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Illustration: _Patsy_
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Bound in Cloth, with Picture Wrappers.
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1. The Way of an Eagle. By ETHEL M. DELL.
2. McGlusky the Reformer. By A. G. HALES.
3. The Trail of ’98. By ROBERT W. SERVICE.
4. Ann Veronica. By H. G. WELLS.
5. The Knave of Diamonds. By ETHEL M. DELL.
6. The Beetle: A Mystery. By RICHARD MARSH.
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8. The Shulamite. By ALICE AND CLAUDE ASKEW.
9. New Chronicles of Don Q. By K. AND HESKETH PRICHARD.
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11. The Camera Fiend. By THE AUTHOR OF “RAFFLES.”
12. Monte Carlo. By MRS. H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
13. Called Back. By HUGH CONWAY.
14. The Stickit Minister. By S. R. CROCKETT.
15. The Crimson Azaleas. By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
16. My Lady of the Chimney Corner. By ALEXANDER IRVINE.
17. Patsy. By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
18. The Indiscretion of the By ANTHONY HOPE.
Duchess.
19. By Reef and Palm. By LOUIS BECKE.
20. Queen Sheba’s Ring. By H. RIDER HAGGARD.
21. Uncanny Tales. By F. MARION CRAWFORD.
22. Ricroft of Withens. By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE.
23. The Vultures Prey. By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
24. The Pretender. By ROBERT W. SERVICE.
25. Me. A Book of Remembrance. ANONYMOUS.
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T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1, Adelphi Terrace, LONDON.
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Patsy
by
H. de. Vere Stacpoole
London
C. Fisher Unwin Ltd
Adelphi Terrace
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_First Edition_ 1908
_Second Impression_ 1909
_Third Impression_ 1909
_Fourth Impression_ 1910
_Fifth Impression_ 1916
_Sixth Impression_ 1917
[_All rights reserved_]
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CONTENTS
I. WHERE THE WILD GEESE FLY
II. PATSY
III. THE FORM IN THE WOOD
IV. CON COGAN
V. THE MAN IN THE TREE
VI. THE HIRING OF PATSY
VII. MRS FINNEGAN’S BOY
VIII. THE BATTLE IN THE YARD
IX. A FACE AT THE WINDOW
X. THE GHOST CARRIAGE
XI. THE FIRST GUEST
XII. MR FANSHAWE
XIII. THE MEET OF THE HOUNDS
XIV. A KISS ON THE STAIRS
XV. GOING IN TO DINNER
XVI. IN THE “SCRUBBERY”
XVII. THE STORY OF THE PIG
XVIII. AN INTERRUPTED FEAST
XIX. SHAN
XX. THE MEET OF THE BEAGLES
XXI. MR BOXALL GETS IN THE WAY
XXII. LOVE
XXIII. THE WILD DUCKS
XXIV. NAILING UP THE HOLLY
XXV. A POTENTIAL POET
XXVI. THE SPIRIT OF IRELAND
XXVII. MIDWINTER NIGHT’S DREAM
XXVIII. MR LYBURN
XXIX. THE TRAP
XXX. “PUT THE DONKEY TO”
XXXI. THE FOX AND THE HOUNDS
XXXII. THE FOX TAKES EARTH
XXXIII. BILLY CROOM
XXXIV. MR MURPHY IN EXCELSIS
XXXV. INFLUENZA
XXXVI. PREPARATIONS
XXXVII. FLIGHT
XXXVIII. THE OFF HUB
XXXIX. A MAN OF RESOURCE
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PATSY
CHAPTER I
WHERE THE WILD GEESE FLY
A flock of wild geese flying across the sunset far away, remote,
fantastic, the only living things visible in a world filling with
shadows, lent the last touch of beauty to the vast and lonely moors.
“They’re makin’ for the pools of Cloyne, sir,” said the keeper.
Mr Fanshawe watched the flock pass and vanish in the amber distance like
a wreath of smoke. Away to the left, covering themselves with night and
gloom, stood the hills of Glynn, where the golden eagle still has its
eyrie, and the wild goat its home. From there, away to the west, the
great moors stretched to the hills of Cloyne.
It was a typical Irish winter’s evening, the sky threatening and
forgetting to rain, the air damp and filled with the scent of the earth,
near things indistinct in the gathering twilight, and far things seeming
near.
From where Mr Fanshawe stood, with his pipe in his mouth and his gun
under his arm, you might have started with a brave heart to walk to the
hills of Cloyne. Ten miles distant, or at most twelve, they seemed,
those hills that lay thirty Irish miles away.
