Front matter (continued 3)

The foot people had been left behind; there was no one to drive the pack out in time to do anything. But Greatness presently elected to get on the line of a fox and gather some friends with her, which fox they solemnly hunted round and round, stolidly and carefully, until Beauty marked him in a rabbit burrow and watched Grandjer try to dig him out.

With the aid of the terrier he was bolted and killed.

The thick mist of the morning had crept up again, grey and clammy. It hung with a stillness through which voices echoed hollowly, and great drops began to collect on the branches.

Harold Keefe shivered in the chill, proffering apologies to Mrs. Weston for any fancied shortcomings in the bay horse; Mrs. Weston, with her legs very damp and her boots full of water, receiving them quite graciously.

"Oh, I'm sure you meant him to be a dear horse!" she said good-humouredly. "And perhaps when he's hunted more he'll have more breath and less waist. I couldn't keep the girths tight. What a day for Germans to land!" she added with a shiver, peering into the mist. "What's that, Mr. Stafford? There would be nothing to stop them if they did. You've got the wireless to call for help."

"I fancy—that before they landed that the wireless would be arranged about," he said thoughtfully, tapping his boot. "It wouldn't do to have the power of summoning any of the fleet, would it?"

Gheena Freyne stopped listening to the hounds and edged her horse closer.

"A few men in their pay could account for the small guard on the station. And if the transports once got in the men could do a lot of harm before they went out again or were caught." He had got off his horse and was holding one hand to his side as if something hurt him.

"They'll be all so horribly beaten by Christmas there won't be anyone to come," declared Violet Weston optimistically. "You don't think the old Professor is taking notes of the coast, do you, Mr. Stafford?"

"Not that I——" Stafford stopped. "They're coming past this way again," he said. "I don't envy Darby all this time."

The fog came down so thickly that Darby gathered the pack and decided to go home. He had at least vindicated his start by killing two foxes and having some fun.

It was more to Andy's shrill pipe than the horn which brought hounds out, a great many of them suspiciously red about the mouth.

"They enjoy a place like that," said Andy happily, "with rabbits galore."

"When they get into it, Barty," said Darby as they jogged homewards, "and keep together and get on a little faster, they might show us some fun, after all."

"They'll show ye what noses can do," said Barty grimly. "But harriers with a taste of tarrier an' God knows what they was whelped, and harriers with a taste of tarrier they'll die. Wasn't that Grandjer digging the fox out, no less?"

They would pass close to Castle Freyne. The cars came up looking for them, and Gheena asked everyone to tea.

"I'll drive you, Gheena," Darby said, his voice muffled in the mist.

He climbed down slowly. On his horse he had been upright and good to look at; now he limped and shuffled towards the car, catching at it to support him.

"And you, Stafford?" he said. "Cantillon there would take your horse back for you."

"Mr. Stafford will probably want to get back to his work as he's been out all day," suggested Gheena frostily.

Basil Stafford observed mildly that it was undoubtedly a nice light evening to direct drainage works on, but he thought that he would wait until next day.

"Gheena"—Darby climbed into his car—"Gheena, the Croompaun was a very big leap for you to-day on that new mare of yours."

"You saw her do it?" she asked.

"I generally see you do things," he answered slowly, a rasp of pain in his voice.

Matilda Freyne had ambled homewards some two hours before. She was watching old Naylour pack up the Klaxon when they got in, and explaining how disappointed Mr. Freyne had been.

"If one could have an attachment to a saddle for that, Naylour," she said, "it would make a far better noise than he ever will with his mouth, wouldn't it? And a whistle is so undignified, is it not? And there you all are! And you are very tired, Dearest. And will you have your bath before your poached eggs, Dearest George, because both are ready?"

Darby said he thought that possibly the bath might be the easier to keep hot if it was still in the taps. He was then waylaid by Gheena at the dining-room door, Crabbit gyrating at her feet, worrying her muddy boots, and twisting himself into equine knots in his joy.

"Darby, I couldn't ask you. How did they kill that fox in the open like that? Was he sitting down in the fence?"

"He was," said Darby briefly.

"An' he was a cub. An old fox went away."

The corners of Darby's mouth relaxed visibly.

