PART II

A quarter of an hour later Philippa and I stood in the high road, with

the sense of deliverance throbbing in every grateful nerve, and viewed

the car, with the job-cook and the policeman, swing heavily away

towards the railway station.

Mine was the strategy that had brought about our escape, mine were the

attractions that had lured the cook to mount the policeman's car with

me, and still more inalienably mine was the searing moment when, still

arm-in-arm with the cook, we drove away from the deeply appreciative

party on the doorsteps. Philippa and a policeman were on the opposite

side of the car; the second policeman, very considerately, walked.

We were close to the station, the cook had sung herself to sleep, and

Philippa and I had relapsed into the depths of abysmal despondency,

when our incredulous eyes beheld the Butler-Knoxes' coachman coming

towards us at a trot, riding a bay horse and leading a grey, on which

was a side-saddle. Flavin, the horse dealer, had, after all, been as

good as Flurry's word--the hirelings were here, and all was right with

the world.

The car slackened to a walk, we slid from it silently, and it and its

burden passed into that place of shadows to which all extraneous

affairs of life betake themselves on a hunting morning, when the hour

is come, and the horse.

Looshy's coachman delivered to me the bay horse, a large and

notable-looking animal, with a Roman nose adorned with a crooked blaze,

a tranquil eye, and two white stockings. In his left hand he held a

compact iron-grey mare, hogged and docked, who came up to the bank by

the roadside, to be mounted, as neatly as a man-o'-war boat comes

alongside. Hirelings of so superior a class it had never before been

my privilege to meet, and I made up my mind that they were either

incurably vicious or broken winded.

"It's easy known that this mare's carried a lady before, sir," said the

coachman, a young man with a soul for higher things than driving the

Butler-Knox covered car, "and the big horse is the best I ever seen

come out of Flavin's! He's in grand condition, he's as slick as a

mouse! Only for Mr. Flurry being there we'd hardly have got them," he

continued, while he lengthened my stirrup-leathers, "the chap Flavin

sent with them had drink taken, and the porters had the box shunted and

himself in it, stretched, and the bottle of whisky with him!"

Flavin's man and his bottle of whisky were now negligible incidents for

me. Philippa was already under way, and the time was short. The bay

horse, arching his neck and reaching pleasantly at his bit, went away

at a rhythmic and easy trot, the grey mare flitted beside him with

equal precision; it was, perhaps, rather fast for riding to a meet, but

we were late, and were they not hirelings?

We followed our guides, the telegraph posts, for some four miles of

level road; they dropped down a deepening valley to a grey and brimming

river, and presently came slate roofs and white-washed houses, staring

at each other across an empty village street. We had arrived at

Kilbarron, the scene of the meet, and the meet was not.

"They've gone on! they've gone on!" screamed an old woman from a

doorway, "away up over the hill!"

Evidently every other live thing had followed the hunt, and we did not

spare Mr. Flavin's horses in doing the same. We reached the top of the

long hill in a remarkably brief space of time, and, having done so,

realised that we were not too late. A couple of fields away a row of

figures, standing like palings along the top of a bank, with their

backs to us, told that the hounds were still in view; even as we

sighted them, the palings plunged _en masse_ from their standpoint with

that composite yell that in Ireland denotes the breaking (and

frequently the heading) of a fox, and vanished. Whatever was

happening, it was not coming our way. I turned my hireling at the bank

by the roadside, he came round with a responsive swing, and in two

large and orderly bounds he was over. Before I had time to look round,

the grey mare, with the faintest hint of a buck, galloped emulously

past me.

"Perfection!" panted Philippa, putting her hat straight.

As we came up on to the next bank, recently vacated by its human

palisade, we found that fortune had smiled upon us. Just below, on our

right, was a long strip of gorse covert; three big fields beyond it,

gliding from us like a flock of seagulls, were the clamouring hounds,

and in the space between us and them bucketed the hunt, in the first

fine frenzy of getting away. Flavin's bay immediately caught hold, not

implacably, but with the firmness of superior knowledge; the grey mare,

having ascertained that Philippa was not going to interfere, thought

better of going on alone, and took the time from her stable companion.

The field was already sorting itself into the usual divisions of the

forward, the cunning, and the useless; our luck stood to us; the

forward division, carried away by the enthusiasm of a good start and a

sympathetic fall of ground, succeeded in less than a quarter of a mile

in hustling the hounds over the line, and brought about a check. We

joined the rearguard, and worked our way towards the front,

unobtrusively, because Sir Thomas Purcell's comments on the situation

were circling like a stock-whip among the guilty, and were not sparing

the innocent. At this moment we found Flurry Knox beside us.

"Sir Thomas is giving the soldiers their tea in a mug!" he said; "and

they were in the want of it! How are those horses doing with you?" he

went on, looking our steeds up and down. "They look up to your

weights, anyhow! I suppose you didn't see your friend, the General?

He was at the meet in a motor."

"In a motor!" repeated Philippa. "I thought he was such a wonderful

rider."

"He knows how to get a motor along, anyhow," replied Flurry, his

attentive eyes following the operations of the hounds; "maybe he has

the gout. You'd say he had by the colour of his face. Hullo! Boys!

They're away again! Come on, Mrs. Yeates! Knock your two guineas'

worth out of Flavin!"

Short as it was, the burst had been long enough to tranquillise my

anxieties as to our hirelings' wind, and when we started again we found

them almost excessively ready for the stone-faced bank that confronted

us at the end of the field. Some twenty of us, including the chidden,

but wholly unabashed soldiers, went at it in line, and, after the

manner of stone-faced banks, it grew very tall as we approached it.

Flavin's bay strode unfalteringly over it; it was as though he grasped

it and flung it behind him. The grey mare, full of jealousy and

vain-glory, had a hard try to fly the whole thing, but retained

sufficient self-control to change feet at the last possible instant;

with or without a scramble or a peck, we all arrived somehow in the

next field, and saw, topping the succeeding fence, the bulky chestnut

quarters of Sir Thomas Purcell's horse and the square scarlet back of

Sir Thomas. Away to the left, on an assortment of astute crocks, three

of the Misses Purcell followed the First Whip, at as considerable a

distance from their parent as was consistent with a good place. Their

voices came confusedly to us; apparently each was telling the others to

get out of her way.

For a quarter of an hour the hounds ran hard over the clean

pasture-land, whose curves rose before us and glided astern like the

long rollers under an Atlantic liner. Innocent of rocks or pitfalls,

unimpeachable as to surface, it was a page of fair print as compared

with the black letter manuscript to which the country of Mr. Flurry

Knox's hounds might be likened. Never before have I crossed fences as

sound, as seductive, it was like jumping large and well-upholstered

Chesterfield sofas; Chesterfieldian also were the manners of Flavin's

bay. I found myself in the magnificent position of giving a lead to

Flurry and the Dodger, of giving several leads to the soldiery; once,

when a wide and boggy stream occurred, the Misses Purcell and the

crocks looked to me as their pioneer. The hustle and the hurry never

relaxed; the hounds had fastened on the line and were running it as

though it were a footpath; but for the check at the start, no fox could

have held his lead for so long at such a pace, and whatever the pace,

the tails of the horses of Sir Thomas and the First Whip never failed

to disappear over the bank just ahead.

For me, in the unwonted glory of heading the desperadoes of the first

flight, life and the future were contained in the question of how much

longer I could count on my hireling. I was just able to spare a hasty

thought or two to Philippa and the grey, and I remember that it was

after a heavy drop into a road that I noticed, with the just and

impotent wrath of a husband, that her hair was beginning to come down.

It was just then that I first saw the motor. The fox had run the road

for some little distance; we clattered and splashed along it, until an

intimidating roar from Sir Thomas and the sight of his right arm in the

air, brought us, bumping and tugging, to a standstill. The hounds were

for a moment at fault, swarming, with their heads down, over every inch

of the road, and beyond them, about a hundred yards from us, was a

resplendent scarlet motor, whose nearer approach was summarily

interdicted by the First Whip. I am short-sighted, but I caught an

impression of two elderly gentlemen, one of whom, wearing a white

moustache and a tall hat, was responding warmly to the fulminations of

Sir Thomas. If this were my ancient brother-in-arms, Jimmy Porteous,

following hounds in a motor, times were indeed changed. I dismissed

the possibility from my mind. Just then I caught sight of Flurry's

face; it had in it the fearful joy of a schoolboy who has seen a squib

put into the tail pocket of the schoolmaster, and awaits the result.

Mrs. Flurry, in the heroic act of plucking a hairpin from her own

unshaken golden-red plaits, and yielding it to Philippa, met his eye

with a glance that was so expressionless as to amount to a danger

signal.

At this moment the hounds jostled over the wall with a clatter of

falling stones; they spread themselves in the field like the opening of

a fan, they narrowed to the recovered line like the closing of one; Sir

Thomas's chestnut hoisted himself and his fifteen-stone burden out of

the road with the heave of an earthquake. The riders shoved after him,

and we were swept again into the current of the hunt.

