Front matter (continued 2)

"Slattery did it often," said Darby tersely to himself and hobbling off.

Keefe, relieved by his absence, now explained the difficulty of getting any horses just at present. People who had very good hunters hid them away for fear they would be commandeered, and all the sixty and seventy-pound screws were sold.

"The most lamentable sight ever I seen," observed Phil, taking the bay for a little stroll down the yard and back again. "The teeth dhragged out of the youngsters to make them the right age, an' ould sthagers taken that ye'd offered oats to feed 'em on it, sthone blind I seen them bought, an' sore with spavins, an' broken-winded. Old car horses ripped out of the shafts an' soult for chargers. Runaways, stoopers, sthaggerers, the sorra a charnst a man would have to run away at all with the craythurs sint out for them," concluded Phil sorrowfully.

"He—has his—forelegs a little near together, hasn't he?" inquired Violet Weston dubiously.

"The way he can't throw dust up betune them," said Phil softly, something very like a wink trembling on his left eyelid.

Mrs. Weston held up a mauve suede shoe to Phil; next moment she was in the saddle, with a white skirt very much rucked up, and a good deal of mauve silk stockings to be seen. She trotted the bay horse out of the gate and put him into a gallop in the field outside.

When everyone had rushed out to see her fall off, they saw that she was quite at home in a man's saddle, and if she did not ride over well, yet knew how to stay on.

Returning with the bay all out, Mrs. Weston had only just time to avoid Mrs. De Burgho Keane, who fled aside with a scream and then halted to stare icily at the mauve legs.

"I couldn't hold on sideways," said Violet Weston apologetically; "and, of course, I'd wear boots. He won't be very dear, will he, Mr. Keefe, because I want a new fur coat as well?"

Mr. Keefe said sixty pounds with a faint quiver in his voice. "And a dozen of gloves for luck," he said gallantly.

"I'd rather have a bridle," said Mrs. Weston pleasantly. "And there is only a kind of shed which Tom Guinane says he must put a door to; but I expect the horse will do nicely."

The old saw of Romford's, "I'm too much of a gentleman," rang in Keefe's head.

"If we really are going to have hunting, and you say horses are so hard to find," went on Mrs. Weston pleasantly.

Keefe thought ruefully of the string of horses which would be trotted towards the front gate of Seaview directly Violet Weston made her intention of hunting known. Prompt decision would alone save him from loss on his gamble, for he had bought the narrow bay.

Mrs. De Burgho Keane looking on, now declared that if, as her husband informed her, foxes must be killed, they ought to be shot, and not make the country a laughing stock by running about after the Caseys' foot pack. The earths could be closed and the animals dislodged with terriers and good shots stationed. "Now you are able to shoot still, Darby?"

Darby said "Yes," with the same twisted smile.

"And the foxes killed, the skins could be sold for the Blue Cross Fund," said the lady decidedly.

She held the public ear as she put forward the absolute wickedness of spending money upon hunters when every penny was, and would be, wanted for the war.

"If everyone gave up keeping everything, it seems to me that a lot of people would starve," said Darby gravely. "Out-of-place servants who cannot join the army are rather at a discount this year. If we all did nothing always, we should make a lot of riches and create a lot of poverty."

"If you are sure she will get over the fences," said Violet Weston, "I will buy him. And can I call it Britannia or Commander-in-Chief?"

Darby mildly suggested Equator, because it was a line, and was coldly turned away from.

Harold Keefe drew a breath of sheer relief.

"I'll have the cob with the curbs for myself now," he thought blissfully, "out of the profit."

"You are going to take it without a vet.?" said Gheena. "Are you? You warrant it, Mr. Keefe?"

Mr. Keefe's pained expression rested on the Commander-in-Chief's hocks, and he said warmly that he'd warrant it fit to hunt, for it never went lame on them.

"Oh, leave it between them, Gheena," murmured Darby wearily. "They can put it in the settlements."

Mr. Keefe, with an outburst of unwilling honesty, now drew gloomy attention to the curb.

"He has a curb," he said darkly. "It never stopped him."

"But—I thought it was a very severe bridle," said the widow vaguely, "and was two bits; and it is only wearing one at present."

"If it was a gag on his hocks it would do her," gulped Darby, when he had recovered a little and emerged from the stable he had fled into. "He wears his curb behind, Mrs. Weston, not in his mouth."

Mrs. Weston said, "What absolute nonsense!" quite huffily and patted the Commander's white nose.

"I hate a horse with a white nose, he always looks like a sheep," said Darby. "And, hello, Mrs. Delaney! How many hens has the fox eaten now?"

A little withered old woman had come into the yard, a basket in her hands.

"It is not hens I am afther, Masther Darby, but the lind of a handful of flour from Anne to save me walkin' onto the village, the Guinanes being quite run out."

But they were taking it home last night from the ship, said Gheena quickly.

"They didn't brin' it to the shop, then, Miss Gheena, an they up an' toult me they could not have it until to-morrow."

Gheena nodded carelessly.

In a flutter of dark draperies Mrs. De Burgho Keane moved to her motor-car, a luxurious Limousine.

"And you must be particular with Naylour, Matilda dear," she said. "I noticed that to-day, after years of impressing Madam upon him he had fallen back upon Ma'am. You will find him a difficult old creature," she added acidly, for just then she recalled the paucity of Naylour's wages and his great use in the house.

A malignant eye peering from behind the kitchen door revealed that old Naylour was listening.

The big car lolloped off heavily, and the butler advanced into the yard; Mrs. Freyne had gone in.

"I wondther who'll juggle the decanthers of port-wine now for her," he said bitterly. "Fine red sthuff from Macdinough's for the ladies an' the clergy, and the cellar wine for themselves an' th' experts. An' champagne the same way, with me heart broke in me, huntin' Jamesey for fear he'd make a mistake. An' in she'd wheel directly the dinner was over an' the gentlemin cleared out, makin measure in her heart's eye on the decanthers befour she'd lock them up. The gentleman had no maneness in him, poor gentleman, but herself. God save us!"

"I don't know why she ever comes here," said Gheena pettishly. "Isn't she horrid, Mr. Keefe?"

"She has the face of a fat rat on her," said Keefe briefly.

CHAPTER V

"How the dickens did your Dada call them up?" said Darby, eyeing the ten couple of fox-hounds' relations as they rushed joyously round his park, declining to come near anyone.

"He had a nise of his own," said Andy cautiously, "and his bugle. Maybe if ye sounded ye'res, yer honor."

Heads were thrown up at the note, to go down again, apparently regarding the sound as something of no moment to them.

"Me Dada's bugle had a grating screech on it," said Andy. "Grandjer! Grandjer! Grandjer is after a rabbit. Beauty, ye spalpeen! Beauty agragh?"

The crooked-legged old matron came to the call, wagging her long tan stern abjectly.

Darby said cheerily that it was a good thing to have one obedient. He watched Gheena galloping her grey recklessly as she endeavoured to put hounds back to him.

"D'ye hear that! Isn't Grandjer terrible swhift?" Andy's admiring note was called for by the dying scream of the rabbit as Grandjer broke it up and ate it.

"What I intended to do," said Darby, lifting his hat to cool his head, "was to take these brutes round by Leshaun and back the mountain road. It is not a bit of use taking them out if they won't follow us anywhere. Good man, Phil!"

An accurately aimed lash was driving Spinster and Doatie out of the woods.

A little more noise and violent whip-work brought the whole of the pack into view; they sat down, greeted each other as complete friends, but looked with distrust at Darby on his black mare. Their master had always been on foot.

"If ye were to borry me Dada's bugle," said Andy hopefully. "It is hangin' up at home."

"Chance the road, Phil," said Darby. "We must get to Cullane on Monday somehow."

Darby's old house stood well back from the sea, a long, rambling house, which had been pulled down by someone who objected to its original hideousness, and rebuilt with gables and wide windows. A flagged terrace, guarded with stone railings and stone urns, which in summer overflowed with scarlet geraniums, had been laid out at one side; and the usual basement, where the kitchen blinked up behind a dark alley, was made darker still by another railing of cut stone. The inevitable fuchsia hedges guarded the flower-beds, a tangle now of withering dahlias and Michaelmas daisies.

A fine old place, well kept up, and no one alive knew what battles the young owner had fought with himself there when he came back to it crippled. Battles fought for endurance, when the joys of being up again and able to shuffle in the sunshine had worn off. The very trees which he used to climb, the sunk fences which he jumped so lightly over, the ladders leading to the lofts, mocked Darby.

To get down to the trout stream meant a long weary struggle, or the bitterness of sitting in his bath-chair drawn by old Ned the donkey.

When hope of amending culminated in being able to ride, Darby knew that his days of swift life were done for ever. He snatched something from the wreck; he could shuffle on his crutch. He could shoot as straight as ever, fish from a boat or where the banks were flat.

When he ceased to rebel, he knitted up as many ravelled strands as he could, and twisted and crippled, faced his lease of life.

England called now; he could not go to her, not back to his old regiment which was fighting somewhere in France. Riding at Darby's right side, he looked straight and whole, a lean, good-looking man, with a kindly ravaged face. Coming to the other, one saw an arm tied up, a leg palpably cork, stiff and useless, an almost useless hand, and a scar, vanishing now, on the cheek-bone.

He could ride still, and shuffle back to the saddle without much difficulty after a fall, easy things to meet with in the close country, with its trappy fences and its occasional big bog drains or awkward pieces of gaps fenced by stabs of bog dale.

Black Maria sidled and snorted at the pack, which trolled along obediently enough now, believing they must really be going out hunting. Stafford said he would come to help and get them to know him. And Mr. Keefe could not come because they wanted him somewhere.

"They seem to want everyone somewhere now," said Gheena gloomily. "There are the Guinanes out fishing, and it's horribly rough."

The Guinanes' boat was bobbing actively on the back of vicious leaden waves, bobbing down almost out of sight, and the two men had their backs in it as they pulled.

"Just by Shanockheela, where there's that nasty current—they can't catch anything to-day."