"Well, Grandjer snapped a cub in the morning," he said softly, "and must have carried it along; and when we met it, what Barty said was: 'If we lights down and who-whoops him, sorra the sowl 'll be the wiser, but all well playzed. Thim livin' round the covert extry so. An' Andy 'll kape a sthill tongue.' And Andy said his own Mama wouldn't twist it out of him in purgathory, and it didn't seem to matter what one does with that pack; so—well, it was a great beginning."

"Oh, Darby!" said Gheena faintly.

"I doubt if the best English packs would care for me as a Master; that is, if we write an account of it to the Field," whispered Darby. "Will you send one, Gheena?"

"I would not disgrace the County," said Gheena hysterically. "Dearest is telling them all now how he accounted for that fox."

CHAPTER VIII

Gheena Freyne knitted with unskilful rapidity and stared disconsolately at a blurred and bitter afternoon. The sea whined and moaned in the harbour, a liquid carpet of warship tint broken by peevish flakes of white. Gheena could hear it because she had the window wide open, cooling the hot air of the long, rather shabby room, before her stepfather came stamping in to shut it emphatically and mutter ill-humouredly as to violent chills.

There was a constant jar as of ill-fitting machinery in motion between Gheena and George Freyne. His fussy love of authority frothed at Gheena to roll back spent and broken into angry fume, her mother's complete and somewhat elusive submission making it even more difficult to bear.

It was elusive because Mrs. Freyne having duly received Dearest George's advice and commands, perhaps as to dinner, would amble down to the kitchen and then take Anne's advice there to save trouble, causing such faint shocks as pheasants for dinner, which George had ordered to be hung for another week, or beefsteak when the economy of mutton had been heavily counselled.

"Well, you see, we did send for mutton, Dearest, and Mullcahy—what did he say, Naylour?"

"That the teeth in ye're head 'd be left is all he had in the shop, Ma'am, it was that fresh."

"Exactly, Dearest. And I thought that really at a penny a pound the dentist would soon equalize; so this is only off the sirloin we bought, George dearest."

In the same way Matilda took the latest advice from grooms and chauffeur. Still, it was better than Gheena, who took none at all, but listened with her grey-green eyes glinting, preserved complete silence, and did exactly as she thought best.

"Shut that window, Gheena—storms of rain and wind and a gale blowing in!" Bang went the sash.

"I've admitted some oxygen," said Gheena equably. "You'd better unwind yourself gently, Dearest; you got three strands round your ankles making that rush."

"And the fire roaring up the chimney with coals at their present price. Well, if it is turf and wood, there won't be wood always."

"Take one step backwards—now turn round," said Gheena. "Thank you. Don't break it; think of the soldiers in France."

The unbroken gloom of the day had irritated her. She looked at the grate and remembered—Gheena was too generous to recall it often—that it was her father's money which paid for everything, and that in a few years' time the house would be her own.

"And your insensate habit of sleeping in a gale," grumbled George Freyne, "smashed the Chippendale table at your window last night. I met Maria carrying it down with a leg gone. It is a valuable table."

"Was," suggested Gheena, her needles flashing. "Tom Malone put a deal leg on."

Her stepfather eyed her a little anxiously. The question of Gheena's future worried him. The thought of the Dower House in winter was almost intolerable. When Gheena married, Castle Freyne would belong to her absolutely, and if she chose an unpliable husband, it would certainly mean turning out. The war and its burdens curtailed the savings which Dearest George was amassing and—he had been out to the yard and found two new and unneeded men there, taken by Gheena because they had been dismissed, one by an economizer and one whose master had been killed in the war.

"Instead of economizing, you and your mother are always reckless," he burst out. "Two old men taken on, Dillon and O'Leary, useless old dodderers, eating in the kitchen, with tea and sugar and flour at their present prices. And oats—I have ordered nothing but black oats for the future, Gheena, for the horses, and I sent away a man who brought white."

"I ordered that," said Gheena, getting up, "and my horses shall not cat black oats, Dearest, even if the heat has upset you."

"The heat?" said George Freyne, glaring at the blurred atmosphere outside.

"And I'm going down to see Hennessy. He is sure to be at tea with Anne," said Gheena, going out. "He got that oats for me."

The hoot of a motor-horn roused Dearest George from sombre chewing of bitter mental cud.