As we thundered away up the field threatening shouts from the checked

motorists followed us; apparently, after the manner of their kind, they

had not a moment to spare, and the delay had annoyed them. The next

fence arrived, and they, and all else, were forgotten.

There was a wood ahead of us, cresting a long upland, and for it the

hounds were making, at a pace that brutally ignored the rise of ground,

and the fact that in these higher levels the fields were smaller, and

the fences had to be faced up a hill that momently grew steeper.

"Hold on, Mrs. Yeates, till I take down that pole for you!" Flurry's

voice followed us up the hill, and there was that in it that told he

was making heavy weather of it. He was leading the dripping Dodger,

and I have seldom seen a redder face than his as he laboured past

Philippa and dragged away the shaft of a cart that barred a gap. "Bad

luck to this for a close country!" he puffed. "You're not off one

fence before you're on top of the next!" Flavin's horses were

certainly lathering pretty freely, but were otherwise making no remark

on the situation, and neither of them had so far made a mistake of any

kind. I saw the First Whip regard the bay with obvious respect, and

turn with a confidential comment to the nearest Miss Purcell. It

hall-marked my achievements.

Philippa and I were among the first into the wood; even Flurry had been

left three fields behind, and the glory of our position radiated from

us, as we stood at the end of the main ride, sublimely surveying the

arrival of the rest of the streaming hunt. Sir Thomas and the hounds

had dived out of sight into the recesses of the wood; a period of

inaction ensued, and for a few balmy minutes peace with honour was ours.

Balmy, however, as were the minutes, there crept into them an anxiety

as to what the hounds were doing. A great and complete silence had

fallen as far as they and Sir Thomas were concerned, and Philippa and

I, conscious of our high estate as leaders of the hunt, melted away

from the crowd to investigate matters. We followed a path that took us

across the wood, and the deeper we went the deeper was the silence, and

the more acute became our fears that we had been left behind. Sir

Thomas had an evil reputation for slipping his field and getting away

alone.

"There's the horn!" cried Philippa. "It's outside the wood! They

_have_ gone away. Hurry!"

We were squeezing along the farther edge of the covert, looking for a

way out, and I, too, heard the note, faint, yet commanding. I hurried.

That is to say, with my hat over my eyes, and my cheek laid against the

bay's neck, I followed my wife up an alley that was barely wide enough

for a woodcock.

On our left was an impassable hedge of small trees, crowning a heavy

drop into the field outside the wood; our faces were rowelled by the

branches of young spruce firs. It was all very well for Philippa,

riding nearly two hands lower than I, to twist her way in and out

through them like a squirrel, but for me, on a 16.2 horse, resolved on

following his stable companion through a keyhole if necessary, it was

anything but well. My eyes were tightly shut, my arm was in front of

them, and my eye-glass was hanging down my back, when I felt the bay

stop.

"Here's a way out," said my wife's voice, apparently from the middle of

a fir tree, "there's a sort of a cattle track here."

There followed a scramble and a slide, then Philippa's voice again,

enjoining me to keep to the right.

She has since explained that she really meant the left, and that, in

any case, I might have known that she always said right when she meant

left; be that as it may, when the bay and I had committed ourselves to

the steep descent--half water-course, half cattle track--I was smitten

in the face by a holly branch. Before I had recovered from its impact,

a stout beechen bough, that it had masked, met me violently across the

waistcoat and held me in mid-air, as the gorilla is reputed to grasp

and hold the traveller, while my horse moved firmly downward from

beneath me. After a moment of suspense, mental and physical, I fell to

earth, like the arrow in the song, I knew not where, and tobogganed

painfully down something steep and stony, with briers in it.

As I rose to my feet, the mellow note of the horn that had beguiled us

from the wood, again sounded; nearer now, and with a harsher cadence,

and I perceived, at the farther end of the field in which I had

arrived, a bullock, with his head over a gate, sending a long and

lamentable bugle note to the companions from whom he had been

separated. Simultaneously the hounds opened far back in the wood

behind me, and I knew that the flood-tide of luck had turned against us.

Flavin's bay had not waited for me. He was already well away, going

with head and tail high held, a gentleman at large, seeking for

entertainment at a lively and irresponsible trot. Pursuing him, with

more zeal than discretion, was Philippa on the grey mare; he broke into

a canter, and I had the pleasure of seeing them both swing through a

gateway and proceed at a round gallop across the next field. I

followed them at the best imitation of the same pace that my boots

permitted, and squelched through the mire of the gateway in time to see

the bay horse jump a tall bank, and drop with a clatter into a road.

At the same moment the drumming and hooting of a motor-car broke upon

my ear, and three heads, one of them wearing a tall hat, slid at high

speed along the line of the fence. At sight of this apparition the bay

horse gave a massive buck, and fled at full speed up a lane. To my

surprise and gratification, the motor-car instantly stopped, and one of

its occupants--the wearer of the tall hat--sprang out and gave chase to

my horse.

My attention was here abruptly transferred to my wife, who, having

followed the chase, whether by her own wish or that of the grey mare I

have never been able to discover, was now combating the desire of the

latter to jump the bank at the exact spot calculated to land them both

in the lap of the motor-car. The dispute ended in a slanting and

crab-like rush at a place twenty yards lower down, and it was then that

the figure of our host, Mr. Lucius Butler-Knox, rose, amazingly, in the

motor-car, making semaphore gestures of warning.

The mare jumped crookedly on to the bank, hung there for half a second,

and launched herself into space, the launch being followed,

appropriately, by a mighty splash. Neither she nor Philippa reappeared.

Throughout these events I had not ceased to run, and the next thing I

can distinctly recall is scrambling, thoroughly blown, on to the fence,

whence a moving scene presented itself to me. The grey mare and

Philippa had, with singular ingenuity, selected between them the one

place in the fence where disaster was inevitable; and I now beheld my

wife prone in two feet of yellow water, the overflow of a flooded ditch

that had turned a hollow by the roadside into a sufficiently imposing

pond. Mr. Butler-Knox and the chauffeur were already rendering all the

assistance possible, short of wetting their feet, and were hauling her

ashore; while the grey mare, recumbent in deeper water, surveyed the

operation with composure, and made no attempt to move. When I joined

the party--a process involving a wide circuit of the flood--Philippa

had sunk, dripping, upon a heap of stones by the roadside, in laughter

as inexplicable as it was unsuitable. There was, at all events, no

need to ask if she were hurt.

"The most appalling thing that you ever knew in your life has

happened!" she wailed, and instantly fell again into unseemly

convulsions.

Whatever the jest might be, it did not appeal to the chauffeur, who

withdrew in silence to his motor, coldly wiping the vicarious duckweed

from his knees with a silk pocket-handkerchief. Still less did it

appeal to me. Any fair-minded person will admit that I had cause to be

excessively angry with Philippa. That a grown woman, the mother of two

children, should mistake the bellow of a bullock for the note of a horn

was bad enough; but that when, having caused a serious accident by not

knowing her right hand from her left, and having, by further

insanities, driven one valuable horse adrift into the country, probably

broken the back of another, laid the seeds of heart disease in her

husband from shock and over-exertion, and of rheumatic fever in

herself; when, I repeat, after all these outrages, she should sit in a

soaking heap by the roadside, laughing like a maniac, I feel that the

sympathy of the public will not be withheld from me.

The mystery of Mr. Butler-Knox's appearance in the motor-car passed by

me like a feather in a whirlwind; I strode without a word into the

yellow flood in which the mare was lying, and got hold of her reins

with the handle of my crop; I might as well have tried to draw out

Behemoth with a hook. Her hind-quarters were well fixed in the hidden

ditch, she made not the slightest effort to stir, and continued to

recline, contentedly, not to say defiantly.

"That's a great sign of fine weather," said a voice behind me in

affable comment, "when a horse will lie down in wather that way."

[Illustration: "THAT'S A GREAT SIGN OF FINE WEATHER WHEN A HORSE WILL

LIE DOWN IN WATHER THAT WAY"]

I turned upon my consoler, and saw a young countryman with a fur-lined

coat hanging upon his arm.

"I got this thrown in the _bohireen_ above," he said, "the other

gentleman, that's follying the bay horse, stripped it off him, and God

knows it's itself that's weighty!"

"My dear Major!" began Looshy, addressing me agitatedly from the bank,

as a hen might address a refractory duckling, "there has been a most

unfortunate mistake."

"There has! There has! It's all Flurry's fault!" gasped Philippa,

staggering towards me like a drunken woman.

"I fear the General is terribly annoyed," continued Looshy, wiping his

grey beard and mopping his collar to remove the muddy imprint of

Philippa's arm; "he rushed into Garden Mount in search of his horses

when he found they were not at the meet nor at the station--he left

Lady Porteous with my sisters and took me to identify you; I mentioned

your name, but he did not seem to grasp it--indeed his language

was--er--was such that I thought it unwise to press the point."

I dropped the reins and began, slowly, to wade out of the pool.

"I understand he has but just paid £300 for these horses--it was an

unpardonable mistake of Flurry's," went on Looshy, "he found the

General's horses at the station and thought that they were Flavin's."