"They have a new boat got for sailing," commented Andy. "An' me Mama does be thinkin' Mrs. Weston gave it to them, for they couldn't have the money nor half of it themselves."

"It is McGreery's boat that he left an' he to list," put in Phil; "thirty pound they should pay. She is above at the Quay now."

"They seem to be rowing out," said Darby, staring, "and there's a real big sea at the point. Oh, it's to meet that fishing-smack that's standing in."

They stood watching the dipping and rising of the little boat, and the pitching of the red-sailed smack, which beat in against the wind, lurching past the rowing boat.

"They've had enough," said Gheena; "they're putting the lines in. Good gracious! they'll be swamped."

The sea out there for a small boat was cruelly wild, but the men put up a rag of sail and ran down to the coast before the strong wind into the shelter of the harbour.

"There is some clather behind us," said Andy, pulling up Ratty just as Darby commented upon the bravery of fishermen. "A sight of horses, I'm thinkin'."

There were four, all ridden at a break-neck trot, with Mrs. Weston's Commander-in-Chief, very fresh and jaunty, leading the procession.

She wore a multitude of curls showing round the edge of her bowler hat, which curls, she confided to Gheena, she simply could not tuck away, and she looked fresh and young as she rode loose-reined, with the sea breeze blowing off her powder.

"For two miles," gasped George Freyne, "I've talked about tendons, and she went faster and faster."

"But if I hadn't gone so very fast, I'd simply have had to go rather fast for longer," said Mrs. Weston equably. "You were so late coming for me."

"The cutting of drains," said Basil gravely, "and the guarding of coasts. Freyne here is worn out at Home Defence, and even I had to take messages to-day right round to Clona Kratty."

"I'll be giving you all orders soon," said Keefe, mopping his pink face. "As we're all friends here. They may come and invade us." This deep note of tragedy in his voice caused the two boys to say, "Laws Almighty, d'ye say so, the haythens!" and Gheena to clutch so nervously at the grey's mouth that he reared in astonishment.

"In Heaven's name, Keefe," said George Freyne, "when are we to go to sleep in safety?"

"That's what they'll tell you," breathed Mr. Keefe mysteriously. "When they come."

"One would think you'd been talking to them," said Gheena suspiciously. "And as we have no guns and no troops, I don't see why they shouldn't."

"If we drive to the very top of the hills," said Violet Weston, hopefully hysterical, "and built eyries there, they're dreadfully short-winded and might never bother to run up after us."

"You wait until they shelled you," said Darby, "in your eyrie. Gheena looks as though she contemplated entrenching on the lawn."

"Are they beyant in the little boat?" piped Andy dolorously. "Are they, Mr. Keefe, was thim Germins?"

"Who told you, Keefe?" George Freyne showed symptoms of acute strain. "Who—is it right? Are they coming? Are they?"

"Don't get so enated," said Keefe calmly, "I can't tell you now. When they come, you know. What are you talking about, Dillon? It won't be any use when you're crucified bodies! Don't be absurd!" Staring at a ring of white faces and hands dropped limply on their horses' necks, Mr. Keefe grew irritable. "When the orders come," he said sharply, "they'll be really nearly a reality."

"To have lost all that fright for nothing," said Darby tersely. "Orders!"

"Then why in the name of Goodness did you say it was Germans?" blared Freyne furiously; "considering I have got a weak heart. You did say the Germans were coming. I say you did, sir."

"As plainly as the hills," said Mrs. Weston reproachfully. "Oh, what a fright!"

"Unless they showed playing Wagner on the road, it could not have been plainer," said Gheena huffily, "making us all fuss like that, and trying to look as if we weren't, and Phil——"

"Phil appears to have gone home to tell your mother," said George Freyne, answering.

"She won't mind a bit until you come to advise her about it, so that doesn't matter," returned Gheena. "Yes, he's gone."

"He said he was off to the Missus," said Andy, "an' ye none of ye heard him go."

"Three times I repeated: When my orders come!" wailed Keefe. "And I should not have said even that, but I was just trying to break it easily to you all that there will be orders as to invasion, if there is an invasion; and when they come..."

"If you say it again, Keefe, I shall set Grandjer at your horse," said Darby loftily.

Mr. Freyne then got off his horse, and suggested learning the hounds' names, which they had come out for instead of talking nonsense. Andy knew them all. But, as in a kaleidoscope, tan and pied bodies and flapping ears and wistful eyes seemed to shift and melt before the would-be learner.

"That is Doatie, with the sphot above his tail. Call him. That is Sergeant ye called, an' his biggest sphot is on his eye."

"Didn't you call the first one a he," said Freyne heatedly, "and that other—and both?"

"Well, he—Doatie—do have pups surely," said Andy patiently; "but he has a sphot on his tail annyways, an' that is Sergeant."

Grandjer, yellow tan and tailless, was unmistakable. So was Sweetheart, who had lost an ear, and the enormous Home Ruler. The two small black hounds called respectively the Divil and the Tailor could only be mistaken for each other. They were, Andy told them, "Holy terrors to hunt, but apt to be yowlin' if a fence was very high, bein' baygles entirely."

The pack sat or rolled, greatly interested in the increasing reiteration of its names.

Beauty, being polite, thumped her tail without pause; it was really hardly worth while stopping. All the more obliging hounds shifted and oozed from side to side as they were called, and the lesson terminated at length by Darby suggesting that dinner-time would be upon them and they had better go on.

It was too late to wander into the mountains. Darby took a road which wound up to a little group of houses, and then back again to the coast, with the pack lumbering along quite placidly and the four whippers-in all repeating names behind them.

All save Gheena. Sundry visits to the meets of the foot dogs had made her familiar with most of the pack.

The Commander-in-Chief, somewhat exhausted by his burst, was now forging noisily, clicking his flat feet together fiercely, and varying this by an occasional stumble.

"Did you really think Mr. Keefe meant the Germans were coming?" Gheena found Basil Stafford riding beside her.

"And if he had meant it," he said, with a thrill in his voice. "It's a big sea to guard, Miss Freyne. Lord, if he had meant it! Spiked helmets marching along this road—oh, with their owners, if you like it, and everything seized! Promise me if they ever do come you'll run away inland," he said. "They won't go off the railway lines."

"How could they come?" Gheena looked out to sea. "You don't think they mean to try?"

"I know"—he checked himself—"I know—that it may be possible for them to try."

"I shall ride away Whitebird and lead Redbird, and lead Bluebird, and take all the dogs," said Gheena firmly.

Save for the chasing of a blameless cat, the pack got home in chastened mood, greatly depressed by an aimless promenade. George Freyne's car was at Darby's gate, and a suggestion of bed at Castle Freyne was well received.

"Keefe can lead Gheena's horse, he won't want to hurry, and Stafford can take mine, Darby, and we'll drive. Matilda may have been worried by Phil about Keefe's nonsense."

A tyre bursting delayed the motor, and the horses could cross a short way through the park, so that as they drove up the avenue they saw Stafford appearing with Gheena's grey jogging amicably beside him.

"Hello, there! Hello, you! I say, Freyne!" he called out, amazed to see the motor swerve.

"Dearest, the sunk fence!" shrilled Gheena.

For the car was suddenly left to itself as Dearest George cleared something from his face, and again, with light-hearted gaiety, the Sunbeam immediately dived off the gravel at the sunk fence.

"Hello, I say!" Gheena leaped from the car wildly.

"A bee," said Freyne, beating at the air hard, "a bee! Bees, my God!"

He switched the power off and leaped for the shelter of the laurels.

"He's mad," said Gheena. "But it is bees! All the bees!" Her dive into the undergrowth was even swifter than her stepfather's. She was followed by Darby going with long bounds off his crutch, and then by the chauffeur. A swarm of furious insects buzzed outside.

"Bees!" George Freyne wiped his forehead. "The bees have risen. I am badly stung on my nose."

"They've swarmed on the doorstep," suggested Gheena. "Look! they are in a cloud. I thought you were crazy at first, Dearest, but you're right. And the car has not gone over."

"Bees," said Darby, "don't swarm in October."

"The two hives is beyant on the steps," remarked Dayly the chauffeur, as he nursed a stung cheek drearily. "I sees them."

Basil Stafford, skirting the sunk fence, believed that they had all gone away and called out loudly. His fevered imagination even sprung to the chance of Germans having really come and being in full occupation of Castle Freyne.

"Hello—what!" He struck an insect from his nose. The bees saw new worlds to conquer. He beat his ears. It is lamentable to add that young England's manhood sprang yelling from the saddle, leaped the sunk fence, and was into the laurels on to Dearest George's body.

"Bees!" howled Stafford. "Swarms!"

"In October," wailed Freyne, dabbing his swelling nose and nursing a trampled-on leg.

"And both the horses have gone off their heads," said Gheena. "They have simply flown away. You will go at once to catch them, Dayly."

"I would be afeard, Miss," said the chauffeur simply. "They are terrible sot agin horses any times, them bays."

At this point the dining-room window was opened very cautiously.

"The first of them," quavered Phil's voice dramatically, "It was thruth. They are lurkin' in the bushes. I hears them."

Gheena said, "Listen."

Then there was a pause in conversation filled by prayer.

"It is the Masther's cyar," declaimed Anne the cook. "I'd know her in Heaven."

"They took her off him," gulped Mary Kate, the kitchenmaid, who was in the throes of Ave Marias. "He is kilt, the craythur. See the empty sate."

"An' there is some lurking outside," breathed Phil. "I can hear them in the shrubs. I tell ye wasn't it the great plan entirely to kape us safe? The poor ould Masther, the craythur."

His master's head, veiled by a flapping laurel leaf, suddenly issued from the thicket, and the voice which issued from behind it did not seem to be discussing Germans.

"God above us, did they do ye a harrum, sir?" wailed Anne from the window, putting out her kindly face for a second. "An' ye too, Bayly? God be praised for ye're lives."

"The two eyes out of me head," replied Dayly—Dearest was incoherent—"and the Masther's nose the size of two, an' Misther Stafford picked in the ear."