Fanshawe was staying for the hunting with Mr Trench of Dunboyne House.
He had come out to-day to have a shot at the snipe, and he had not done
badly, to judge by the weight of the bag Micky Finn, the old keeper, was
carrying.
“Well,” said the young man, refilling and lighting his pipe, “we’d
better be getting back. How far are we from the house, Micky?”
“A matter of five mile be the boggs, sir, an’ siven be the road; which
way would your ’arner be chusin’ to take?”
“The road,” said Mr Fanshawe, and, followed by Micky and the dogs, he
struck towards the high-road from Dunbeg which goes across the moors
white and straight like a chalk-line drawn by a giant.
“You were afther askin’ me, sir, what time the letters came from
Dunbeg,” said Micky, as they stepped on to the highway. “Here’s Larry
and the letters now, comin’ as hard as he can pelt two hours late, the
blackguyard! He’s been stoppin’ to drink at Billy Sheehan’s, or
colloguing wid the girls; musha, but it’s little he cares who waits for
their letters whin the bottle’s before him.”
Mr Fanshawe shaded his eyes, and with a constriction of the heart
watched the horseman and the horse coming at a furious pace and
developing with magical speed against the sunset. The sound of the
hoofs, like the sound of castanets in the hands of a madman, came on the
breeze.
The horseman, a ragged individual with a leer on his face, no boots on
his feet, and a post-bag slung on his back, reined in when he came level
with the keeper and the gentleman, bringing his horse literally on its
haunches.
“Any letters for Mr Fanshawe, Larry?” asked the keeper.
“Begob!” said Larry, swinging the post-bag round and opening it,
“there’s letters enough for a dozen, but I’m no schollard to tell yiz
who thir for; will y’ be afther puttin’ your hand in the bag, sir, and
takin’ your chice?”
Mr Fanshawe did as he was invited. There was only one letter for him,
all the rest were for Mr Trench or members of his household.
It was not the letter he had been half expecting by every post for weeks
and weeks past, and he opened it with a gloomy brow, and read it by the
light of sunset as Larry rode on and the sound of the hoofs died away on
the high-road.
To be young, rich, healthy, good-looking, and yet unhappy! No other
magician but Love could bring about such an extraordinary concatenation
of states.
Love had done this in the case of Mr Fanshawe.
As for the letter, it was addressed from Glen Druid House, Tullagh, Mid
Meath, and it ran:
“DEAR RICHARD,—I have only just been informed that you are staying
with my friends the Trenches, to whom, through you, I send my very
kind regards.
“This house is only some forty miles from where you are now, and as
I have a small house-party coming on the 10th, the happy idea has
occurred to me that you might join us, if your engagements will
permit you so to do. You will find shooting enough to please you, I
think, in the coverts, and the O’Farrel’s hounds meet twice a week.
You will also find a sincere welcome from your old friend,
“SELINA SEAGRAVE.
“_P.S._—I am here, at present, by myself. I would be quite alone
were it not that I have your cousin Robert’s children staying with
me. Bob (Lord Gawdor), Doris, and Selina my namesake.”
“Bother the children!” said Mr Fanshawe, thrusting the letter into the
pocket of his shooting coat, and little dreaming what pleasant factors
in the making of his fate those same children were to be.
He was rather fond of children, as a matter of fact, but he was in love,
and he had been deciphering Lady Seagrave’s old-fashioned caligraphy in
the hope of finding, like a flower in a wilderness, the magical name of
Violet Lestrange.
“Do you know anything of Glen Druid House, near Tullagh, Micky?” he
asked, as they trudged along together in the deepening twilight.
“Yes, sor,” replied Micky; “it’s be Castle Knock over beyant thim hills.
It was Mr Moriarty’s in the ould days. The place went to rot an’ ruin
whin the ould gintleman died, but they do be tellin’ me it’s changed
hands to an ould lady from over the wather.”
“Is there good shooting?”
“Shutin’!” said Micky, speaking more from a desire to be amiable than
from absolute knowledge. “Sure, it’s not a gun you’d want there at all,
at all, for you could knock the cock phisints down wid your fist.
Phisints! ay, be jabers! an’ woodcock an’ teal; and as for hares an’
rabbits, the groun’s is jumpin’ an’ runnin’ wid them.”
“If nothing better turns up,” said Mr Fanshawe to himself, “I’m not sure
that I won’t accept the old girl’s invitation;” and ten days later, as
you may have guessed from this preamble, he did.
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