"Dear Flurry!" sobbed Philippa, shamelessly, reeling against me and

clutching my arm.

"Begor' he have the horse!" said the young countryman, looking up the

hill.

A stout figure in a red coat and tall hat was approaching by way of the

_bohireen_, followed by a man leading a limping horse.

"I think," said Looshy nervously, "that Mrs. Yeates had better have my

seat in the motor-car and hurry home. I will walk--I should really

prefer it. The General will be quite happy now that he has found his

horses and his old friend."

[Illustration: "I WILL WALK--I SHOULD REALLY PREFER IT"]

The chauffeur, plying a long-necked oil-can, smiled sardonically.

X

SHARPER THAN A FERRET'S TOOTH

"My dear Philippa," said Miss Shute gloomily, "I have about as much

chance of spending next winter in Florence as I have of spending it in

the moon. I despair of ever getting Bernard married. I look upon him

as hopeless."

"I don't agree with you at all," replied Philippa, "don't you remember

how demented he was about Sally Knox? And when we all thought he was

on the verge of suicide, we discovered that he was deep in a flirtation

with that American girl. It seems to me he's ready to be devoted to

any one who takes him in hand. He has none of that deadly helpless

fidelity about him."

"I ought never to have allowed him to take up gardening," said Miss

Shute, despondently pursuing her own line of thought, "it only promotes

intimacies with dowagers."

"Yes, and it makes men elderly, and contented, and stay-at-home,"

agreed Philippa; "it's one of the worst signs! But I can easily make

Sybil Hervey think she's a gardener. She's a thoroughly nice,

coercible girl. Alice has always been so particular about her girls.

Of course with their money they've been run after a good deal, but

they're not in the least spoilt."

"I don't think," I murmured privately to Maria, who was trying to

hypnotise me into letting her crawl on to the sofa beside me, "that

we'll borrow half-a-crown to get drunk with her."

Maria wagged her tail in servile acquiescence.

"Nonsense!" said my wife largely.

A month from the date of this conversation, Sybil Hervey, my wife's

pretty, young, and well-dowered niece, was staying beneath our roof. I

had not changed my mind about the half-crown, though Maria, perfidious

as ever, feigned for her the impassioned affection that had so often

imposed upon the guileless guest within my gates.

"Why, this dog has taken the most extraordinary fancy to me!" Sybil

Hervey (who was really a very amiable girl) would say, and Maria, with

a furtive eye upon her owners, would softly draw the guest's third

piece of cake into the brown velvet bag that she called her mouth.

This was all very well from Maria's point of view, but a friendship

with Maria had not been the object of Miss Hervey's importation. I

evade, by main strength, the quotation from Burns proper to this state

of affairs, and proceed to say that the matrimonial scheme laid by my

wife and Miss Shute was not prospering. Sybil Hervey, the coercible,

the thoroughly nice, shied persistently at the instructive pages of

Robinson's "English Flower Garden," and stuck in her toes and refused

point blank to weed seedlings for her Aunt Philippa. Nor was a

comprehensive garden party at Clountiss attended with any success; far

otherwise. Miss Shute unfortunately thought it incumbent on her to

trawl in deep waters, and to invite even the McRory family to her

entertainment, with the result that her brother, Bernard--I quote my

wife verbatim--made a ridiculous spectacle of himself by walking about

all the afternoon with a fluffy-haired, certainly-rather-pretty, little

abomination, a creature who was staying with the McRorys. Worse even

than this, Sybil had disappointed, if not disgraced, her backers, by

vanishing from the ken of un-gentle men with Mr. De Lacy McRory, known

to his friends as "Curly."

I have before now dealt, superficially, and quite inadequately, with

the McRorys. It may even be permitted to me to recall again the

generic description of each young male McRory. "A bit of a lad, but

nothing at all to the next youngest." Since that time the family had

worn its way, unequally and in patches, into the tolerance of the

neighbourhood. It was said, apologetically, that the daughters danced,

and played tennis and golf so well, and the sons did the same and were

such excellent shots, and that Mrs. McRory bought, uncomplainingly, all

that was offered to her at bazaars, and could always be counted on for

a whole row of seats at local concerts. As for old McRory, people said

that he was certainly rather awful, but that he was better than his

family in that he knew that he was awful, and kept out of the way. As

a matter of history, there were not many functions where a McRory of

some kind, in accordance with its special accomplishment, did not find,

at all events, standing room; fewer still where they did not form a

valued topic of conversation.

Curly McRory was, perhaps, the pioneer of his family in their advance

to cross what has been usefully called "the bounder-y line." He played

all games well, and he was indisputably good-looking, he knew how to be

discreetly silent; he also, apparently, knew how to talk to Sybil what

time her accredited chaperon, oblivious of her position, played two

engrossing sets of tennis.

After this fiasco came a period of stagnation, during which Mr. De Lacy

McRory honoured us with his first visit to Shreelane, bicycling over to

see me, on business connected with the golf club; in my regretted

absence he asked for Mrs. Yeates, and stayed for tea. Following upon

this Sybil took to saying, "I will," in what she believed to be a

brogue, instead of "yes," and was detected in fruitless search for the

McRorys of Temple Braney in the pages of Burke's Irish Landed Gentry.

It was at this unsatisfactory juncture that Mrs. Flurry Knox entered

into the affair with an invitation to us to spend three days at

Aussolas Castle, one of which was to be devoted to the destruction of a

pack of grouse, fabled by John Kane, the keeper, to frequent a mountain

back of Aussolas: the Shutes were also to be of the party. I seemed to

detect in the arrangement a hand more diplomatic than that of

Providence, but I said nothing.

The Flurry Knoxes were, for the moment, in residence at Aussolas, while

old Mrs. Knox made her annual pilgrimage to Buxton. They were sent

there to keep the servants from fighting, and because John Kane had

said that there was no such enemies to pigs as servants on board wages.

(A dark saying, bearing indirectly on the plenishing of pig-buckets.)

Between servants and pigs, as indeed in most affairs of life, little

Mrs. Flurry held the scales of justice with a remarkably steady hand,

and under her régime one could at all events be reasonably sure of

having one's boots cleaned, and of getting a hot bath in the morning.

We went to Aussolas, and Flurry and Bernard Shute and I put in a

blazing September day on the mountain, wading knee deep in matted

heather and furze, in pursuit of the mythical grouse, and brought home

two hares and a headache (the latter being my contribution to the bag).

The ladies met us with tea; Sybil, in Harris tweed and admirable boots,

looked, I must admit, uncommonly smart. Even Flurry was impressed, and

it was palpable to the most superficial observer that Bernard was at

length beginning, like a baby, to "take notice." After tea he and she

moved away in sweet accord to wash teacups in a bog-hole, from whence

their prattle came prosperously to the ears of the three diplomatists,

seated, like the witches in Macbeth, upon the heath, and, like them,

arranging futures for other people. Bearing in mind that one of the

witches had (in a previous incarnation as Miss Sally Knox) held Bernard

in her thrall, and still retained him in a platonic sphere of

influence, any person of experience would have said that the odds were

greatly against Mr. Shute.

[Illustration: FLURRY AND I PUT IN A BLAZING SEPTEMBER DAY ON THE

MOUNTAIN]

The hot bath that was the _fine fleur_ of Mrs. Flurry's régime at

Aussolas failed conspicuously next morning. It was the precursor of a

general slump. When, at a liberal 9.30, I arrived in the dining-room,

of neither host, hostess, nor breakfast was there any sign. The host,

it appeared, had gone to a fair; having waited for a hungry half-hour

we were coming to the conclusion that the hostess had gone with him,

when the door opened and Mrs. Flurry came swiftly into the room. Her

face was as a book, where men might read strange matters; it was also

of a hue that suggested the ardent climate of the kitchen; in her hand

she carried a toast-rack, and following hard on her heels came three

maids, also heavily flushed, bearing various foods, and all,

apparently, on the verge of tears. This cortège having retired, Mrs.

Flurry proceeded to explain. The butler, Johnny, a dingy young man,

once Mrs. Knox's bathchair-attendant, had departed at 8 A.M.,

accompanied by Michael the pantry boy, to dig a grave for a cousin. To

those acquainted with Aussolas there was nothing remarkable in this,

but Sybil Hervey's china-blue eyes opened wide, and I heard her ask

Bernard in a low voice if he thought it was anything agrarian. The

annoyance of the cook at the defection of the butler and pantry boy was

so acute that she had retired to her room and refused to send in

breakfast.

"That was no more than I should have expected from the servants here,"

said Mrs. Flurry vindictively, "but what was just a little too much was

finding the yard-boy cramming the toast into the toast-rack with his

fingers."

At this my wife's niece uttered the loud yell which all young women

with any pretension to smartness have by them for use on emergencies,

and exclaimed--

"Oh, _don't_!"

"You needn't be frightened," said Mrs. Flurry, giving Miss Hervey the

eighth part of a glance of her greeny-grey eyes; "I made this stuff

myself, and you may all think yourselves lucky to get anything," she

went on, "as one of the herd of incapables downstairs said, 'to get as

much milk as'd do the tea itself, that was the stratagem'!"