"The haythens!" said the voice, now again behind the blind. "The Turks an' infidels. I hear Dayly. Could the polis——" She prayed loudly.

"Prayer won't mind ye, Mary Kate," counselled Phil, sobbing. "I hear Miss Gheena bawlin'."

At this point Gheena grew hysterical. George Freyne's words became clear as he ordered Phil, as a something, something, something idiot, to get away the bees, to get help and take the dam brutes away.

The angry bees were racing up and down the avenue between the laurels and safety.

"I carried them around," said Phil soberly, out of the window, "thinkin' they'd destroy the robbers if they comes up, so I up and clapped the two carriage rugs around them, an' they neshtin' within, an' I wouldn't say we can ever get them back till it is dark entirely, sir, they bein' a trifle irritated in themselves an' all out."

The prospect of crouching in the laurels until after dark, or the alternative of squeezing through the barbed wire palings or of taking the open surrounded by a cloud of bees was now with the refugees.

The remarks which sped from the bitter smelling shade of the laurels were venomous as the disturbed honey-makers.

"Someone is talkin'," said the sober voice behind the Venetian blind. "Howld ye're whist, Mary Anne, till we listen. Would ye dhraw the Germins on us? Do not stir the blind on ye're life or they'll be in. The bees Mary Anne, not the——"

At this point Mrs. Freyne opened the hall door. It was dim behind her, and she was not perceived by the questing enemy.

"Matilda," wailed her husband, "get them away!"

"Oh, you, Dearest!" replied his wife placidly. "Dear me! I see the car nearly over the sunk fence, and I thought I heard George, but I cannot do anything until he comes—can I, Professor?—about the Germans."

A deeper note grunted from the hall. Mrs. Freyne chased a bee from her face.

"Matilda," yelped George Freyne, "send someone!"

"There are no Germans, only bees," called Dayly loudly. "An' we are all picked and bit sorryful, Ma'am."

"Bees!" Mrs. Freyne saw the hives. "Professor, someone has put two hives at the door, and Dearest George is in the bushes. Dearest, what am I to do?"

George put forth a swollen face to deliver orders, to cry for men and bee dresses. To pray that veiled rescuers should be sent to them and gauze veils—anything to escape the bees.

Mrs. Freyne, obliged to ask advice, hurried to the Professor. A stifled yell and a crash told that the enemy had gone inside, and the hall door was slammed, promises of aid being presently shrilled from the upper windows.

"We are getting transparent things, Dearest. You are sure there is no danger? My net skirt, do you think? Oh, dear!"

The enraged bees sighted new worlds to conquer as they sped out at Violet Weston and Mr. Keefe, who were riding quietly across the lawn, the result being—four gaitered legs described some circles and curves, and two people dived wildly from their saddles and ran.

"If you ask Dearest George what to do," advised Mrs. Freyne from the upper window—"he is under the laurels—he'll tell you."

Mrs. Weston crashed to covert with a shriek, followed by Mr. Keefe swearing fluently, and plucking bees from his collar; these he stamped on, but they had stung him first.

A variety of advising onlookers began to collect cautiously on the avenue, all advising at the same time.

Dayly suddenly put his coat over his head and sped blindly to comparative safety.

"An' I thinkin' it the grandest plan," said Phil, speaking now from the bushes at the other side of the drive. "Bullets they is used to, says I, an' they might resint; but innocent bees, they could blame none for, says I, an' the two maids bawlin' and prayin' within."

"There is James runnin', afther they have him kilt," wailed the housemaid wildly. "Oh, the Turks! An' the Missus cool an' aisy at the windy above." Another wild shriek echoed despairingly, followed by sobs for mercy, and Mary Kate hid her face.

Now just as James took flight, Mrs. De Burgho Keane's large car hummed to the gate, and was pulled sharply up to avoid Dayly.

Mrs. De Burgho Keane was pinched and anxious looking. Phil had dropped word as he scurried for home.

The sight of the flying figure, the murmurs from the bushes, upset her completely.

Even as Dayly escaped, Smith, her own chauffeur, suddenly let the car slap into the bushes as he beat frantically at the air. Mrs. De Burgho Keane suggested "Mines!" at the pitch of her voice, reasoning out that some hidden force must have upset the discreet Englishman. Muffled figures rushed across the drive.

"If they would take five pounds and the ham to let me go," she pattered unevenly, searching in her purse. And she got half out of the car as Dearest George, his head muffled in an old net skirt of his wife's, came tearing blindly out of the laurels, flapping at a cloud of bees. They were in the net, entangled, these furious little beings of wrath tinged and buzzed in his ears. He struck the car, and with a sob clutched Smith the chauffeur, burrowing down under the wheel for covert.

"My God! they are after you!" said Mrs. Keane heavily. "They have hurt you! Oh, the horror—of reality!"

The amazing spectacle of George Freyne veiled in net thrilled her with horror.

"Half killed me, the devils! Start the car, Smith; back her! Get her away! Get us out of this! Half killed me! One eye gone, my nose ruined! Start her, will you?"

Smith jogged the self-starter, and put in the reverse with a yell. He had just been stung. Mrs. De Burgho Keane on the avenue leaped for safety as the maddened chauffeur passed her without heed.

"Put your long veil down," yelled George Freyne; "you'll be all right if you do."

A variety of muffled figures now issued from the bushes. Gheena entirely covered by art-muslin curtains, Stafford with a butterfly net over his head and the handle wagging behind, the rescuers insecurely draped, and the gardener in a correct bee dress and armed with a syringe and a bell.

Mrs. De Burgho Keane had sat down flat on the avenue, and she was quite close to a collapse. Stafford stopped to help her. She was clasping her floating lace veil across her face and she endeavoured to speak with a German accent. She leant back against nothing and nearly overbalanced.

Darby Dillon had driven his car over and had pulled up to watch in rare amazement the flight of Dearest George; the spinning away of the Limousine from its rightful owner, and her subsequent collapse.

Rocking helplessly at the wheel, he saw the Professor spin out Dervish-wise into the open, with a black ninon skirt roped round his neck and spreading out cape-wise over his shoulders.

"The party," said Stafford, from the butterfly net, "is now complete." He wagged the handle at Darby.

"You are not going to lift it!" muttered Mrs. Keane heavily. "Not going to look at me! I am really not so beautiful at all, Herr German. Mines! So quickly! They upset Smith—Schmidt, a name homelike to Boches. I—if five pounds, and a ham—it's all I've with me—to let me go."

Stafford's laughter rent him for a time, then he said: "Oh, come along!" quite kindly, and poked sufficiently behind the lacy shoulders to lift her up.

"Mr. Stafford, how did you escape?" The stout lady got up and stood unsteadily.

"They won't follow us into the house, but hurry," said Stafford, choking. "Hurry, while the gardener bells them."

For Carty, loftily secure in veil and gloves, commenced to peal the bell.

Mrs. De Burgho Keane heard and gave up with a stifled cry of the Tocsin, then slid into Stafford's arm, her head on his shoulder, the Professor supporting her the other side. She was not quite unconscious, but absolutely dazed, submitting without realizing it to the support of the nearest wheelbarrow which was half full of weeds. Darby drove swiftly across the lawn to the yard gate, thus avoiding the bees.

When they had all assembled in the drawing-room, picked off the remaining bees and stood uneasily, starting at every sound, Mrs. De Burgho Keane woke up. Someone had drenched her in toilet vinegar and left her to recover.

Mrs. Freyne consulted Dearest George as to remedies for bee stings before, a little hurt at his reply, she fetched the blue-bags and onions, of which the room reeked healthily.

George Freyne had apparently lost one eye; the other glared from the shelter of a swollen nose in an outraged frenzy of pain. Stafford rubbed his neck delicately and Gheena shook a finger regretfully.

Old Naylour, quite unshaken, had brought in comforting tea.

"Do you think, Dearest George, that tea would upset Mrs. Keane?" asked Matilda Freyne thoughtfully. "She is opening her eyes." To which George Freyne remarked unsympathletically that anyone was damn lucky who had eyes to open, and Mrs. Keane sat up appalled by such callousness.

"They hurt you," she said faintly, "hurt you all. I succumbed. And they? They spared us. I said Schmidt to placate them."

"They are nearly all in now," said Stafford, looking out. "The bell did it and the dark."

Mrs. Keane muttered something incoherently; the words related to the Tocsin and the French.

"And the mines which upset Smith," she said. "Poor Smith! What an experience!"

When the facts of the case and Phil's strategy were fully explained to her, Mrs. De Burgho Keane felt a sense of loss. If they were not Germans, then everyone had behaved as though they were—well, she sniffed up the scent of onions.

"Bees alone," she said awfully, "do not cause men to rush and scream and hurl themselves from dark corners and take my car, and my man Smith, and——"

"He got it on the cheek and the hand," said Stafford gloomily. "Some of your half-dead 'uns, Freyne, in your bridal veil."

"The skirt which the cook did get me," said the Professor, "is torn sorely, but it kept out much pain."

Mrs. Violet Weston, stung on the neck, said gruffly that it was all absurd. Mr. Keefe, whose cheeks were engaged in swallowing his snub nose, decided that he would not be able to do duty anywhere for a week or more.

A chorus of voices sounded outside advising and declaiming. Presently Mrs. De Burgho Keane, shaken and offended, made her way to her car attended by her gloomy one-eyed host.

"And Phil"—she turned round—"what will you do to Phil, or what has been done to him?"

George Freyne muttered the words, "Hang Phil!" viciously but indistinctly.

To this day Mrs. De Burgho Keane believes that the truth was concealed from her, and that an invading army of Germans are either buried in the park or took sail again for Germany, finding Ireland useless to them.

"Bees!" she said haughtily to those whom she confided in, "the bees were a blind for other excesses."

CHAPTER VI

"Wasn't it all a great upset entirely, Miss Gheena," said Phil sympathetically. "Mary Kate isn't the bether of it yet, an' the Masther's lost eye blinks, an' all."

Gheena remarked gravely that she thought the defence of Ireland ought to be entrusted to Phil.

