit into her mouth was remarkable,

and so also was the crab-like manner in which she sidled out of the

yard, with Flurry and myself at her head, and Leigh Kelway hanging on

to the back of the car to keep it from jamming in the gateway.

"Sit up on the car now," said Flurry when we got out on to the road;

"I'll lead her on a bit. She's been ploughed anyway; one side of her

mouth's as tough as a gad!"

Leigh Kelway threw away the wisp of grass with which he had been

cleaning his hands, and mopped his intellectual forehead; he was very

silent. We both mounted the car, and Flurry, with the reins in his

hand, walked beside the filly, who, with her tail clasped in, moved

onward in a succession of short jerks.

"Oh, she's all right!" said Flurry, beginning to run, and dragging the

filly into a trot; "once she gets started--" Here the filly spied a

pig in a neighbouring field, and despite the fact that she had probably

eaten out of the same trough with it, she gave a violent side spring,

and broke into a gallop.

"Now we're off!" shouted Flurry, making a jump at the car and

clambering on; "if the traces hold we'll do!"

The English language is powerless to suggest the view-halloo with which

Mr. Knox ended his speech, or to do more than indicate the rigid

anxiety of Leigh Kelway's face as he regained his balance after the

preliminary jerk, and clutched the back rail. It must be said for

Lynch's filly that she did not kick; she merely fled, like a dog with a

kettle tied to its tail, from the pursuing rattle and jingle behind

her, with the shafts buffeting her dusty sides as the car swung to and

fro. Whenever she showed any signs of slackening, Flurry loosed

another yell at her that renewed her panic, and thus we precariously

covered another two or three miles of our journey.

Had it not been for a large stone lying on the road, and had the filly

not chosen to swerve so as to bring the wheel on top of it, I dare say

we might have got to the races; but by an unfortunate coincidence both

these things occurred, and when we recovered from the consequent shock,

the tire of one of the wheels had come off, and was trundling with

cumbrous gaiety into the ditch. Flurry stopped the filly and began to

laugh; Leigh Kelway said something startlingly unparliamentary under

his breath.

"Well, it might be worse," Flurry said consolingly as he lifted the

tire on to the car; "we're not half a mile from a forge."

We walked that half-mile in funereal procession behind the car; the

glory had departed from the weather, and an ugly wall of cloud was

rising up out of the west to meet the sun; the hills had darkened and

lost colour, and the white bog cotton shivered in a cold wind that

smelt of rain.

By a miracle the smith was not at the races, owing, as he explained, to

his having "the toothaches," the two facts combined producing in him a

morosity only equalled by that of Leigh Kelway. The smith's sole

comment on the situation was to unharness the filly, and drag her into

the forge, where he tied her up. He then proceeded to whistle

viciously on his fingers in the direction of a cottage, and to command,

in tones of thunder, some unseen creature to bring over a couple of

baskets of turf. The turf arrived in process of time, on a woman's

back, and was arranged in a circle in a yard at the back of the forge.

The tire was bedded in it, and the turf was with difficulty kindled at

different points.

"Ye'll not get to the races this day," said the smith, yielding to a

sardonic satisfaction; "the turf's wet, and I haven't one to do a

hand's turn for me." He laid the wheel on the ground and lit his pipe.

Leigh Kelway looked pallidly about him over the spacious empty

landscape of brown mountain slopes patched with golden furze and seamed

with grey walls; I wondered if he were as hungry as I. We sat on

stones opposite the smouldering ring of turf and smoked, and Flurry

beguiled the smith into grim and calumnious confidences about every

horse in the country. After about an hour, during which the turf went

out three times, and the weather became more and more threatening, a

girl with a red petticoat over her head appeared at the gate of the

yard, and said to the smith:

"The horse is gone away from ye."

"Where?" exclaimed Flurry, springing to his feet.

"I met him walking wesht the road there below, and when I thought to

turn him he commenced to gallop."

"Pulled her head out of the headstall," said Flurry, after a rapid

survey of the forge. "She's near home by now."

It was at this moment that the rain began; the situation could scarcely

have been better stage-managed. After reviewing the position, Flurry

and I decided that the only thing to do was to walk to a public-house a

couple of miles farther on, feed there if possible, hire a car, and go

home.

It was an uphill walk, with mild generous raindrops striking thicker

and thicker on our faces; no one talked, and the grey clouds crowded up

from behind the hills like billows of steam. Leigh Kelway bore it all

with egregious resignation. I cannot pretend that I was at heart

sympathetic, but by virtue of being his host I felt responsible for the

breakdown, for his light suit, for everything, and divined his

sentiment of horror at the first sight of the public-house.

It was a long, low cottage, with a line of dripping elm-trees

overshadowing it; empty cars and carts round its door, and a babel from

within made it evident that the race-goers were pursuing a gradual

homeward route. The shop was crammed with steaming countrymen, whose

loud brawling voices, all talking together, roused my English friend to

his first remark since we had left the forge.

"Surely, Yeates, we are not going into that place?" he said severely;

"those men are all drunk."

"Ah, nothing to signify!" said Flurry, plunging in and driving his way

through the throng like a plough. "Here, Mary Kate!" he called to the

girl behind the counter, "tell your mother we want some tea and bread

and butter in the room inside."

The smell of bad tobacco and spilt porter was choking; we worked our

way through it after him towards the end of the shop, intersecting at

every hand discussions about the races.

"Tom was very nice. He spared his horse all along, and then he put

into him--" "Well, at Goggin's corner the third horse was before the

second, but he was goin' wake in himself." "I tell ye the mare had the

hind leg fasht in the fore." "Clancy was dipping in the saddle."

"'Twas a dam nice race whatever----"