Hard on the heels of the quotation there came a rushing sound in the

hall without, a furious grappling with the door-handle, and the cook

herself, or rather the Tragic Muse in person, burst into the room. Her

tawny hair hung loose about her head; her yellow-brown eyes blazed in

an ashen and extremely handsome face; she shook a pair of freckled

fists at the universe. I cannot pretend to do more than indicate the

drift of her denunciation. Brunhilde, ascending the funeral pyre, with

full orchestral accompaniment, could not more fully and deafeningly

have held her audience, and the theme might have been taken out of the

darkest corner of any of the Sagas.

The burying-ground of her clan was--so she had been informed by a swift

runner--even now being broken into by the butler and the pantry boy,

and the graves of her ancestors were being thrown open to the Four

Winds of the World, to make room for the Scuff of the Country (whatever

that might mean). Here followed the most capable and comprehensive

cursings of the butler and the pantry boy that it has ever been my lot

to admire, delivered at lightning speed, and with gestures worthy of

the highest traditions of classic drama, the whole ending with the

statement that she was on her way to the graveyard now to drink their

blood.

"I trust you will, Kate," cordially responded Mrs. Flurry, "don't wait

a moment!"

The Tragic Muse, startled into an instant of silence, stared wildly at

Mrs. Flurry, seemed to scent afar off the possibility that she was not

being taken seriously, and whirled from the room, a Vampire on the

warpath.

"I meant every word I said to her!" said Sally, looking round upon us

defiantly, "I was very near offering her your motor, Mr. Shute! The

sooner she kills Johnny and Michael the better pleased I shall be! And

I may tell you all," she added, "that we shall have no luncheon to-day,

and most probably no dinner!"

"Oh, that's all right!" said Philippa, seeing her chance, and hammering

in her wedge with all speed, "now there's nothing for it but sandwiches

and a picnic!"

The lake at Aussolas was one of a winding chain of three, connected by

narrow channels cut through the bog for the passage of boats that

carried turf to the lake-side dwellers. The end one of these, known as

Braney's Lake, was a recognised place for picnics; a ruined oratory on

a wooded point supplying the pretext, and a reliable spring well

completing the equipment. The weather was of the variety specially

associated in my mind with Philippa's picnics, brilliantly fine, with a

falling glass, and 12 o'clock saw us shoving out from the Aussolas turf

quay, through the reeds and the rocks.

[Illustration: BRANEY'S LAKE]

We were a party of six, in two boats; diplomacy, whose I know not, had

so disposed matters that Bernard Shute and Sybil Hervey were despatched

together in a dapper punt, and I, realising to the full the

insignificance of my position as a married man, found myself tugging at

a tough and ponderous oar, in a species of barge, known to history as

"The-Yallow-Boat-that-was-painted-black." My wife and Mrs. Flurry took

turns in assisting my labours by paddling with a scull in the bow,

while Miss Shute languidly pulled the wrong string at intervals, in the

stern. Why, I grumbled contentiously, should, as it were, fish be made

of Bernard and flesh be made of me (which was a highly figurative way

of describing a performance that would take a stone off my weight ere

all was done). Why, I repeated, should not Bernard put his broad back

into it in the heavy boat with me, and leave the punt for the ladies?

My wife tore herself from _sotto voce_ gabblings with Sally in the bow

to tell me that I was thoroughly unsympathetic, what time she dealt me

an unintentional but none the less disabling blow in the spine, in her

effort to fall again into stroke. Mrs. Flurry, in order to take turns

at the oar with Philippa, had seated herself on the luncheon basket in

the bow, thereby sinking the old tub by the head, and, as we afterwards

found, causing her to leak in the sun-dried upper seams. To us

travelled the voice of Bernard, lightly propelling his skiff over the

ruffled and sparkling blue water.

"He's telling her about all the alterations he's going to make at

Clountiss!" hissed Sally down the back of Philippa's neck.

"Almost actionable!" responded my wife, and in her enthusiasm her oar

again took me heavily between the shoulder blades.

We laboured out of the Aussolas lake, and poled down the narrow channel

into the middle lake, where shallows, and a heavy summer's growth of

reeds, did not facilitate our advance. The day began to cloud over; as

we wobbled out of the second channel into Braney's lake the sun went

in, a sharp shower began to whip the water, and simultaneously Miss

Shute announced that her feet were wet, and that she thought the boat

must be leaking. I then perceived that the water was up to the bottom

boards, and was coming in faster than I could have wished. A baler was

required, and I proceeded with confidence to search for the rusty

mustard tin, or cracked jam-crock, that fills that office. There was

nothing to be found.

"There are plenty of cups in the luncheon basket," said Sally,

tranquilly; "Flurry once had to bale this old boat out with one of his

grandmother's galoshes."

Philippa and I began to row with some vigour, while Sally wrestled with

the fastening of the luncheon basket in the bow. The lid opened with a

jerk and a crack. There was one long and speechless moment, and then

Sally said in a very gentle voice:

"They've sent the washing-basket, with all the clean clothes!"

Of the general bearings of this catastrophe there was no time to think;

its most pressing feature was the fact that there were no cups with

which to bale the boat. I looked over my shoulder and saw Bernard

dragging the punt ashore under the ruined oratory, a quarter of a mile

away; there was nothing for it but to turn and make for the shore on

our right at the best pace attainable. Sally and Philippa

double-banked the bow oar, and the old boat, leaking harder at each

moment, wallowed on towards a landing stage that suddenly became

visible amid the reeds--the bottom boards were by this time awash, and

Miss Shute's complexion and that of her holland dress matched to a

shade.

"Could you throw the washing overboard?" I suggested over my shoulder,

labouring the while at my massy oar.

"My--new--nightgowns!" panted Mrs. Flurry, "never!"

Just then big rocks began to show yellow in the depths, the next moment

the boat scraped over one, and, almost immediately afterwards, settled

down quietly and with dignity in some three feet of brown water and mud.

Only those who have tried to get out of a submerged boat, can form any

idea of what then befell. Our feet and legs turned to lead, the water

to glue, all that was floatable in the boat rose to the surface, and

lay about there impeding our every movement. We had foundered in sight

of port and were not half-a-dozen yards from the landing stage, but to

drag myself and three women, all up to our waists in water, and the

ladies hopelessly handicapped by their petticoats, over the gunwale of

a sunken boat, and to flounder ashore with them in mud, over unsteady

rocks, and through the ever-hampering reeds, was infinitely more

difficult and exhausting than it may seem.

Clasping a slimy post to my bosom with one arm, I was in the act of

shoving Miss Shute up on to the landing stage, when I heard the

unmistakeable Dublin light tenor voice of a McRory hail me, announcing

that he was coming to our rescue. More distant shouts, and the rapid

creaking of hard-pulled oars told that Bernard and Sybil were also

speeding to our aid. The three diplomates, dripping on the end of the

pier, looked at each other bodefully, and Philippa murmured:

"The worst has happened!"

After that the worst continued to happen, and at a pace that overbore

all resistance. Mr. De Lacy McRory, tall and beautiful, in lily-white

flannels, took the lead into his own hands and played his game

faultlessly. Philippa was the object of his chief solicitude, Sally

and Miss Shute had their share of a manly tenderness that resolutely

ignored the degrading absurdity of their appearance; his father's

house, and all that was therein was laid at our feet. Captive and

helpless, we slopped and squelched beside him through the shrubberies

of Temple Braney House, with the shower, now matured into a heavy

down-pour, completing our saturation, too spiritless to resent the

heavy pleasantries of Bernard, the giggling condolences of Sybil.

We have never been able to decide at which moment the knife of

humiliation cut deepest, whether it was when we stood and dripped on

the steps, while Curly McRory summoned in trumpet tones his women-kind,

or when, still dripping, we stood in the hall and were presented to

Mrs. McRory and a troop of young men and maidens, vociferous in

sympathy and hospitality; or when, having progressed like water carts

through the house, we found ourselves installed, like the Plague of

Frogs, in the bedchambers of the McRorys, face to face with the supreme

embarrassment of either going to bed, or of arraying ourselves in the

all too gorgeous garments that were flung before us with a generous

abandon worthy of Sir Walter Raleigh.

I chose the latter course, and, in process of time, found myself

immaculately clothed in what is, I believe, known to tailors as "a

Lounge Suit," though not for untold gold would I have lounged, or by

any carelessness endangered the perfection of the creases of its dark

grey trousers.

The luncheon gong sounded, and, like the leading gentleman in any

drawing-room drama, I put forth from my dressing-room, and at the head

of the stairs met my wife and Miss Shute. They were, if possible,

grander than I, and looked as if they were going to a wedding.