"Bein' full sure themselves was comin'," continued Phil ruefully, "an' the Missus alone in the Great House with that Professor that's up to no good. Sure I thought it was the great thought, an' when I heard the nise in the bushes, I wasn't full sure they was come on us, an' I right entirely to brin' the bees out."

Darby burst into sudden laughter, memory of those thronged moments reaching him.

"When Dearest went off backwards in the car, and she sat down," gulped Darby, "and the Professor danced out in the black tea-gown tied over his head."

"If ye had it dhrawn out on one of thim twiddly picthers, wouldn't it be the great sight?" said Phil. "But when they were afther sayin' the Germans was comin', was I right to believe them, Mister Darby? Wouldn't it be the price of them haythens to be picked be honest bees? But the Masther is that peevish about it," ruminated Phil, "an' at me noon and night. If he was one of us afther a fair or a dance, he wouldn't be thinkin' long of a closed eye."

Darby grinned again, and looked up to see Gheena cast off her coat and stand in close-fitting stockingette.

"It is much too cold for a bathe," he said paternally.

Gheena kicked off her shoes, and remarked that cold water was always warmer when it wasn't really warm, as she poised for a dive.

The sea poured in just there into a deep narrow pool, hedged over about twenty yards down by a narrow belt of rocks. Beyond that was another pool, a small one, and there the sea seemed to dive under a ledge, called the Bridge, where it gurgled and sucked and muttered restlessly, until it showed again in a basin of great depth, washed into at low tide by the waves and covered at high.

Gheena poised, balanced, disappeared. The water surged and parted, throwing up protesting sprays and rippled as she shot up. Then she was gone again out of sight.

"Always she does be doin' that same," said Phil, "undther the rock no less, like a merrymaid."

Darby ran to the Bridge. A shadow showed in the green depths swimming easily under water; next moment Gheena's merry face shot up.

"I call it my diving-bell." She trod water easily.

"It's hang dangerous going under like that; if there was a devil-fish down there."

"Or a shark," suggested Gheena, holding on to the seaweed-hung ledge.

"There does be cobblers, anyways," put in Phil, "an' I seen a lobsther out of that hole onst."

"I say I call it my diving-bell," Gheena laughed. "I can get out to the Basin now, Darby. That took me ages. I used to go half way and get frightened. And I'm waiting to find a way into the pool of Cons Cave; there must be a passage, and it's close to this."

"You go out to the Basin!" Darby stood on the rocks, his face white and drawn. He could hobble, he could ride, but if Gheena choked down there he could not dive in to help her. He was twisted, crippled, useless. She would drown before his eyes.

"I wish you wouldn't, Gheena. If you got cramp out here, if you hit the rocks..."

"It was girls at the Coliseum," said Gheena absently "they did things under water and I had to learn."

"There is Mister Stafford now," said Phil.

Stafford's face appeared above a ledge of rock; he clambered over and came towards the pool.

"You'll get to know these rocks," said Darby thoughtfully.

"All systems of drainage, even that of the tide, being interesting to me," Stafford laughed. "And, Miss Freyne, bathing in October!"

Gheena merely replying it was better than in November, climbed out and dived skilfully; she came up to take a big breath, disappearing again.

"She will rise outside now," said Phil, fingering the rope which Matilda Freyne insisted on being carried by him.

A minute, almost two, Darby scraped and shuffled along the rocks, his teeth set, Stafford slipping past him easily.

"Is it this pool, Phil?" Stafford peered down beyond the Bridge.

"It is," said Phil, gathering sea-grass placidly.

Something alive had vanished under that wall of rock, down into the sucking cold depths, something at the mercy of the sea; the men bent over, both tense from fear.

"Phil, for God's sake! Does she do it often? Phil, come here!"

"She does so, sir, too often. I am gatherin' say-grass for the Misthress, sir, and won't she be plazed if there isn't enough."

"Say-grass, you Phil?" The green water stirred. Cobbles scurried madly away. Gheena's face parted the water.

"Po-oh!" She drew a long breath. "Po-oh! I got on slowly to-day somehow." She ran back, swam up the long pool and hurried off to dress.

"That submarine business," said Darby gloomily, looking down into the still pool.

Stafford looked up sharply.

"I don't like it," said Darby. "The slightest accident in that hole under the rock and——"

His mouth twisted.

"She just takes her own way in everything," he went on. "Matilda will ask the angels' advice about her wings in Heaven; she never gave an order in her life, and Dearest George is so obsessed by his authority that the girl never takes any notice of him. She has no business to bathe at all in October, it's too cold; and what she meant by learning to hold her breath."

Basil Stafford jumped lightly over the narrow pool landing with a slight slip and stagger.

"It's ... a fine thing to have one's limbs," said Darby gently. "A very fine thing, Stafford, to be fit and able to move as a man should."

Stafford said nothing—it was the only thing to say. The unmarred side of Darby's face was turned towards him, lean, fine in its lines, with cleanly-cut features—the face of a man who had power to feel and to enjoy life.

"I'll be only one of many after this war," grunted Darby after a pause; "but, Lord, if I could have lost myself for my country, out there!"

Basil Stafford sighed uneasily, flushing a little.

"We are going to have five-o'clock tea out here at four," announced Gheena, appearing suddenly. "Mama has got callers—the Bradys from the Rectory, with a right-minded cousin, and the O'Haras from Crom Rectory,—and they are all going to knit." She flicked out her own knitting as she spoke. "So Phil is making a fire. He always lets it go out."

Phil was coughing patiently, his face hidden in a pungent reek of turf smoke.

"I am afther blowin' it up, Miss Gheena, till there isn't a puff in me two cheeks," he explained; "but someone was at our little cranny of turf, and this same is moist on us."

To boil a kettle with bunches of heather requires constant scurryings to and fro, outbreaks of fiery flame being varied by smouldering ashes. Mocking songs from the kettle, followed by glum silences which it refused to break.

Basil Stafford, his eyes full of tears, thought almost regretfully of the tea-party at Castle Freyne, and it was Darby at last who hauled a now stormily bubbling kettle from a roaring blaze, and was then heartily abused because he had forgotten to heat the tea-pot.

Immediately the tea was made the turf glowed to a fiery red and the smoke was no more.

Basil Stafford drank smoked strong tea in silence. His glasses lay beside him, and more than once he looked through them out at the silver-grey sea.

"Uncle Richard says they suspect bases here"—Gheena looked along the low cliffs—"for the submarines; people supplying them with petrol. No one would; they couldn't."

"Money," said Stafford, "tempts some people greatly. The Germans pay well, I am told," he added a little hurriedly.

"Tom Knox got his commission yesterday." Gheena waved her tea-cup. "He is all khaki and importance. How anyone who could go can stay!" She looked fierily at Stafford.

"Some people cannot help themselves," he said apologetically.

Gheena said icily that they could do something, drive a car, replace other men; then she stopped abruptly, seeing Darby's drawn face.

"The Professor," said Darby, "is making studies of rocks as usual. What amusement he can find hammering out little pieces of stones I cannot say."

"And he do be lookin' at thim half the night through," put in Phil. "Ye can see his shaddy if he pulls down the blind—he forgets most times—pokin' an' peepin', with big books in front of himself."

The Professor saw the group and waved a telegram.

"Your man was very busy, Stafford; he had forgotten some supplies, so I offered to bring this." He held it out, beaming softly.

Basil opened it, reading with slow ease. Then he looked round at the distant wireless station and grunted sharply.

"Of course," he said to himself. "It does make it..."

Gheena had snatched the wire, reading out a meaningless jumble of letters and short words.

"And the news?" she asked softly.

"Oh, the war news. Everything much as usual. Great hopes and little else," he answered coolly. "When they strew the papers with roses they seem to forget the thorns or the stems, Miss Freyne."

Having been haughtily told he was a pessimist, Basil Stafford read his wire again to himself.

"Mrs. Weston offered to do post-boy, too," said the Professor. "I met her, but I wouldn't allow it. She was at your house borrowing note-paper. Hers was out. She has gone to see Mrs. Freyne now."

Basil Stafford said "Oh!" very thoughtfully.

The party at Castle Freyne was gathered in an airless room when they got back, heated by a large fire of wood and turf, the blend of tea and conversation strong in the close atmosphere. The women were knitting and the men discussing the mistakes of the war, humbly listened to by their spouses. The Bradys' right-minded cousin—her name was O'Toole—stabbed wool which grated harshly on the needles, and occasionally commented shrewdly.

Gheena let a breath of soft fresh air into the room as she threw up a window, and the visitors shivered politely.

"Going to nurse, or motor drive, or release a man?" asked the right-minded cousin almost as she shook hands. "I'm on five committees in Dublin."

Gheena said meekly that she was waiting to act as interpreter when the South Coast was invaded, and Mr. O'Hara carefully explained that nearly all Teutons spoke English fluently, so that that idea was absurd.

Gheena snubbed, closed half the window, and sighed patiently.

"Are you joining?" said Miss O'Toole to Stafford.

Mr. Stafford eyed her rancorously, merely remarking that his time was occupied by business.

A fumble at Miss O'Toole's pocket revealed the probable presence of a box of white feathers.

"Dearest George thinks the Germans are making all kinds of mistakes," said Matilda Freyne placidly. "Losing such lots of men, you know, and making themselves so unpopular and digging so much. He thinks they will all get rheumatism and have to go to Harrogate."

Darby suggested Marienbad and Homburg slyly. He thought the German army invalided might congest Harrogate. Matilda looked at Dearest George, feeling uncertain until she consulted him. George Freyne got up and shut the window sharply. Then he remarked to Stafford that he was glad the wireless station was now properly guarded. Anyone might have reached it before.

"When I saw you over there yesterday, Stafford, I said to you——"

Gheena listened with such elaborate carelessness that it was impossible to avoid nothing what she was doing.

"And, by the way, how did you get in?" added George Freyne fussily.

"I had some business there. Hanly charged my battery for me, too. Yes, I knew the guard. I thought they'd put on men soon."

Mrs. Weston, knitting rapidly, began to talk about the hunting in rapturous tones. It was actually going to commence next day, and she hoped her bay horse would be as good as he looked, the darling.