Darby Dillon took his car round to the shelter of the archway and then let himself in.

He came lumping across the polished hall and into the hot drawing-room.

George Freyne stared at him and grunted before he burst into the song of his grievances, which were tea, sugar, oats, and two women without mental balance.

"We had to come home from the meet," said Darby, having duly listened without comment. "Too wild to keep hounds out and no one there but ourselves.—I'm not listening! But I was, George. But a man may do what he likes with his own, mayn't he? And Gheena is an heiress. It will all be hers."

"Except a thousand a year and a cave," burst out George Freyne—"a sea cave on the shore."

"Don't make short cuts to it, then," said Darby gravely.

Gheena, her colour still high, returned, Crabbit at her heels.

"I've sent the car to ask Mrs. Weston to tea," she said. "Dillon can drive, and it will mean Mr. Keefe also, no doubt."

"And Stafford," said Darby. "He's the latest."

Gheena sniffed haughtily.

"Why he stays on here," she burst out—"as if drains mattered. A nice thing if the Germans found them ready just to make their potato grounds good for them."

Darby held his hands to the blaze, as he said quietly that all men knew their own affairs best.

"The man may have something wrong with him," he said. "Heart disease or heaven knows what!"

"A man who rides and shoots," said Gheena contemptuously. "I have my eye——" Then she stopped abruptly.

Dearest George, feeling himself neglected, remarked that he would not have the car sent on futile errands. It was a dear car, and just because it was a wet day, and to send it with a man who might be able to drive, or might be in the bay by noon under water, car and all. He appealed to his wife, who came in unperturbed by bad weather, her curiously fresh comeliness outlined in girlish blue.

"Of course, Dearest George, it will get wet as it is wet," said Matilda Freyne sympathetically, "the tyres especially; but it is so very wet that it won't be bad, and as old Dillon is there, it may amuse him to wash it, and Gheena said she wanted company."

"I'll buy a small car now I've Dillon," said Gheena shortly, "one for myself. They are back now; the wetting's over."

"These two men were going to have tea with me," giggled Violet Weston as she came in, "so I brought them along. We were just getting the Professor to play Bridge, so I brought him too."

"The last time I came there were the bees," said the Professor amicably, "and the poor lady so much alarmed."

"Any news?" Darby looked at Stafford.

"The usual deadlock in mud and ice." Stafford pulled out a telegram. "I get weary of wires nowadays. Christmas is so near, and some of us dreamt of them having Christmas at home, and some of Christmas in Berlin, and here we are."

Violet Weston, somewhat flauntily dressed in mauve, with expensive white furs and shoes with diamond buckles, peeped at the wire anxiously.

"Why do you have the things in Greek?" she asked.

"One word does for three, you see," he said smiling, as he dropped the flimsy paper into the fire.

"They are talking now of a great submarine blockade," said Darby, "cutting off all our supplies."

"And they say there are supply bases along this very coast," puffed Dearest George. "Matilda, why is tea late?"

"Perhaps if we asked Naylour?" Mrs. Freyne was not disposed to reply to a direct question. "What do you think, Dearest? Perhaps that new bad coal——"

"I beg your pardon," said Naylour at the door, "but there is two coastguards here to have speech with the Masther."

The importance of his country's defence wiped the thoughts of tea from Dearest George's mind; he rushed to the door and Gheena opened the window widely.

"I have to perish you all to change the atmosphere," she said apologetically. "What is it, Professor?"

"It is my handkerchief a silken," said the Professor anxiously. "I had him out in the hall and with a cold in the nose——" He ambled out.

"Gheena," said Violet Weston, "I've something to say to you."

Gheena trailed her wool across the carpet to the far end of the long room.

"Some one said—they saw submarines about," whispered Violet; "one of the coastguards told me—a periscope just outside the bay. And also that they're all on the watch for supplies going out from here—and that they are afraid of people signalling. Gheena—what is that Stafford man doing here—idling?"

"He is not a German," said Gheena stoutly.

"Go on knitting, he's watching us. If a German is brought up altogether in England he has no accent—nothing. He goes out late at night. How do I know? I went into the garden one night to look for a cat I heard mewing there, and he went down the next steps; they do for the Professor's home and mine, you know. I heard him crunching off across the beach beyond the pier."