"We had the choice of about eighty silk blouses," breathed Philippa,

gathering up a long and silken train, "Sally has to wear Madame's

clothes, nothing else were short enough. We're in for it, you know,"

she added, "a luncheon is inevitable, and goodness knows when we can

get away, especially if this rain lasts--" her voice broke

hysterically; I turned and saw Mrs. Flurry shuffling towards us in

velvet slippers, holding up with both hands a flowing purple brocade

skirt. I pointed repressively downwards, to where, in the window seat

of the hall below, were visible the crispéd golden curls of Mr. De Lacy

McRory, and the shining rolls and undulations of Miss Sybil Hervey's

_chevelure_. Their heads were in close proximity, and their voices

were low and confidential.

"This must be put a stop to!" said Philippa, rustling swiftly

downstairs.

We all moved processionally in to lunch, arm in arm with the McRorys.

To Philippa had fallen old McRory, who was the best of the party (in

being so awful that he knew he was awful). He maintained an unbroken

silence throughout the meal, but whistled jigs secretly through his

teeth, a method of keeping up his courage of which I believe he was

quite unconscious. Of the brilliance of the part that I played with

Mrs. McRory it would ill become me to speak; what is more worthy of

record is the rapid and Upas-like growth of intimacy between Curly

McRory and my wife's niece. She had probably never before encountered

a young man so anxious to be agreeable, so skilled in achieving that

end. The fact that he was Irish accounted, no doubt, in her eyes, for

all that was unusual in his voice and manners, and his long eyelashes

did the rest. Sybil grew momently pinker and prettier as the long,

extraordinary meal marched on.

Of its component parts I can only remember that there was a soup tureen

full of custard, a mountainous dish of trifle, in whose veins ran

honey, instead of jam, and to whose enlivenment a bottle at least of

whisky had been dedicated; certainly, at one period, Philippa had on

one side of her plate a cup of soup, and on the other a cup of tea.

Cecilia Shute was perhaps the member of our party who took it all

hardest. Pale and implacable, attired in a brilliant blue garment that

was an outrage alike to her convictions and her complexion, she sat

between two young McRorys, who understood no more of her language than

she did of theirs, and was obliged to view with the frigid tranquillity

boasted of by Doctor Johnson, the spectacle of her brother devoting

himself enthusiastically to that McRory cousin whom Philippa had

described as a fluffy-haired abomination. Everything, in fact, was

occurring that was least desired by the ladies of my party, with the

single exception of my niece by marriage; and the glowing satisfaction

of the McRory family was not hid from us, and did not ameliorate the

position.

When luncheon was at length brought to a close nothing could well have

been blacker than the outlook. The rain, and the splendour of our

borrowed plumes, put a return by boat out of the question. It was a

good seven miles round by road, and the McRory family, fleet and

tireless bicyclists, had but one horse, which was lame. A telegram to

Aussolas had been despatched an hour ago, but as Mrs. Flurry was

gloomily certain that every servant there had gone to the funeral, the

time of our release was unknown.

I do not now distinctly remember what occurred immediately after lunch,

but I know there came a period when I found myself alone in the hall,

turning over the pages of a dreary comic paper, uncertain what to do,

but determined on one point, that neither principalities nor powers

should force me into the drawing-room, where sat the three unhappy

women of my party, being entertained within an inch of their lives by

Mrs. McRory. Sybil and Bernard and their boon companions had betaken

themselves to that distant and dilapidated wing of the house in which I

had once unearthed Tomsy Flood, there to play squash racquets in one of

the empty rooms. I was consequently enacting the part laid down for me

by my lounge suit; I was lounging, as a gentleman should, without for

an instant disturbing the creases of my trousers.

At times I was aware of the silent and respectful surveillance of Mr.

McRory in the inner hall, but I thought it best for us both to feign

unconsciousness of his presence. Through a swing door that, true to

its definition, swung wheezily to the cabbage-laden draughts from the

lower regions, I could hear the tide of battle rolling through the

disused wing. The squash racquets seemed to be of a most pervading

character; the thunder of rushing feet, blent with the long,

progressive shriek of an express train, would at intervals approach

almost to the swing door, but I remained unmolested. I had entered

upon my second cigarette, and a period of comparative peace, when I

heard a stealing foot, and found at my elbow a female McRory of about

twelve as years go, but dowered with the accumulated experience of six

elder sisters.

"Did Pinkie and Mr. Shute come in this way to hide?" she began, looking

at me as if "Pinkie," whoever she might be, was in my pocket. "We're

playing hide'n-go-seek, and we can't find them."

I said I knew nothing of them.

The McRory child looked at me with supernal intelligence from under the

wing of dark hair that was tied over one ear.

"They're not playing fair anyhow, and there's Curly and Miss Hervey

that wouldn't play at all!" She eyed me again. "He took her out to

show her the ferrets and they never came back. I was watching them;

she said one of the ferrets bit her finger, and Curly kissed it!"

"I suppose you mean he kissed the ferret," I said repressively, while I

thought of Alice Hervey, mother of Sybil, and trembled.

"Ah, go on! what a fool you're letting on to be!" replied the McRory

child, with elegant sarcasm. She swung round on her heel and sped away

again upon the trail, cannoning against old McRory in the back hall.

"I tell you, that's the lady!" soliloquised old McRory, from the deep

of the back hall. I gathered that he was referring to the social

capacity of his youngest daughter and thought he was probably right.

It was at this moment that deliverance broke like a sunburst upon us; I

saw through the windows of the hall a dogcart and an outside car whirl

past the door and onwards to the yard. The former was driven by Flurry

Knox, the car by Michael the Aussolas pantry boy, apparently none the

worse for his encounter with the vampire cook. I snatched an umbrella,

and, regardless of the lounge suit, followed with all speed the golden

path of the sunburst.

Flurry, clad in glistening yellow oilskins, met me in the yard, wearing

an expression of ill-concealed exultation worthy of Job's comforters at

their brightest.

"D'ye know who opened your wire?" he began, regarding me with an all

observant eye from under his sou-wester, while the rain drops ran down

his nose. "I can tell you there's the Old Gentleman to pay at

Aussolas--or the old lady, and that's worse! That's a nice suit--you

ought to buy that from Curly."

"Who opened my telegram?" I said. I was not at all amused.

"'When she got there, the cupboard was bare,'" returned Flurry. "'Not

a servant in the house, not a bit in the larder!' If it wasn't that by

the mercy of providence I found the picnic basket that you bright boys

had left after you, she'd have torn the house down!"

"I suppose you mean that your grandmother has come back," I said

stonily.

"She fought with her unfortunate devil of a doctor at Buxton," said

Flurry, permitting himself a grin of remembrance, "he told her she was

too old to eat late dinner, and she told him she wasn't going to be a

slave to her stomach or to him either, and she'd eat her dinner when

she pleased, and she landed in at Aussolas by the mid-day train without

a word."

"What did she say when she opened my telegram?" I faltered.

"She said 'Thank God I'm not a fool!'" replied her grandson.

The proposition was unanswerable, and I took it, so to speak, lying

down.

"Here!" said Flurry, summoning the pantry boy. "These horses must go

in out of the rain. I'll look over there for some place I can put

them."

"I see Michael got back from the funeral," I said, following Flurry

across the wide and wet expanse of the yard, "I suppose the cook killed

Johnny?"

"Ah, not at all," said Flurry, "anyway, my grandmother had the two of

them up unpacking her trunks when I left. Here, this place looks like

a stable----"

He opened a door, in front of which a cascade from a broken water-shoot

was splashing noisily. The potent smell of ferrets greeted us.

Seated on the ferrets' box were Mr. De Lacy McRory, and Sybil, daughter

of Alice Hervey. Apparently she had again been bitten by the ferret,

but this time the bite was not on her finger.

XI

OWENEEN THE SPRAT

I was labouring under the slough of Christmas letters and bills, when

my wife came in and asked me if I would take her to the Workhouse.

[Illustration: MY WIFE CAME AND ASKED ME IF I WOULD TAKE HER TO THE

WORKHOUSE]

"My dear," I replied, ponderously, but, I think, excusably, "you have,

as usual, anticipated my intention, but I think we can hold out until

after Christmas."

Philippa declined to pay the jest the respect to which its age entitled

it, and replied inconsequently that I knew perfectly well that she

could not drive the outside car with the children and the Christmas

tree. I assented that they would make an awkward team, and offered, as

a substitute for my services, those of Denis, the stopgap.

Those who live in Ireland best know the staying powers of stopgaps.

Denis, uncle of Michael Leary the Whip, had been imported into the

kennels during my ministry, to bridge a hiatus in the long dynasty of

the kennel-boys, and had remained for eighteen months, a notable

instance of the survival of what might primarily have been considered

the unfittest. That Denis should so long have endured his nephew's

rule was due not so much to the tie of blood, as to the privileged

irresponsibility of a stopgap. Nothing was expected of him, and he

pursued an unmolested course, until the return of Flurry Knox from

South Africa changed the general conditions. He then remained

submerged until he drifted into the gap formed in my own establishment

by Mr. Peter Cadogan's elopement.