"If he only gets as far as his looks go," said Darby absently.

Miss O'Toole was questioning Basil Stafford ruthlessly—as to his age, birthplace and nationality. These items she wrote down in a small note-book, where, she said pointedly, she kept a register of fit men. Then quite suddenly she asked a question in laboured German.

"Hanoverian or Platt?" asked Stafford amiably. "I should like to know which you'd understand best before I answer. When I was at Berlin I practised both."

Then the mocking look died out of his face, which reddened slowly.

Gheena escaped from the heat to the doorstep. It was one of those autumn nights which are as oppressive as June with none of its lightness. The air was murkily hot, and a fog was stealing into the hollows; through the grey haze one could hear the sea boom at the end of the park.

Everyone began to put up their knitting. The O'Haras' wagonette, poised haughtily high over a dejected grey cob, came round to the door, the weary beast walking with the bitter certainty of seven miles to go and a feed of hay at its end.

Miss O'Toole, trailing her ball of wool, came stealthily towards Gheena.

"I should ... watch him," she breathed fiercely. "Wireless here, and a coast for submarines, and—what is he doing?"

Gheena said "Drains" a little faintly.

Miss O'Toole compared drains to trenches with a sort of disdain.

"Young—strong—active. Blurts out he's been to Berlin and blushes over it. It's a place to watch," gulped Miss O'Toole dramatically.

Several exclamations, coupled with seven stumbles, heralded the approach of Basil Stafford, who had spun a cocoon of wool about his legs, and was cursing volubly in discreet undertone. His endeavour to get unwound involving him more securely still, he demanded tartly why Miss O'Toole played Fair Rosamund on the doorsteps; and, of course, if she could take it off in a second he would not cut the stuff, but——

Miss O'Toole, coursing round him agilely with dives and dashes at his gaiters, managed, as she loosed Stafford, to meet and involve the master of the house in the tangle.

Basil Stafford said "Silkworms," and advised George to stand quite still.

"Under, over. That's his bit. I never saw anyone dive so neatly on dry land."

A whistle sounded clearly on the cliffs, shrill and sweet. Basil suddenly used force, so that the wool fell from him in frayed pieces, and slipped to the door, followed by bitter reproaches from Miss O'Toole. In her opinion, at least two soldiers had been deprived of mittens.

It was unkind of Dearest George to say huffily that they were jolly lucky, for the drawing-room door opened to show him standing, wondering with the agile danger swoop round him, and winding feverishly. Gheena was outside.

The suspicious eyes of two blameless clergymen and their spouses fell heavily upon George Freyne, Mrs. Weston's cheerful voice wishing to know if it was a new game of "Now we go round the Mulberry Bush," or Kis...? and here her host's glance stopped her, and trying to help, she involved herself in the tangle.

"How you became so entangled," said Mrs. Brady icily, "in my niece's wool, Mr. Freyne?"

"It was Stafford," roared Dearest.

The eight suspicious eyes looked round for Mr. Stafford and four noses sniffed simultaneously.

"Break the stuff!" foamed Freyne. "Get me a knife! No, the other leg, not the right, the left."

"Take Dearest George's advice," counselled Matilda; "he is sure to know his own legs. There! you were wrong. Just lift that foot, George, and the other at the same time. And, dear me, George!" George's answer being curt.

"Not being a Zeppelin," said Darby thoughtfully. "Round his arm now, Miss O'Toole, and his neck. Put your arm round it, and you too, Mrs. Weston. It's the last strand."

Mrs. O'Hara, who had listened for quite an hour on the previous day to accounts of the perfections of Miss O'Toole from Dublin, now decided in awful tones that the pony could not stand for another moment, and said "Good-bye" heavily.

"I am not evil-minded," said the clergyman's wife, "but I thought better of Mr. Freyne, and that painted Mrs. Weston."

"Even if the girl were pretty!" said her husband. "Go on, James, home. One could understand." Here he coughed hoarsely.

Gheena, who had run down from the sea, came back slowly; through the still mist she could hear voices on the water—men rowing back to the little village on the point.

Crabbit barked suspiciously at something unseen on land, ran it to earth, and came back with Basil Stafford.

"What did you think? Who whistled to you?" said Gheena abruptly.

"War makes the world jumpy," he said coolly. "Might have been an advance patrol of Boches, y'know, coming up to supper."

The day of the first meet of the scratch pack dawned in a grey mist, with the sea whimpering under a shroud of white. At seven, when everyone in Darby's yard was busy polishing and hissing, the mist cleared to a clammy greyness, hot and still. Little Andy, extremely resembling an active mosquito leaping from place to place, regretting as he reached each, that he was not at the other.

He tore to the kennels, advising old Barty, calling on Beauty lovingly, prophesying that she would folly none but himself. Telling Grandjer not to be frettin' for his tail, because the front of him would soon show them what he was; pouring out tales of Daisy and Greatness and their prowess.

Barty, his new leathers covered by overalls, observed bitterly that to be goin' out with such a pack was like what a man'd dhrame of afther he atin' too much.

"Like a dhrame when ye'd be at a hunt an' all off, an' the horse undher ye sthandin' sthock sthill," he ruminated sourly, "an' hounds leggin' it over the besht of ye're counthry, or maybe a check an' ye knowin' the line, an' the horn ye'd put to ye're mouth is a concertina, an' two strange masthers out laffin' at ye. Save us! I am terrible for dhramin'. Andy McInerny, terrible! The least taste extry at night and I'll be at it. One was the worst of all, that there was a great lawn meet at Dom Dhurres, an' I with the grey horse outside waitin', an the crowd an' all, an' not a ridin' trouser or a boot on me, and no way to git thim. Sometimes I'd see the sphur tacked to me bare heel, an' the shame of it'd be through me; but I never axed even for a horse's hood."

"When I dhrames I dhrames plisint," remarked Andy simply. "I med believe onst I had Mr. Freyne's best horse whipt off, an' he himself dead in a ditch, cosy and quiet an away I bolted, an' Miss Gheena watchin'."

"Plisint!" said Darby softly. He had come up behind the two.

"An' off I whipt before hounds an' all, till Misther Freyne run up, shouting and leppin', but I travelled on. Ye're not goin' to send them out empty, Misther Barty, are ye, the craythers?"

"In the name of God, youngster, would ye feed hounds on huntin' day, ye omadawn?"

"It was thinkin' of kapin' the payce mid us, me Dada 'd say," murmured little Andy. "What they kills, Mr. Darby can pay for aisy. They're apt to catch bins, an' they hungered. It was the widow Hefferty's turkeys onst an we never sent thim dogs out empty agin."

At this stage Barty threatened reprisals if Andy did not instantly run away to mind his own bizness; so Andy hovered for a space, repeating that even the least taste of food would quieten the dogs, and then scampered back to the yards.

Darby's active, well-bred bay was being polished until he shone as a horse-chestnut fresh from the husk. The sedate grey, which was Barty's mount, poked a lean head from his loose box, and knew it was hunting again. A liver chestnut, destined to carry Carty, the newly-broke-in second whip, was doing what his rider called rings around his box, induced by the sight of the whip which Carty had only just learnt to crack, and which, so far, had generally hit his horse by mistake.

The chestnut preserved a too lively recollection of how often the thong had found him out in tender places.

"Have ye e'er a polish put on the Rat?" was what Andy demanded, as he seized a clean bridle, and zealously rubbed the bits in sand.

"Let ye put a polish on him yerself, ye pinkeen." Mike, the head groom, raised a heated face.

"He'd clout me with his hindmost legs," remarked Andy soberly, "unless I had a one to howld him."

"Me gran' bits that was clane an' all." Mike left the bridle for Andy, looked at it, and hinted darkly that it was not the Rat but Andy who would have a polish put on his hide if he did not leave his bethers to themselves. Next moment, as Andy trailed tearfully back to the kennels, old Mike stumped growling to the Rat's stable, directing that the pony should be cleaned properly, so that Miss Gheena wouldn't be at them at the meet.

The Rat was a long-tailed, powerful little beast, with the second thighs of a big horse, no shoulder, and a lean, vicious head. If he had been sixteen hands, he would have carried sixteen stone with ease.

He bit and kicked in the stable and ran away out of it; but few more wonderful hunters had been foaled, and his inches made his evil efforts to hunt futile. They had tried him in harness, to the extreme detriment of two pony carts, and with additions to chips for lighting the fires. If they stopped him kicking, he lay down and slumbered stolidly, but Gheena would not part with him.

"The head of that child will open and let out his brains, the sthate he is in," said Mike, looking after Andy. "If he has flithered up to the kennels onst to-day he has done it twinty times, an' the eyes lightin' out of his head. Will ye have Colleen out second, sir?"

This to Darby, who came limping and crippling across the yard.

"A second horse." Darby glared back at the kennels, and suggested that possibly half a horse might be sufficient with the pack which he had gathered together.

"For the huntin' they'll do it might be," said Mike, grinning; "but it is the huntin' ye'll do yerself afther them, Misther Darby, when, maybe, they'll make home on ye, and, sure enough, bein' used to Matt McInerny's bugle, they'll not come to yer own. An' the teasin' they may be afther givin' ye. Will I send Colleen to Drumeneer, sir, at one o'clock, an' Sportsman for Barty? That grey isn't half fit."

Darby went to his breakfast and came out again before he was finished, disturbed by the pursuit of Grandjer and Daisy round the house. Grandjer was, in fact, hot on the line of the stable cat, which took cover just in time, crackling like a live wireless installation from the depths of a holly tree.

"If ye had to quieten them with a taste of mate," panted Andy, when he had entreated Grandjer to give over and come huntin'. "If Barty had to be said by me. 'Ware cats, ye thievin' rogue."

"Where is Barty?" Darby inquired, limping out with his hunting whip.

"It is Greatness an' Doatie he is afther," observed Andy absently, "that got into the chicken yard. We have the resht secured in the coach-house. Would ye flick a clout at Daisy, sir, where he is nosin' in the bushes? There wasn't the thickness of a hair between Grandjer an the ould cat's tail when she treed," confided Andy proudly. "Grandjer is hard to bate, I tell ye. If he had to take afther Dandy, wouldn't he have been the grand terrier afther rots?" he finished regretfully.