"We'll watch him," said Gheena through clenched teeth. "I have been watching him myself. Now you can too, and Crabbit and I will find out where the petrol is stored."

"I've spoke to you three times," said Darby to Stafford, "and you've never answered. Now you come out of the catalepsy with a lep."

"Why was tea late, Naylour?" Mrs. Freyne asked. "Oh, dear, here is Mrs. Keane!"

"Naylour," said Mrs. De Burgho Keane, flapping into the room, "was never in time. He used to commence to clean his silver at four o'clock, and when it was half-past the tea-pot would be all pink paste."

"Asking your pardon, Ma'am, but that same was only on days when I had jobs given me," said Naylour firmly, "all the coats to brush and all throusers to press."

"Naylour!" said Mrs. Keane haughtily.

"An' tay is not afther bein' late, Ma'am, but the Masther's watch is on. He sot it on this mornin', thinkin' he'd be huntin', so as to get all out, an' he forgot to sot it back."

"Four kinds of cake!" groaned Mrs. Keane. "I allowance them to a spoon of sugar to each cup now in the kitchen and four cups of tea a day."

"I remember noticing the cake for the concert tea wasn't sweet," said Gheena absently. "We made five pounds, and we'll have another for the Red Cross—with the recruiting song."

"So dreadfully immodest!" said Mrs. Keane. "Just think how the soldiers would hate it, too, if everyone who had sung that song ran to kiss them on platforms on their return. I should insist on its being altered to greet."

"Darby said that wouldn't do for Scotch regiments, because 'greet' was Gaelic for 'cry.'"

"I found him," said the Professor, returning, "but so also had Crabbit."

He held up a large bandanna rent across by sharp teeth. Stafford stared at the pocket-handkerchief thoughtfully, and Crabbit wagged his tail pleasantly.

"War is a dreadful thing!" said Dearest George, rushing back. "Too many complications. Confound it, Gheena, it's your wool again!" His plunge into space was checked by the Professor's plump shoulder. "Several suspicious characters hanging round the wireless. Two cars puncturing on the road just outside and taking an unreasonable time to repair. Oh, yes, they took their numbers quite cleverly. And people asking the way, and they've seen a submarine outside the bay. English or German? Oh, German, of course, Matilda! What foolish questions you do ask! And they are afraid——"

"Here—my friend, was all this for publication?" said the Professor softly—"all?"

"There's nothing private in a sighted submarine," snapped George Freyne peevishly; "the fishermen saw her from the point. The Guinanes say they did not, although they were out at the time, but they never like to agree with anyone. Mary Talty did and Con Talty."

"What I came to tell you," said Mrs. De Burgho Keane, raising her voice and looking importantly, "was that——"

"You've dropped your hot bun," said Mrs. Freyne absently, "the butterest bit. Please, Crabbit."

"—Was that Lancelot Freyne is wounded," concluded Mrs. Keane irately. "I met his mother and Annette both in tears because the wire did not say how much though it mentioned a foot."

"Just think of Lancelot wounded! Somehow one never realized that he had really gone out," said Mrs. Freyne.

"He was at the base looking after embarkations," said Gheena. "He must have got run over. They did not send him up, I know, because his letters were all Boulogne, and how cleverly he could talk French."

"Still, he's wounded," said Mrs. Keane. "And you might think more of your cousin, Gheena. He will probably come home to recuperate."

"If General French can spare him," said Gheena sweetly. "You see, someone who might be of use will have to replace him now at the base."

Dearest George broke in hotly to remark that Gheena was very heartless talking in that fashion about a gallant boy who had gone to fight for his country, and decided that he would drive over to Cahercalla to find out the news. He thought it over as a fresh blast of rain drove against the window and a boom of wind shook the trees outside.

Stafford, seated in a dark corner, was absently breaking up pieces of plum cake and feeding Crabbit with them. He seemed lost in thought.

"The extravagance—in war-time!" said Mrs. Keane, seeing him. "I am astonished! with plums in it too!"

"To say nothing of its making him sick," said George Freyne. "I think all dogs should be got rid of with food so dear."

Gheena's cheeks lost some of their colour. Her stepfather could do nasty things when he was put out.

"If anything were to happen to Crabbit I'd get married next day to replace him," she said, a note of cold warning in her voice. "To anyone! You might take me, Professor."