Philippa's workhouse-tea took place on Christmas Eve. We were still

hurrying through an early luncheon when the nodding crest of the

Christmas tree passed the dining-room windows. My youngest son

immediately upset his pudding into his lap; and Philippa hustled forth

to put on her hat, an operation which, like the making of an omelette,

can apparently only be successfully performed at the last moment. With

feelings of mingled apprehension and relief I saw the party drive from

the door, the Christmas tree seated on one side of the car, Philippa on

the other, clutching her offspring, Denis on the box, embosomed, like a

wood-pigeon, in the boughs of the spruce fir. I congratulated myself

that the Quaker, now white with the snows of many winters, was in the

shafts. Had I not been too deeply engaged in so arranging the rug that

it should not trail in the mud all the way to Skebawn, I might have

noticed that the lamps had been forgotten.

It was, as I have said, Christmas Eve, and as the afternoon wore on I

began to reflect upon what the road from Skebawn would be in another

hour, full of drunken people, and, what was worse, of carts steered by

drunken people. I had assured Philippa (with what I believe she

describes as masculine _esprit de corps_) of Denis's adequacy as a

driver, but that did not alter the fact that in the last rays of the

setting sun, I got out my bicycle and set forth for the Workhouse.

When I reached the town it was dark, but the Christmas shoppers showed

no tendency to curtail their operations on that account, and the

streets were filled with an intricate and variously moving tide of

people and carts. The paraffin lamps in the shops did their best,

behind bunches of holly, oranges, and monstrous Christmas candles, and

partially illumined the press of dark-cloaked women, and more or less

drunken men, who swayed and shoved and held vast conversations on the

narrow pavements. The red glare of the chemist's globe transformed the

leading female beggar of the town into a being from the Brocken; her

usual Christmas family, contributed for the festival by the neighbours,

as to a Christmas number, were grouped in fortunate ghastliness in the

green light. She extracted from me her recognised tribute, and pursued

by her assurance that she would forgive me now till Easter (_i.e._ that

further alms would not be exacted for at least a fortnight), I made my

way onward into the outer darkness, beyond the uttermost link in the

chain of public-houses.

[Illustration: AN INTRICATE AND VARIOUSLY MOVING TIDE OF PEOPLE]

The road that led to the Workhouse led also to the railway station; a

quarter of a mile away the green light of a signal-post stood high in

the darkness, like an emerald. As I neared the Workhouse I recognised

the deliberate footfall of the Quaker, and presently his long pale face

entered the circle illuminated by my bicycle-lamp. My family were not

at all moved by my solicitude for their safety, but, being in want of

an audience, were pleased to suggest that I should drive home with

them. The road was disgustingly muddy; I tied my bicycle to the back

of the car with the rope that is found in wells of all outside cars.

It was not till I had put out the bicycle lamp that I noticed that the

car-lamps had been forgotten, but Denis, true to the convention of his

tribe, asseverated that he could see better without lights. I took the

place vacated by the Christmas tree, the Quaker pounded on at his usual

stone-breaking trot, and my offspring, in strenuous and entangled duet,

declaimed to me the events of the afternoon.

It was without voice or warning that a row of men was materialised out

of the darkness, under the Quaker's nose; they fell away to right and

left, but one, as if stupefied, held on his way in the middle of the

road. It is not easy to divert the Quaker from his course; we swung to

the right, but the wing of the car, on my side, struck the man full in

the chest. He fell as instantly and solidly as if he were a stone

pillar, and, like a stone, he lay in the mud. Loud and inebriate howls

rose from the others, and, as if in answer, came a long and distant

shriek from an incoming train. Upon this, without bestowing an

instant's further heed to their fallen comrade, the party took to their

heels and ran to the station. It was all done in a dozen seconds; by

the time the Quaker was pulled up we were alone with our victim, and

Denis was hoarsely suggesting to me that it would be better to drive

away at once. I have often since then regretted that I did not take

his advice.

The victim was a very small man; Denis and I dragged him to the side of

the road, and propped him up against the wall. He was of an alarming

limpness, but there was a something reassuring in the reek of whisky

that arose as I leaned over him, trying to diagnose his injuries by the

aid of a succession of lighted matches. His head lay crookedly on his

chest; he breathed heavily, but peacefully, and his limbs seemed

uninjured. Denis at my elbow, did not cease to assure me, tremulously,

that there was nothing ailed the man, that he was a stranger, and that

it would be as good for us to go home. Philippa, on the car, strove as

best she might with the unappeasable curiosity of her sons and with the

pigheaded anxiety of the Quaker to get home to his dinner. At this

juncture a voice, fifty yards away in the darkness, uplifted itself in

song--

"Heaven's refle-hex! Killa-ar-ney!"

it bawled hideously.

It fell as balm upon my ear, in its assurance of the proximity of

Slipper.

"Sure I know the man well," he said, shielding the flame of a match in

his hand with practised skill. "Wake up, me _bouchaleen_!" He shook

him unmercifully. "Open your eyes, darlin'!"

The invalid here showed signs of animation by uttering an incoherent

but, as it seemed, a threatening roar. It lifted Denis as a feather is

lifted by a wind, and wafted him to the Quaker's head, where he

remained in strict attention to his duties. It also lifted Philippa.

"Is he very bad, do you think?" she murmured at my elbow. "Shall I

drive for the doctor?"

"Arrah, what docthor?" said Slipper magnificently. "Give me a

half-a-crown, Major, and I'll get him what meddyceen will answer him as

good as any docthor! Lave him to me!" He shook him again. "I'll

regulate him!"

The victim here sat up, and shouted something about going home. He was

undoubtedly very drunk. It seemed to me that Slipper's ministrations

would be more suitable to the situation than mine, certainly than

Philippa's. I administered the solatium; then I placed Denis on the

box of the car with the bicycle-lamp in his hand, and drove my family

home.

After church next day we met Flurry Knox. He approached us with the

green glint in his eye that told that game was on foot, whatever that

game might be.

"Who bailed you out, Mrs. Yeates?" he said solicitously. "I heard you

and the Major and Denis Leary were all in the lock-up for furious

driving and killing a man! I'm told he was anointed last night."

Philippa directed what she believed to be a searching glance at

Flurry's face of friendly concern.

"I don't believe a word of it!" she said dauntlessly, while a very

becoming warmth in her complexion betrayed an inward qualm. "Who told

you?"

"The servants heard it at first Mass this morning; and Slipper had me

late for church telling me about it. The fellow says if he lives he's

going to take an action against the Major."

I listened with, I hope, outward serenity. In dealings with Flurry

Knox the possibility that he might be speaking the truth could never

safely be lost sight of. It was also well to remember that he

generally knew what the truth was.

I said loftily, that there had been nothing the matter with the man but

Christmas Eve, and inquired if Flurry knew his name and address.

"Of course I do," said Flurry, "he's one of those mountainy men that

live up in the hill behind Aussolas. Oweneen the Sprat is the name he

goes by, and he's the crossest little thief in the Barony. Never mind,

Mrs. Yeates, I'll see you get fair play in the dock!"

"How silly you are!" said Philippa; but I could see that she was shaken.

Whatever Flurry's servants may have heard at first Mass, was apparently

equalled, if not excelled, by what Denis heard at second. He asked me

next morning, with a gallant attempt at indifference, if I had had any

word of "the man-een."

"'Twas what the people were saying on the roads last night that he

could have the law of us, and there was more was saying that he'd never

do a day's good. Sure they say the backbone is cracked where the wheel

of the car went over him! But didn't yourself and the misthress swear

black and blue that the wheel never went next or nigh him? And didn't

Michael say that there wasn't a Christmas this ten years that that one

hadn't a head on him the size of a bullawawn with the len'th of dhrink?"

In spite of the contributory negligence that might be assumed in the

case of any one with this singular infirmity, I was not without a

secret uneasiness. Two days afterwards I received a letter, written on

copybook paper in a clerkly hand. It had the Aussolas post-mark, in

addition to the imprint of various thumbs, and set forth the injuries

inflicted by me and my driver on Owen Twohig on Christmas Eve, and

finally, it demanded a compensation of twenty pounds for the same.

Failing this satisfaction the law was threatened, but a hope was

finally expressed that the honourable gentleman would not see a poor

man wronged; it was, in fact, the familiar mixture of bluff and whine,

and, as I said to Philippa, the Man-een (under which title he had

passed into the domestic vocabulary) had of course got hold of a letter

writer to do the trick for him.

In the next day or so I met Flurry twice, and found him so rationally

interested, and even concerned, about fresh versions of the accident

that had cropped up, that I was moved to tell him of the incident of

the letter. He looked serious, and said he would go up himself to see

what was wrong with Oweneen. He advised me to keep out of it for the

present, as they might open their mouths too big.

The moon was high as I returned from this interview; when I wheeled my

bicycle into the yard I found that the coach-house in which I was wont

to stable it was locked; so also was the harness-room. Attempting to

enter the house by the kitchen door I found it also was locked; a

gabble of conversation prevailed within, and with the mounting

indignation of one who hears but cannot make himself heard, I banged

ferociously on the door. Silence fell, and Mrs. Cadogan's voice

implored heaven's protection.

"Open the door!" I roared.

A windlike rush of petticoats followed, through which came sibilantly

the words, "Glory be to goodness! 'Tis the masther!"