Grandjer, leaving the animated Marconi in the tree with sorrow, growled out that it was a pleasure deferred as he yielded to persuasion and trolled towards the yard.

"An' he'll trail a fox as good as a cat," said Andy still more proudly. "We should be off now to be in time."

Barty climbed to the grey's back, age slipping from his withered monkey-like little form as his knees gripped the saddle. In a new pink coat, his little twisted face all aglow under its peaked cap, Darby awoke to a second youth. He could still ride. He was a huntsman once again, with the right to swear respectfully at his superiors and fluently at offending equals. His old hands took up the reins until the grey bent his neck proudly to the light touch, and slipped away with his strong halt exaggerated by his light-hearted pride.

Carty landing with difficulty on to the suspicious chestnut, said "C'o-op thee" knowingly and cracked his whip.

A certain number of hounds pattered out docilely, but Beauty, Grandjer and Daisy sat down and waited for little Andy.

When the lash-stung chestnut had done two maddened circles round the yard and upset Carty on to a barrow full of sand, men on foot used blandishments and threats to induce the three to join the pack.

A small eager face peeped rapturously round a half-open door, for the three were adepts at dodging blows and very few got home.

"They are looking for Andy," suggested Darby.

"Tell that shrimpeen Andy if he does not hurry along I'll tear the nose from his face," yelled Barty at length, his dignity as huntsman spent.

"Didn't ye tell me not to move on until ye were moved on yerself?" shrilled a reproachful voice. "An' I'll be late, says I, an' the price of ye, says you, an' now the gaither on me leg is not even hooked up yet."

Discomfited Barty said several things to himself; aloud, he told Andy that if himself and his pony did not come on the minnit, they might remain inside, an' them three wastrels of dogs with them.

This threat brought forth the Rat and Andy with a rush, the little wicked-eyed pony tearing along with his jaws set and only stopping when he saw hounds, the three renegades falling in happily.

"Didn't I say ye could not go without me?" said Andy. "And if anyone does go without me it will be the Rot," he added a little anxiously, as that animal reared abruptly and then dropped and kicked.

Barty, distinctly raffled, started again, the body of the crooked-legged miscellaneous pack at his heels, with Andy and Carty behind, and behind them the three rebels, now strolling along placidly.

Far off the sea could be seen, grey-blue under a grey-blue haze; before them the hills bumped and twisted, with the narrow-slated banks dividing the fields; here and there brown chasms from which turf had been cut, and the coppery gleam of a stream, and further off some fair pastures with the slates on the banks replaced by growth of gorse and fern. Something had to hold the crumbling treacherous soil together. It took an active horse and a quick jumper to slip over those banks without a fall or scramble, unless they adopted the safer plan of some of the heavy-weights, who stood on them until the fence crumbled into a brown mould of safety.

Darby watched the final start with resignation and a grin. He foresaw complications before him, but at least they were trying to keep things together for the peppery brave little man who was out fighting for his country, and they were not trying to ruin a really good pack.

"We'll pull down a few foxes if we have to get lassoes," said Darby cheerily, going to put on his hunting cap.

The good side of his face was reflected in the glass. He was young and strong despite his injuries; the cheer of a day's hunting was in his blood, and for a moment a flash of hope lit his lurid young eyes. A flash he so seldom saw, or allowed himself to see, that almost with a snarl he turned so that the scarred cheek was reflected and buried the gay hope almost as soon as it was born.

"You fool!" said Darby severely. "You rotten fool! To think!"

"Chicken or egg sandwich, sir?" the antiquated butler inquired in the hall.

"Egg; and provision the car with the chickens. I may appease the pack with them," said Darby grimly.

What a fine old place it was as he looked out across the wide park, the big old trees flaunting in autumn glory, the sea just visible! He might have been running down those steps lightly, with hopes which had not to be smothered at birth and his heart. He might have loved the old place doubly, because he could offer it as a home to a girl whom he cared for; instead of—his hand touched his useless leg; he leant on his stick. "But, hang it, if it were so, I should have been in France and probably crippled for good," said Darby, trying to put care away.

It was on mornings such as these, when he could enjoy part of life, that Care clung closer. He could ride, but must call whole men to open gates or catch his horse for him. He could feel the rush of the wind on his face and the horse between his knees, see hounds hunt, look for his turns and his luck as other men did; but at the finish, when men jumped from their tired horses, he must climb down laboriously, feel the glow dying as he limped to his car or into some house to have tea.

He met the post-boy on the avenue and found a short letter from the Master.

"Keep it going if you can. We're having poor hunting here; but back the old country to kill its fox in the end, for all the croppers they'll take on the way."

Darby drove fast along the narrow bumpy roads, drawing a distinct breath of relief when he saw Barty and the hounds demurely still upon a hill and quite a crowd of people waiting.

There was a lack of smartness about the assemblage. Mrs. O'Gorman from the Bank had only half clipped her stout roan. She said that it seemed wrong to turn out a horse just the same as one would in peace times. There were no new habits and half the familiar faces were gone. Mr. Hefferty, the local dealer, who generally had a string out—at least four horses, shaven and tidied and gingered until their tails stood out as banners, and every semblance of a good point was emphasized—now had only one, a light whity grey with big feet, an animal which would have to be dyed if it ever went on active service.

Someone who had seen a paper was immediately surrounded. How was it? What was the news? Good or bad?

These were the days when people hoped that war could not go on, that it would end suddenly and dramatically because it was too huge to endure; when everyone forgot that its very hugeness would keep it going until money and men failed.

Old Captain Moore, who was fiercely anxious to do something, was even explaining to people at what point our troops would enter Berlin. He had been there twice on a Cook's tour, and he meant to go for another directly there was peace. He had even written about his ticket. Mr. O'Gorman was concerned as to the choice of prisons for the Kaiser and personally blamed that excitable Emperor for the feverish price of oats.

"Spoiling even what's left to us over here!" he said. "Hope they'll give him black bread when they shut him up."

A thousand places for victory were discussed and argued over. Everything was hopeful and nothing ominous of defeat or even of check. Antwerp, after all, was only part of unfortunate Belgium, and its fall made the air clearer.

The communiqués were things to be hung over, relied on, and devoured. People believed then that every word from Berlin was an invention.

Then the small field turned its thoughts from war and looked at the hounds.

"Any more adventures, Barty?" Darby asked softly.

"There is one thing, sir." Barty returned an indirect reply. "That hunt or no, they'll get a bit to ate another mornin'. We only tore them off the back of Carty's mother's pig, an' they had three chickens gone from me own aunt while you'll be clappin' an eyelid."

Matilda Freyne asked Dearest George if he thought it would be wise to get up, and was then lifted to the saddle without making any effort to assist in the proceedings. Once there, she consulted Dearest George as to her straps and the adjustment of her reins, and was placidly happy on her quiet horse.

Gheena had forgotten all wars as she endeavoured to persuade her brown mare not to buck. It was so good to be out with any kind of hounds again.

George Freyne having taken his new hunting cap out of a hat-box and adjusted it with pride, shouted to Darby to wait for him, and grew irritable when Darby looked reproachfully at his watch.

"If you had a wife to get fixed up and the hang post late on account of the hang war! Hunting horn only just here in a box not even opened. Here you, Phil, are there straps for it and for the case?"

"They are, sir," said Phil briefly.

Dearest George tore feverishly at the nailed box, injured one of his fingers, and having sucked it noisily, mounted his horse, ordering Phil to open the hang thing and fix it on.

By this time the majority of the small field had collected by the Freynes' motor, feeling that George Freyne was to blame for keeping them waiting and looking at him reproachfully. Mr. O'Gorman remarked "Twenty past" just as the lid of the box cracked open.

"And you'd like it to be forty past if you were late yourself, O'Gorman," snapped Dearest George bitterly. "I'll move on without you often enough. How is a joint master to go out with nothing to play on, blow at—er—sound for his hounds, I should like to know?"

Here Darby wanted patiently to know if Phil was digging trenches or only opening a box.

"I'd say it will not fit on aisy," said Phil dubiously, coming round. He held up a brightly new Klaxon and scratched his head with his free hand.

"I—Matilda!" yelled George Freyne hopelessly.

"Dearest George," said Matilda placidly.

"I—told you—a hunting horn—weeks ago! Years ago! There was a delay in sending it."

"You said the very loudest one, Dearest George," said Matilda pleasantly. "All the stores were short owing to the war. I did wonder what you could fix it on to, but as you said a whistle too. Isn't there a whistle in the box, Phil?"

"Move on, Barty," said Darby with decision.

CHAPTER VII

Darby Dillon left his fellow master glaring at the Klaxon horn and rode up to the hounds. There was no eager greeting to him of quick yaps and wagging sterns, but rather a distinctly critical surveillance, and liquid eyes looking for the men on foot whom the pack knew.

Seen gathered together, the scratch pack were not prepossessing.

Darby grinned softly at the varieties of hound types, at Greatness's crooked legs and Daisy's snub nose, and especially at the crop-tailed Grandjer, so nearly related to a terrier.

A fringe of excited onlookers, previous followers of the foot dogs, gathered close, commenting eagerly.

"That is Spinsther, that ye reared, Marty. D'ye call to mind the day he took the trail down be Conellan's dykes, an' we all at the wrong side?"

Marty rubbed his head and recalled the incident.

"An' when he had his pup, didn't he tear meself too," remarked Marty sourly. "A pair of trouser I had on but eighteen months near pulled off me. He is a savage soort of a dog that Spinsther, an' I to rear him an' all with lashin's of milk an' male."

"An' Beauty, he has the nose. When the thrail was losht down anear the say, an' the other dogs on the back thrail, wasn't it Beauty thrun a yowl of his own?"

"Grandjer was the next," put in little Andy, "or maybe the firsht; but Papa had his mind med up he was only thrailin' old Mrs. Day's cat, Grandjer bein' but a puppy then."