The old Professor spilt his fourth cup of tea as the remark reached him; then recovering, he observed that the marriage of a maid to her grandfather was forbidden in the prayer-books, and asked for more tea placidly.

"Well, someone," said Gheena. "Darby, how many wild things did the pack do to-day in the rain?"

"They just clung to the horses' heels," said Darby gruffly, his voice sounding hoarse and strained; "that was all, Gheena. By the time the war is over they will be a model pack. If one could breed a fox-hound with Grandjer's nose!"

"They were two hours and a half hunting that fox on Tuesday," said Gheena, "but they caught him in the end. He looked absolutely blighted with astonishment going up the last field, considering how many times he'd left them behind. Oh, dear! what a Christmas it's going to be—all wool and war!"

"Your chauffeur sent in to say, Ma'am, that if the wind arises any more, he'll scarcely get the big car across the long hill beyant the bache," announced Naylour respectfully, "an' will he come arround before it does?"

"How you can allow Ma'am, Matilda," said Mrs. De Burgho Keane coldly. "I had trained him into Madam so completely."

It was unfortunate that Naylour's "She had so, Madam," remarked completely to himself, should have been audible to Gheena and Darby, who burst into the insane giggles induced by attempts at suppression of open laughter.

"His silver wants cleaning," also said Mrs. Keane. "You should make him do at least what he can do."

"An' what he could not," came murmuring from the open door.

"If you can't get across the hill, come back," said Matilda Freyne, ignoring the comments placidly. "There are plenty of spare rooms and a turkey as well. That's for dinner, of course. Gheena, what is amusing you and Darby?"

"Retrospection," said Darby solemnly; "nothing else."

The bad day gave its wildness to the night, which stormed and raged through a wind-tormented darkness, to grow ashamed before a murky dawn and threatening to hide in the caves of storm, leaving a still world and pallid, washed-out sky, with an apologetic sun wintering in its cloudless expanse. Far out on the point the spray was lashing up silver bright; caught in the sheltered bay the caged waves heaved sullenly.

Gheena came down to breakfast in reflective mood. She was completely at her mother's mercy as to money until she married or came of age, and her mother's money meant Dearest George's. Vexed by the falling off of his savings, George Freyne had spent a long evening carping at his stepdaughter, and forbidden a fire in her own small sitting-room when she wanted to go there to play cards.

George Freyne objected to Gheena's keeping her three horses, although there was no real hunting. He objected to a three-year-old bay brought in to train. He was, in fact, in the humour to object to everything, and he talked gloomily, of putting down the motor and taking again to the outside car, which languished in the coach-house.

"As that young horse has been brought in, he could be trained to harness," he said unpleasantly; "and Bluebird was bought for a cart; she would do."

Gheena's blue roan mare was a precious possession. Miss Freyne eyed the breakfast table with unalloyed gloom, and helped herself to eggs simply as an everyday duty and not because she wanted one.

"Dearest George said we were to have them poached or plain boiled in future," remarked Mrs. Freyne, coming in. "He said it would save the frying butter, you know."

Gheena rapped a brown shell and remarked she wished that it was in futurity.

"As it's our money——" she began.

"But you could not hint that to a sensitive man, Gheena dear, and an egg is just the same—isn't it, dear? There is always the yolk and the other part, isn't there, Darby?"

Darby had stayed the night.

"And the shell," said Gheena, talking again. "I'll have ham, I'm not hungry, and they're quite hard. I've battered all round without a dinge coming."

She ate ham more cheerily. Dearest was extremely particular as to boiled eggs. At one time he had hung lovingly on a patent boiler, his watch in his hand. But the boiler had the determination of all such affairs, namely, to hand out the egg either quite hard or glutinously raw, and to decline to say which until the shell was cracked, when it would chuckle softly over its blue flame of spirit. It could even spoil two put in at the same time, relying on a current of air to one side the flame to help in this.

Matilda Freyne, after a weary week of being told it was all her fault for not taking the time, took to being late for breakfast, and Mr. Freyne boiled eggs for himself until incidentally the lamp blew up and singed off his moustache. So Anne the cook now endeavoured to plaze th' ould grumbler, as she tersely put it.