The door opened, I found myself facing the entire strength of my

establishment, including Denis, and augmented by Slipper.

"They told me you were asking afther me, Major," began Slipper,

descending respectfully from the kitchen table, on which he had been

seated.

I noticed that Mrs. Cadogan was ostentatiously holding her heart, and

that Denis was shaking like the conventional aspen.

"What's all this about?" said I, looking round upon them. "Why is the

whole place locked up?"

"It was a little unaisy they were," said Slipper, snatching the

explanation from Mrs. Cadogan with the determination of the skilled

leader of conversation; "I was telling them I seen two men below in the

plantation, like they'd be watching out for some one, and poor Mr.

Leary here got a reeling in his head after I telling it----"

"Indeed the crayture was as white, now, as white as a masheroon!" broke

in Mrs. Cadogan, "and we dhrew him in here to the fire till your Honour

came home."

"Nonsense!" I said angrily, "a couple of boys poaching rabbits! Upon

my word, Slipper, you have very little to do coming here and

frightening people for nothing."

"What did I say?" demanded Slipper, dramatically facing his audience,

"only that I seen two men in the plantation. How would I know what

business they had in it?"

"Ye said ye heard them whishling to each other like curlews through the

wood," faltered Denis, "and sure that's the whishle them Twohigs has

always----"

"Maybe it's whistling to the girls they were!" suggested Slipper, with

an unabashed eye at Hannah.

I told him to come up with me to my office, and stalked from the

kitchen, full of the comfortless wrath that has failed to find a

suitable victim.

The interview in the office did not last long, nor was it in any way

reassuring. Slipper, with the manner of the confederate who had waded

shoulder to shoulder with me through gore, could only tell me that

though he believed that there was nothing ailed the Man-een, he

wouldn't say but what he might be sevarely hurted. That I wasn't gone

five minutes before near a score of the Twohigs come leathering down

out of the town in two ass-butts (this term indicates donkey-carts of

the usual dimensions), and when Oweneen felt them coming, he let the

most unmarciful screech, upon which Slipper, in just fear of the

Twohigs, got over the wall, and executed a strategic retreat upon the

railway station, leaving the Twohigs to carry away their wounded to the

mountains. That for himself he had been going in dread of them ever

since, and for no one else in the wide world would he have put a hand

to one of them.

I preserved an unshaken front towards Slipper, and I was subsequently

sarcastic and epigrammatic to Philippa on the subject of the curlews

who were rabbiting in the plantation, but something that I justified to

myself as a fear of Philippa's insatiable conscientiousness, made me

resolve that I would, without delay, go "back in the mountain," and

interview Oweneen the Sprat.

New Year's Day favoured my purpose, bringing with it clear frost and

iron roads, a day when even the misanthropic soul of a bicycle awakens

into sympathy and geniality. I started in the sunny vigour of the

early afternoon, I sailed up the hills with the effortless speed of a

seagull, I free-wheeled down them with the dive of a swallow, and, as

it seemed to me, with a good deal of its grace. Had Oweneen the Sprat

had the luck to have met me, when, at the seventh milestone from

Shreelane, I realised that I had beaten my own best time by seven

minutes, he could practically have made his own terms. At that point,

however, I had to leave the high road, and the mountain lane that

ensued restored to me the judicial frame of mind. In the first twenty

yards my bicycle was transformed from a swallow to an opinionated and

semi-paralysed wheelbarrow; struggling in a species of dry watercourse

I shoved it up the steep gradients of a large and brown country of

heather and bog, silent save for the contending voices of the streams.

A family of goats, regarding me from a rocky mound, was the first hint

of civilisation; a more reliable symptom presently advanced in the

shape of a lean and hump-backed sow, who bestowed on me a side glance

of tepid interest as she squeezed past.

The _bohireen_ dropped, with a sudden twist to the right, and revealed

a fold in the hillside, containing a half dozen or so of little fields,

crooked, and heavily walled, and nearly as many thatched cabins, flung

about in the hollows as indiscriminately as the boulders upon the

wastes outside. A group of children rose in front of me like a flight

of starlings, and scudded with barefooted nimbleness to the shelter of

the houses, in a pattering, fluttering stampede. I descended upon the

nearest cabin of the colony. The door was shut; a heavy padlock

linking two staples said Not at Home, and the nose of a dog showed in a

hole above the sill, sniffing deeply and suspiciously. I remembered

that the first of January was a holy-day, and that every man in the

colony had doubtless betaken himself to the nearest village. The next

cottage was some fifty yards away, and the faces of a couple of

children peered at me round the corner of it. As I approached they

vanished, but the door of the cabin was open, and blue turf smoke

breathed placidly outwards from it. The merciful frost had glazed the

inevitable dirty pool in front of the door, and had made practicable

the path beside it; I propped my bicycle against a rock, and projected

into the dark interior an inquiry as to whether there was any one in.

I had to repeat it twice before a small old woman with white hair and a

lemon-coloured face appeared; I asked her if she could tell me where

Owen Twohig lived.

"Your Honour's welcome," she replied, tying the strings of her cap

under her chin with wiry fingers, and eyeing me with concentrated

shrewdness. I repeated the question.

She responded by begging me to come in and rest myself, for this was a

cross place and a backwards place, and I should be famished with the

cold--"sure them little wheels dhraws the wind."

I ignored this peculiarity of bicycles, and, not without exasperation,

again asked for Owen Twohig.

"Are you Major Yeates, I beg your pardon?" I assented to what she knew

as well as I did.

"Why then 'tis here he lives indeed, in this little house, and a poor

place he have to live in. Sure he's my son, the crayture--" her voice

at once ascended to the key of lamentation--"faith, he didn't rise till

to-day. Since Christmas Eve I didn't quinch light in the house with

him stretched in the bed always, and not a bit passed his lips night or

day, only one suppeen of whisky in its purity. Ye'd think the tongue

would light out of his mouth with the heat, and ye'd see the blaze of

darkness in his face! I hadn't as much life in me this morning as that

I could wash my face!"

I replied that I wanted to speak to her son, and was in a hurry.

"He's not within, asthore, he's not within at all. He got the lend of

a little donkey, and he went back the mountain to the bonesetter, to

try could he straighten the leg with him."

"Did Dr. Hickey see him?" I demanded.

"Sure a wise woman came in from Finnaun, a' Stephen's Day," pursued

Mrs. Twohig swiftly, "and she bet three spits down on him, and she said

it's what ailed him he had the Fallen Palate, with the dint o' the blow

the car bet him in the poll, and that any one that have the Fallen

Palate might be speechless for three months with it. She took three

ribs of his hair then, and she was pulling them till she was in a

passpiration, and in the latther end she pulled up the palate." She

paused and wiped her eyes with her apron. "But the leg is what has him

destroyed altogether; she told us we should keep sheep's butter rubbed

to it in the place where the thrack o' the wheel is down in it."

The blush of a frosty sunset was already in the sky, and the children

who had fled before me had returned, reinforced by many others, to

cluster in a whispering swarm round my bicycle, and to group themselves

attentively in the rear of the conversation.

"Look here, Mrs. Twohig," I said, not as yet angry, but in useful

proximity to it, "I've had a letter from your son, and he and his

friends have been trying to frighten my man, Denis Leary; he can come

down and see me if he has anything to say, but you can tell him from me

that I'm not going to stand this sort of thing!"

If the Widow Twohig had been voluble before, this pronouncement had the

effect of bringing her down in spate. She instantly, and at the top of

her voice, called heaven to witness her innocence, and the innocence of

her "little boy"; still at full cry, she sketched her blameless career,

and the unmerited suffering that had ever pursued her and hers; how,

during the past thirty years, she had been drooping over her little

orphans, and how Oweneen, that was the only one she had left to do a

hand's turn for her, would be "under clutches" the longest day that

he'd live. It was at about this point that I gave her five shillings.

It was a thoroughly illogical act, but at the moment it seemed

inevitable, and Mrs. Twohig was good enough to accept it in the same

spirit. I told her that I would send Dr. Hickey to see her son (which

had, it struck me, a somewhat stemming effect upon her eloquence), and

I withdrew, still in magisterial displeasure. I must have been half

way down the lane before it was revealed to me that a future on

crutches was what Mrs. Twohig anticipated for her son.

By that night's post I wrote to Hickey, a strictly impartial letter,

stating the position, and asking him to see Owen Twohig, and to let me

have his professional opinion upon him. Philippa added a postscript,

asking for a nerve-tonic for the parlour-maid, a Dublin girl, who,

since the affair of the curlews in the plantation, had lost all colour

and appetite, and persisted in locking the hall door day and night, to

the infinite annoyance of the dogs.

Next morning, while hurrying through an early breakfast, preparatory to

starting for a distant Petty Sessions, I was told that Denis wished to

speak to me at the hall door. This, as I before have had occasion to

point out, boded affairs of the first importance. I proceeded to the

hall door, and there found Denis, pale as the Lily Maid of Astolat,

with three small fishes in his hand.