"They do be talkin' of the Hunt Club hounds, but we have one fox an' his pups," said the covert keeper. "Five of them no less, an' thank God ye are out to hunt them."

Darby gathered the pack and waved his hand. The hounds looked up at the passage of the dog-skin glove through the air with mild curiosity. Darby waved it again; he uttered somewhat awkwardly a variety of hunting cries.

"Oh, give them a whack, you two, Barty," he said helplessly. "Thrash them in." Carty raised his whip, a motion immediately followed by a frantic bolt of the chestnut round the field.

"Me Dada 'd get up on the furry banks if he did hunt a covert on the sly," piped Andy; "make a lep in himself till all 'd be afther him. Onst they've a taste of the thrail ye can lave them."

Greatness, Daisy and Home Ruler, an enormous tan bitch with one ear, were sneaking off to draw for themselves; the place might be alive with hares.

Andy whipped two back, and Darby yelled at Carty to follow Home Ruler.

"Get round them, you—idiot!" he roared.

Carty, soliloquizing feverishly that it was the world he would be round if the chestnut carried on them games, or maybe chargin' Germans before he knew what was what, endeavoured to steer his nervous steed in the direction of Home Ruler's tan hind-quarters.

But it was Gheena who drove the prodigal back to fox-hunting.

The Field having come out, expected, as fox-hunters will, that this motley collection were to be as well ordered and obedient as Tom Lindlay's pack. Observing the difficulties, they decided, very audibly that it was perhaps better to leave a country alone than to botch it in this fashion; and as it would evidently be of very little use to come out riding, better try on foot.

Mr. O'Gorman, who had, almost forgotten what his feet looked like, said "Yes," briskly, "or in a motor-car."

"You'll have to get off and go in, George," said Darby. "I can't go crippling and hobbling up that bank."

"An' if meself comes along with ye," said Andy. "Blow a blasht on ye're bugle, yer honor, now to hearten them."

George Freyne looked heatedly at the empty case, got down with a grunt, and pompously marched toward the bank.

Violet Weston, brightly pretty in a light fawn coat and completely irregular soft tweed hat, pushed the tall bay through the crowd, watching critically. She was followed by Mr. Keefe, who also wore a hunting cap, quite considering that he was one of the Masters as he had helped with the consultations.

George Freyne clambered on to the bank, calling lustily.

"You must go down within." Andy leapt up and disappeared into the gorse, followed by his three faithful hounds. "Ye must go within like me Dada."

"Yerra, push him out! Hurreh in with ye! Gan out of that, Spinsther! Hurreh in along with ye! Nose him up!"

The foot people arrived breathless and rushed to the rescue.

"It is the prickles they are afeard of. Nose him out, Daisy, ye schamer! Blow a blasht on ye're bugle, sir, and over with ye; they'll folly."

George Freyne's new whistle rang shrilly clear, but he stayed on the bank.

"Get into it, Freyne. Here, I'll try my horn," said Keefe.

"If you've a hunting cap on you get in yourself," bellowed Dearest George irritably. "Come along and get in; if you can blow that—do!"

Darby Dillon rocked on his horse as Keefe, stout and pink, outlined in a very tight pink coat, made importantly for the bank, and standing there, brought forth a husky wheeze of sound, followed by an impotent broken squeak.

"Whip them on to us now!" shouted Keefe. "Now! What is the 'Come in' note, Dillon?—which, this or that?"

"He is just like a pink puff-ball," gasped Gheena, wiping her eyes. "Just! Oh, Darby, what is the 'Come in' note?"

"If he expects me to blow in or out now, I can't," gulped Darby. "Blow away yourself, Keefe; you'll strike it in time."

"If he stopped that poisonous row, they'd come to my whistle," shouted Dearest George, stuttering furiously.

"They have the thrail!" shrilled a small voice wildly.

At that moment Beauty flung a long throaty yowl; Grandjer, dashing to her, echoed and confirmed it with his nondescript yelp. Beauty spoke again emphatically, and now Daisy threw her tongue.

Every hound outside quivered to the sound.

"Hurreh! Hurreh! Hurreh! Folly on there! Nose him out! In with ye all! Get on to it, Parnellite! Schald to ye, Spinsther! Hurreh! Hurreh! Over! Over!"

A mixed pack of hounds and followers dashed towards the cover. There was no hanging back now. Home Ruler's huge body caught Dearest George's legs; his footing was precarious. Spinster followed the charge. Leaping to get clear, George Freyne lost his balance, grabbed at Keefe, and the two went face foremost into the thick gorse, floundering there furiously.

"Well done! Success! Back him up, Colleen! Hurreh on!" shrieked a jealous onlooker.

"Andrew McCarty, if you knocked me in, I will kill you," said George. Freyne as he emerged, a new Venus, from the sea of prickles.

"I did not, but the dogs," returned Andrew contemptuously. "An' shouldn't ye be within? God save us! I'd say the inspector had a wakeness got; he is schriekin' terrible!" Keefe's face, convulsed, appeared above the gorse.

"Just above the boot," howled Keefe, struggling upwards. "A devil of a dog with a black face. I fell on him."

"That was Spinsther," said Andrew McCarty. "It was only agitayted he is to catch the fox. He manes no harm. It was him tore me own trousers; but he had pups the same time."

"To the bone," moaned Keefe, as he floundered to the bank. "An infernal hound, Dillon, has bitten me to the bone."

"All that way," said Darby with interest. "Did he leave the tooth in, Keefe?"

"Lord, they're at him. Yoi! Yoi! Yoi there! Hurreh! Hurreh! Nose him out! Rout him out!" yelled the crowd. "Forrard on! There's tongues for ye."

Ten couples of hounds, most of them throwing the long harrier yowl, Grandjer's shrill tongue audible above the rest. It was music in the still misty day. Hats were crammed down, reins tightened; the small Field surged to the edge of the gorse, peering in.

Two cubs and an old fox doubled and twisted in the thick gorse, the music echoed and deepened.

"Watch them, Barty; see to the gap. I've no breath," said Darby. "Get on your horse, George. You took covert gallantly."

"If it was that Andrew McCarty," said Dearest George murderously. "Am I all pricked, Matilda? Am I? Have you looked at my face?" exploded George mildly, removing a handkerchief dotted with blood.

"I was listening to the hounds and thinking how nicely you jumped in, Dearest George," said Matilda mildly. "But when you came out, of course I asked you why you did it. Oh, he's away! You are slightly pricked."

The old fox leapt lightly into view, ran for a few yards, was headed by the rush of the crowd, and disappeared back into covert.

"Hi! You!" Darby swung round. "You set of spoilsports! Think I can't go for you because they're only harriers. If you don't keep away from that gap and stay where you're told, I'll go and hunt hares with 'em."

"Think I didn't see you, O'Loughlin, away for a start! You set of——"

"It is not too bad at all for the sthart," murmured Barty approvingly. "Get over to this end, please, gentlemen," he roared himself. "Keep your eye on the gap, Mr. Keefe."

Harold Keefe bound a blue-and-white check silk handkerchief round his leg and consulted Mrs. Weston as to hydrophobia. He was faintly sulky when she took no notice, her bright blue eyes fixed excitedly on the rustling gorse.

"He is away!" Darby darted along the edge of the gorse. "Away just outside the fence. Blow, sir, blow them out! God save us alive! look at that!"

For at that moment Grandjer, with a stout cub firmly clamped between his jaws, leapt over the bank, and putting the limp little beast down, commenced to worry it.

"Didn't I tell ye Grandjer was the dog?" screamed Andy, flying out. "He is thrackin' that one now since the commincemint, an' never left him."

"We'll have to break this one up, then, I suppose," said Darby. "We must do the right thing."

Grandjer worried and growled and tore. He was screened from view by a big stone and a clump of brambles.

"He will ate it be himself," said Andy. "Do ye go afther the ould fox, sir; none'll know."

Darby looked at Barty, and Barty grinned.

"Be the time someone is bit getting away the fox, the other one'll be at Durra," he whispered. "And why should we lose a hunt acclimatizing this lot to do right, when, with the help of God, the Kayser'll be dead and our own hounds out again next October?"

"But," said Darby, "well, then. Forrard on!"

"He won't ate it all," said Andy. "He'll tiren, an' unless Mr. Keefe bein' bit already wouldn't so much mind another, I'd say whoever went to take it'd get a quare nip."

"Toot" went Darby's horn. "Shrr," George Freyne's whistle. A grating gurgle emanated from Keefe. Slowly hounds dribbled out, but surely, everyone hunting. When he got three couple together, Darby went away, wondering vaguely if he would ever see any of the other which was still conscientiously towling and yowling in covert.

Home Ruler, distantly related to a deer-hound, could travel; she flung herself on the line, with Beauty close behind and Greatness yowling joyously.

Grandjer, finding his fox high and tough, especially as there was no one to dispute it with him, picked up his kill and galloped in pursuit of the charge.

The fox had been gone some time, and scent, the mysterious, was not too good. Home Ruler, dashing light-heartedly in front, threw up her big head suddenly. The remainder of the pack, all hunting zealously, towled into view, coming undisturbed through the horses. Grandjer dropped his cub and galloped down to his companions. It was his sharp yap which rang out as he passed Home Ruler and spoke on the line. Then "Yow-Ow," the long-drawn musical harrier notes, as at a fair pace they pressed on. The going was light on the top of the hill, the banks fair and sound. What matter if Dandy's pup was leading, his docked stump quivering! They were hunting. Slowly but surely they dipped into Durra, a big place in a hollow, and circled round it until it was evident that the unpressed fox had gone back to covert.

"We'll be a long time killing one this way," remarked Darby, watching the pack spread out as they checked.

"And if we do not kill, we are practically of no use." George Freyne would have been supremely happy if his face had not worried him. He knew the line of gaps coming across; he had ridden, as became a Master, in the van, and he was now wondering if blowing his whistle would be a good thing just to remind people of his position.

"The men up at the covert said they were looking for a kill, Darby."