Gheena tapped two other egg-shells with complete dissatisfaction, and went to the window to see Mr. Keefe in uniform, trotting up the drive.

"He's rising to the trot," impatiently said Gheena. "Is it the invasion? Crabbit has gone out and nearly upset him, and now he can't open the swing gate. Here is Dearest."

"Hard again," announced George Freyne tragically, rapping pathetically. "Why the simple matter of three minutes in boiling water cannot be attended to! Gheena, you must pay for that white oats out of your quarter's allowance, as you ordered it against my wishes."

Gheena flushed painfully. Her quarter's allowance was represented by the unpleasant little line which denotes minus—she had given it all away to various war funds, and the man was coming to be paid for the oats.

Harold Keefe, pink and fussy, marched in in his dark uniform, and agreed to a second breakfast; he had had his first one at seven.

He came with orders which roused them all. In case of invasion, horses were to be removed; motors destroyed or taken away; hay burnt. He read out the notice sonorously and with effect.

"There's really a chance of their landing." George Freyne touched the silver tea-pot anxiously. "We could hide all this in the cellar and cover it with slack, but there's the question of the horses again. How can we possibly get them all away if anything does happen? It makes it quite clear, Gheena, that one of your old ones and the youngster must be got rid of at once. Bluebird would make a charger."

"To be frozen and ill-used and shot at, with his bad leg and his delicate skin!" shot out Gheena peevishly.

But though they laughed at the little man in uniform eating ham with appetite, the orders which he had brought made something real of that terrible war across the seas. Germans might come to Ireland—grey-green uniforms, spiked helmets, fierce dull faces might be seen on the edge of the low cliffs. What scurry and flutter there would be if it ever came to pass!

This little man, never quite at his ease, represented the struggle of a mighty nation, pouring out blood and gold for the cause of freedom.

Gheena recovered from depression to see a vision of the flight of the family, with her mother packing carefully, and a string of horses being led off inland.

"I should certainly destroy all the jam," observed Mrs. Freyne, also waking up; "they are so fond of sweets."

"Our navy," said Mr. Freyne pettishly, "is paid to see to things of this class. They will never reach us. But, of course, one must be prepared—and, talking of it, can your cook boil eggs, Keefe?" he asked gloomily.

Mr. Keefe, starting at the change of subject, thought that anyone could—just water and a saucepan.

"And bullets," said Dearest George. "Talking of invasion made me remember the eggs. Bullets—with a delicate digestion."

Keefe picked up an egg and said absently that he liked them hard, because they slipped into a pocket so handily, and with bread and butter one was never at a loss. But when you get a kind of squashy thing— "Oh, thank you, Mrs. Freyne! I'd love to take these two, I've miles to go!"

The master of the house murmured "Savouries" into his empty tea-cup; the desire to economize was strong upon him just then.

"I shall go out to warn all the men," he said, "and just show them that we are at war."

He strode into the yard, followed by his womenkind. Dillon, a very old man, was polishing the brasses on the car and crooning "Kathleen Mavourneen" as he did so. He had looked the possibility of the Union in the face a day or two before.

"Mr. Keefe has just called to say there is a possibility, a probability of a German invasion," said Dearest George loudly, "and I must give orders accordingly."

"They'll niver swhim the say," observed Dillon without emotion. "Have ye another tin of Brasso handy, Phil? This is out."

"Phil—Hennessy, you are to be ready at a moment's notice to fire the hay and be off inland with all the horses, and——"

Phil scratched his head dubiously.

"An' if they calls in an' ye out, sir, would we do the same?" he inquired cautiously, "or wait to ax the Germin officers?"

"John Guinane says if they come here they'll come paycable," remarked Hennessy, as he laboured at a broken oats crusher. "With no waypons, but frindly. An' he says, too, there'll be no more money to go to the Government. We'll be let off paymint for our land."

"God bless and save us! Is the haythens comin' here?" remarked Anne the fat cook nervously. "An' the coffee near out, Ma'am—but a pound in the house."

Darby leant upon his crutch, laughing silently, and Dearest George tried to take off the hat he had not put on, missed it, and wiped his forehead.

"Nothing would make them realize anything," he stormed, as he sat down on a box—"nothing."

"Father Pat says the ships is patrollin' the say and they'll niver let them over," said Anne more happily. "An' what is it, Phil?"