"There was one of thim before me in my bed lasht night!" he said in a

hoarse and shaken whisper, "and there was one in the windy in the

harness-room, down on top o' me razor, and there was another nelt to

the stable door with the nail of a horse's shoe."

I made the natural suggestion that some one had done it for a joke.

"Thim's no joke, sir," replied Denis, portentously, "thim's Sprats!"

[Illustration: "THIM'S NO JOKE, SIR, THIM'S SPRATS!"]

"Well, I'm quite aware of that," I said, unmoved by what appeared to be

the crushing significance of the statement.

"Oweneen the _Sprat_!" murmured Philippa, illuminatingly, emerging from

the dining-room door with her cup of tea in her hand, "it's Hannah,

trying to frighten him!"

Hannah, the housemaid, was known to be the humorist of the household.

"He have a brother a smith, back in the mountain," continued Denis,

wrapping up the sprats and the nail in his handkerchief; "'twas for a

token he put the nail in it. If he dhraws thim mountainy men down on

me, I may as well go under the sod. It isn't yourself or the misthress

they'll folly; it's meself." He crept down the steps as deplorably as

the Jackdaw of Rheims, "and it's what Michael's after telling me, they

have it all through the country that I said you should throw Twohig in

the ditch, and it was good enough for the likes of him, and I said to

Michael 'twas a lie for them, and that we cared him as tender as if he

was our mother itself, and we'd have given the night to him only for

the misthress that was roaring on the car, and no blame to her; sure

the world knows the mother o' children has no courage!"

This drastic generality was unfortunately lost to my wife, as she had

retired to hold a court of inquiry in the kitchen.

The inquiry elicited nothing beyond the fact that since Christmas Day

Denis was "using no food," and that the kitchen, so far from indulging

in practical jokes at his expense, had been instant throughout in

sympathy, and in cups of strong tea, administered for the fortification

of the nerves. All were obviously deeply moved by the incident of the

sprats, the parlour-maid, indeed, having already locked herself into

the pantry, through the door of which, on Philippa's approach, she gave

warning hysterically.

The matter remained unexplained, and was not altogether to my liking.

As I drove down the avenue, and saw Denis carefully close the yard

gates after me, I determined that I would give Murray, the District

Inspector of Police, a brief sketch of the state of affairs. I did not

meet Murray, but, as it happened, this made no difference. Things were

already advancing smoothly and inexorably towards their preordained

conclusion.

I have since heard that none of the servants went to bed that night.

They, including Denis, sat in the kitchen, with locked doors, drinking

tea and reciting religious exercises; Maria, as a further precaution,

being chained to the leg of the table. Their fears were in no degree

allayed by the fact that nothing whatever occurred, and the most

immediate result of the vigil was that my bath next morning boiled as

it stood in the can, and dimmed the room with clouds of steam--a

circumstance sufficiently rare in itself, and absolutely without

precedent on Sunday morning. The next feature of the case was a letter

at breakfast time from a gentleman signing himself "Jas. Fitzmaurice."

He said that Dr. Hickey having gone away for a fortnight's holiday, he

(Fitzmaurice) was acting as his locum tenens. In that capacity he had

opened my letter, and would go and see Twohig as soon as possible. He

enclosed prescription for tonic as requested.

It was a threatening morning, and we did not go to church. I noticed

that my wife's housekeeping _séance_ was unusually prolonged, and even

while I smoked and read the papers, I was travelling in my meditations

to the point of determining that I would have a talk with the priest

about all this infernal nonsense. When Philippa at length rejoined me,

I found that she also had arrived at a conclusion, impelled thereto by

the counsels of Mrs. Cadogan, abetted by her own conscience.

Its result was that immediately after lunch, long before the Sunday

roast beef had been slept off, I found myself carting precarious

parcels--a jug, a bottle, a pudding-dish--to the inside car, in which

Philippa had already placed herself, with a pair of blankets and

various articles culled from my wardrobe (including a pair of boots to

which I was sincerely attached). Denis, pale yellow in complexion and

shrouded in gloom, was on the box, the Quaker was in the shafts. There

was no rain, but the clouds hung black and low.

It was an expedition of purest charity; so Philippa explained to me

over again as we drove away. She said nothing of propitiation or

diplomacy. For my part I said nothing at all, but I reflected on the

peculiar gifts of the Dublin parlour-maid in valeting me, and decided

that it might be better to allow Philippa to run the show on her own

lines, while I maintained an attitude of large-minded disapproval.

The blankets took up as much room in the car as a man; I had to hold in

my hand a jug of partly jellified beef tea. A sourer Lady Bountiful

never set forth upon an errand of mercy. To complete establishment--in

the words of the _Gazette_--Maria and Minx, on the floor of the car,

wrought and strove in ceaseless and objectless agitation, an infliction

due to the ferocity of a female rival, who terrorised the high road

within hail of my gates. I thanked heaven that I had at least been

firm about not taking the children; for the dogs, at all events, the

moment of summary ejectment would arrive sooner or later.

Seven miles in an inside car are seven miles indeed. The hills that

had run to meet my bicycle and glided away behind it, now sat in their

places to be crawled up and lumbered down, at such a pace as seemed

good to the Quaker, whose appetite for the expedition was, if possible,

less than that of his driver. Appetite was, indeed, the last thing

suggested by the aspect of Denis. His drooping shoulders and

deplorable countenance proclaimed apology and deprecation to the

mountain tops, and more especially to the mountainy men. Looking back

on it now, I recognise the greatness of the tribute to my valour and

omnipotence that he should have consented thus to drive us into the

heart of the enemy's country.

A steep slope, ending with a sharp turn through a cutting, reminded me

that we were near the mountain _bohireen_ that was our goal. I got out

and walked up the hill, stiffly, because the cramp of the covered car

was in my legs. Stiff though I was, I had outpaced the Quaker, and was

near the top of the hill, when something that was apparently a brown

croquet-ball rolled swiftly round the bend above me, charged into the

rock wall of the cutting with a clang, and came on down the hill with a

weight and venom unknown to croquet-balls. It sped past me, missed the

Quaker by an uncommonly near shave, and went on its way, hotly pursued

by the two dogs, who, in the next twenty yards, discovered with horror

that it was made of iron, a fact of which I was already aware.

I have always been as lenient as the law, and other circumstances,

would allow towards the illegal game of "bowling." It consists in

bowling an iron ball along a road, the object being to cover the

greatest possible distance in a given number of bowls. It demands

considerable strength and skill, and it is played with a zest much

enhanced by its illegality and by its facilities as a medium for

betting. The law forbids it, on account of its danger to the

unsuspecting wayfarer, in consideration of which a scout is usually

posted ahead to signal the approach of the police, and to give warning

to passers by. The mountainy men, trusting to their isolation, had

neglected this precaution, with results that came near being serious to

the Quaker, and filled with wrath, both personal and official, I took

the hill at a vengeful run, so as to catch the bowler red-handed. At

the turn in the cutting I met him face to face. As a matter of fact he

nearly ran into my arms, and the yelp of agony with which he dodged my

impending embrace is a life-long possession. He was a very small man;

he doubled like a rabbit, and bolted back towards a swarm of men who

were following the fortunes of the game. He flitted over the wall by

the roadside, and was away over the rocky hillside at a speed that even

in my best days would have left me nowhere.

The swarm on the road melted; a good part of it was quietly absorbed by

the lane up which I had dragged my bicycle two days before, the

remainder, elaborately uninterested and respectable, in their dark blue

Sunday clothes, strolled gravely in the opposite direction. A man on a

bicycle met them, and dismounted to speak to the leaders. I wondered

if he were a policeman in plain clothes on the prowl. He came on to

meet me, leading his bicycle, and I perceived that a small black

leather bag was strapped to the carrier. He was young, and apparently

very hot.

"I beg your pardon," he said in the accents of Dublin, "I understand

you're Major Yeates. I'm Dr. Hickey's 'Locum,' and I've come out to

see the man you wrote to me about. From what you said I thought it

better to lose no time."

I was rather out of breath, but I expressed my sense of indebtedness.

"I think there must be some mistake," went on the "Locum." "I've just

asked these men on the road where Owen Twohig lives, and one of

them--the fellow they call Skipper, or some such name--said Owen Twohig

was the little chap that's just after sprinting up the mountain. He

seemed to think it was a great joke. I suppose you're sure Owen was

the name?"

"Perfectly sure," I said heavily.

The eyes of Dr. Fitzmaurice had travelled past me, and were regarding

with professional alertness something farther down the road. I

followed their direction, dreamily, because in spirit I was far away,

tracking Flurry Knox through deep places.

On the hither side of the rock cutting the covered car had come to a

standstill. The reins had fallen from Denis's hands; he was obviously

having the "wakeness" appropriate to the crisis. Philippa, on the step

below him, was proffering to him the jug of beef tea and the bottle of

port. He accepted the latter.

"He knows what's what!" said the "Locum."

[Illustration: "HE KNOWS WHAT'S WHAT!" SAID THE LOCUM]

[Illustration: ]

XII

THE WHITEBOYS