"And we might have had one," said Darby, "if we'd tackled that cub." He looked guiltily at his companions and Barty coughed.

"Beauty has it! Listen to her now! Hurreh on, Beauty! All to Beauty!" yelled little Andy.

The child had lost his cap, his hands were bleeding. The Rat had gone exactly as he chose, but Andy had in these crowded minutes tasted nectar.

That ecstatic jump on to the high bounds bank, the crawl along the top, all but swept off by a branch, the blissful leap straight off the road over a coped wall, with everyone else going in at the gate, the bumping rush through the crowd at the beginning—all these things had gone as wine to young Andy's head.

Might the war go on for ever if it meant his having the Rat to ride on.

Violet Weston, a little ruffled, a brickish red forge showing through the powder on her cheeks, rode up close to Keefe.

"This horse makes a very curious sound when going up a hill," she said a little coldly, "and he seems to find it hard also to do so; also, he stumbled at the banks."

"You—er—rode him at a very high place," said Keefe a little nervously. "That bounds fence is full of rabbit-holes."

"Well, he is very nice to look out, but I say——" Violet Weston turned to beam at Stafford.

"I was just saying this horse makes such a funny gurgle running up hill," she said, "and I shall be disappointed if he is not really a good hunting animal. After paying sixty pounds, too, for the thing. What is that noise, Mr. Stafford?"

"Intake or out-take?" said Stafford, his eyes glued to the persevering Beauty, who was feathering on to the line, with Grandjer dashing wildly about close to her.

"Oh, intake, certain," said Mrs. Weston grimly; and she added rapidly: "What does that mean? It's a shrill noise."

"He was a whistler, an' he a colt," remarked a voice close by. "An' if you do not aise him up the hills, miss, he will tangle in the banks an' his breath gone from him."

"I told you—there was a slight 'if,'" said Keefe, adjusting his hunting cap peevishly. "I said so not enough to stop him. You can't get sound horses this year for small sums."

"They wouldn't pass him for th' army," murmured the same voice in the background. "Twenty pound Tom Talty said, but it was his ankles, an' not the wind."

"They have got it. Forrard on!" yelled Mr. Keefe enthusiastically. "Forrard away!"

Beauty and Grandjer rushed to the cheer which was followed by the thunderous advance of Darby and a heated request to the third Master to let hounds alone when they were puzzling matters out for themselves.

"One of them threw his tongue," said Keefe snappishly.

"He did when Annette Freyne's mare kicked him. So would you," returned Darby dryly.

"If you're anxious to hunt this for yourself," he went on, his voice raised, "do it. You're all over the place. Get the Field up, somebody. Get them back to the clump of trees."

George Freyne, blowing his whistle, rode backwards and forwards busily, right over the line.

"If the Master was not in France he would be dead with the rage an' he here to-day, annyways," said old Barty bitterly. "His breath 'd never see him out with what's doin' here this hour past."

"Will I carry on Beauty or Grandjer?" whispered Andy, "beyant anear the sunk fence where he must have gone over? They won't folly himself or yerself," added Andy wisely.

Beauty's nose went down when she was clear of the crowd. With a long-drawn ecstatic yowl she declared that their fox had gone that way. Grandjer dashed over and spoke to it beyond, the whole pack coming towling melodiously to do their part.

They were patient. It often took three or four hours to wear down a hare. There was very seldom anyone to hurry or help them when they checked, and they were used to their own leisurely ways and their own melodious fashion of puzzling things out. They settled down to it again now, stringing out, every hound hunting without faith or reliance on the one in front, Home Ruler bringing up the rear, her great bulk wearing her out speedily.

Mrs. Weston kicked her spurred heels into the tall bay and put him at his scratchy gallop at the sunk fence, which he rose at gallantly some three feet too soon, and then blundered on his head at the far side.

"She can ride," thought Darby approvingly, as he watched the widow pick the horse up, digging her heels in again to reward him for his blunder with a savage thump of her whip.

Hounds carried on across the road and swung left into some low-lying land cut across by small deep ditches. The little Rat, his wicked head either high in the air or stretched out almost touching the earth, hung among the tail hounds, young Andy quite incapable of anything except sticking limpet-like to the low shoulders in front of him. Their fox had evidently been headed on the road, and not being hurried, had loped off to try a gullet in the bog. Finding this stopped, he turned up again for the covert. The ground was squelchy and holding; the edges of the small dykes were of crumbling peaty earth. Horses bucked and scrambled across, labouring in the deep going.

Several wise people were proceeding leisurely along the high ground to the covert, riding an easy line of gaps.

"We will be apt to meet the Croompaun this course," said Barty to Darby, "an' it will be ugly with all the grass above on it."

The Croompaun was a blend of bog drain and stone-faced bank, fencing the end of the bog. It was a nasty jump coming down from the gorse, when a horse could get fairly easily on to the bank, and what Barty called, settle himself before he made his effort to shoot out over the wide bog drain; but going up it took a really bold horse to get on to the bank far enough to avoid an ugly scramble or an extremely probable topple back.

"We are for it and it's half a mile round," said Darby philosophically.

"That bye Andy will be apt to be kilt at it," observed Barty, "on that skelp of a pony."

Splash! The leading hounds sent up sprays of amber-hued water, and then scrambled up the stony, treacherous bank, now overgrown with long, coarse tufts of grass and trails of bramble.

Darby held his breath as the Rat altered the position of his lean, pointed head, putting it straight up, and cocked his lop ears with complete determination. Next moment he hurled his powerful little body high in the air, landed seemingly on a mere tussock, and with the scratch of steel on stone, was safe on the top.

"Good Begonnes!" said old Barty. "Have a care of that Home Ruler, Misther Darby; she is undther your feet."

Darby pulled his horse together in the deep churning ground. A fall to him was an ugly thing, but he had no thought of it as he faced the Croompaun.

His active little horse rose with a grunt of effort, landing safely with his hind legs well under him, just as Barty rolled actively from the grey's back; that animal, relieved of weight, managed to get up somehow. The chestnut settled matters by refusing honestly, ridden, it must be owned, rather half-heartedly by Carty.

The two other black caps pulled up immediately, considerately remembering that Hunt servants must be attended to.

"Hold him at it and I'll whip him for you," said Dearest George, unloosing his thong.

At the sound of the swish the chestnut swerved with the swiftness of an acrobat, and declined to be straightened again.

"It will be quicker, maybe, to go around than to be swhervin' for half an hour," said Carty nervously. "Aisy, sir, he is in dread of a whip."

Gheena and Stafford got over side by side, and the tall bay, completely blown, simply slipped in to cool himself, Violet Weston shooting off with a shriek of wrath.

"I never saw a woman leather a horse so hard," said George Freyne afterwards. "She clouted him up to the place you can land, and never asked a soul to help her."

The few who had got over galloped on over light land, galloped and sometimes trotted, for scent was none too good, and the scratch pack did not mean to hurry themselves.

"Take us a long time to kill a fox at this rate, Barty," said Darby. "Eh?"

"They'll eat him in covert if he has no wish to break out again," said Barty; "an' that same will be no good thing this hour of the year."

"They have the thrail losht," said Andy as the rat stopped.

They had, just where Grandjer had dropped the limp remains of the cub. He recognized his prey now pouncing at it with a growl. Darby looked at the Field, which had short-cutted, and were just coming into view three fields away. Gheena and Stafford, stopped by wire, were some way behind. And the avoiders of the Croompaun were only looping the hill.

Spurs went in and bridles were shaken as Darby sent a blood-curdling yell of triumph echoing across the still day. It seemed mixed up with "Have it, Grandjer! Have it!" And this was followed by Barty's trained screech and a still "Who-whoop!" from Andy.

The new pack, the foot dogs, had run into their fox handsomely in the open.

"Yoi-i, there! Who-whoop!" Barty was dexterously removing brush marks and pads before he held the carcass above his head in the midst of the slightly interested hounds, Grandjer alone showing what he thought of the matter by snapping at Barty's legs and growling savagely.

"Well done! Bravo! Just what's wanted! How they must have bustled him!"

"Yoi-i, there! Worry! worry! worry! You would never make dacent fox-hounds of thim," said Barty disgustedly, "so what the odds!"

"Me Dada schnaps the hares if he is up quick enough," said Andy thoughtfully; "an' whin he is not, there is no one to be nisin', so they are not acclimatized to what ye are bawlin' out."

"The finest thing that could happen. We may congratulate ourselves," gasped Freyne. "Tally ho! Tear him and eat him! Tally ho!"

"Hi, puss, puss! Hurreh! Hurreh!" chorused the arriving foot contingent. "Yerra ate him! Hi, puss!"

"There is one fox pasht in half an hour back," added the covert keeper. "Had ye two in front of ye, sir? Ar'n't they wondthers for what they look like, thim dogs!"

"Dearest George, I took your advice and came across high ground," remarked Mrs. Freyne, ambling up. "We all saw you riding away from the Croompaun. I should have been afraid you had fallen in, but I saw your hunting cap going round so plainly and so sensibly."

George Freyne said nothing rather expressively. It was a little hard on a man who had just been telling his cousin Annette the dangers which she had escaped in the bog, and how hounds had flown down there.

"And, by the way, Annette, I thank you to buy tuppenceworth of red ribbon for that mare's tail," put in Darby. "Home Ruler is quite lame where you kicked her. She was last all the way."

"She is always lasht afther she is first for ten minutes," murmured Andy. "Me Dada says it is the weight of him, and that some of his fambly was mastiffs an' them yally saintly dogs."

The next covert was three miles off, and hounds, now learning something of their new work, pattered in fair order along a stony road. There was a faint diversion occasioned by Grandjer almost chopping a cat, one which Andy explained he was near to get offin befour, she having dragged her claws down his face onst an' got away from him.

The next covert was a straggling place, a long wood of fir and young larch with a few dubiously rideable paths in it. It was the last place to come to with the new pack, which enjoyed itself completely in its own way: Some hunting rabbits; four couple solemnly towling after a hare, and the rest disappearing in different directions. Barty viewed a fox away, but all their looking and whistling could only produce a dribble of hounds.