"It is the box we put a lick of paint on yestherday; makin' it sweet to hold the crushed oats. He won't be best plazed if it isn't dry," whispered Phil. "An' not much drying in yestherday, aither."

Mr. Freyne got up, removing a film of brown paint with him, and without noticing it, continued his oration.

He was interrupted this time by Matilda, asking him if he'd remembered to write for the salt for the dairy, and left hurriedly, saying more to himself than it was seemly to utter aloud.

"His throuser bein' brown, ye could not see," said Phil anxiously. "God save us! look at the print of himself on it, an' there'll be pure murther whin he claps an eye on his throuser. Hurry in to Naylour, Anne, and tell him to rub on turps whin the Masther changes his clothes."

"Dearest George will be angry," said Gheena thoughtfully; "it is quite sticky."

Mr. Freyne was sorely puzzled later on to find smudges of brown paint on the red leather library chair, and another smudge on the drawing-room sofa, where he had sat down to ruminate over the crass stupidity of the Irish.

When both the housemaids took "their Bible oath" that they were innocent of using fresh paint, there was nothing for it but to harangue his wife and Gheena. When Gheena offered a sporting bet that he had done it himself, he got really angry, and unwisely accused her of impertinence to her elders.

Phil knocked at the library door.

"I'm carrying the horses to the forge, sir, to be looked after against they take the road," he said pleasantly. "An' James is up to know who'll lead the prize bull, for he'll go with no one but himself, an' he can't walk five mile. An' where will he go to? he says."

When the locality mentioned by Mr. Freyne was a very hot one, Phil said "Yes, sir," and returned, murmuring that the Germans made the Masther terrible peevish.

"I am going on to Cahercalla, Gheena; you would probably like to come."

Gheena said "No" absently. She was watching a distant figure on the edge of the cliff. It looked like the Professor.

"Then Matilda must."

"Oh, Dearest George," said Matilda weakly, "I thought of taking a little ride; but if you think I'd better—— Of course, they are upset about Lancelot."

A second figure appeared on the cliffs, someone tall and active. Gheena flung the French windows open, omitted to close them, and slipped into the wood which went down to the edge of the sea.

"Gheena gets rougher every day," said Freyne angrily—"every day, and more thoughtless."

Darby, on his stick, hobbled out and went slowly down the lawn, his eyes fixed sadly on the trees that held the girl. How quickly she had slipped out, leapt over the sunk fence and disappeared! It was good to be young and strong and active. The measure of strength which had returned to him could not content him. Always with one side which would drag, always slow and crippled. He would be better, people told him. His crushed limb would improve by degrees, but he could never know the fullness of life again. He saw Gheena come dodging across the carpet of dead leaves and peep at the fretted, still blue sea. She leant out cautiously, then came into full view, and stood as if listening. Two people were talking just below the verge of the cliff.

"Are you looking for Germans?" said Darby politely.

"Oh, hush, Darby; do hush! You don't know"—Gheena came close to him—"you don't know the kind of things I think," she whispered.

"If there was any use in those blamed bits of rock," said Basil Stafford's voice.

"My friend, is there any use in dead butterflies, in used postage stamps, or an array of foxes' heads and tails? The rocks are my hobby to collect and ascertain the stratum. Himmel!" This exclamation was caused by Crabbit rolling a completely unwashed small rock on to the Professor's neck.

"Rabbits," said the Professor, "excavating. In time stuffed. Shall I not have a complete report of every coast in Britain?"

Stafford said "Oh! add a 'c,'" rather dubiously. "You'd be paid a bit for that just now," he added grimly.

"To tell them what was the softest rock to hit against. Hein!" The old man chuckled. "And I am well salaried, pensioned; I have no need of money."

"Before I came here I wanted it as I shall never want it again," said Stafford slowly. "An old debt suddenly cropping up, a dying mother with her only chance an operation and a minus balance at the bank, and half pay. But it all came right."

"You found means to get the money—eh?"

"More than I wanted," said Basil. "I got it in a way I hated getting it by, but it's here—and it saved my mother too."

Gheena drew back slowly, her face flushed.

More money than he knew what to do with, and he was playing at making drains on the south coast of Ireland. Gheena decided to go to see Mrs. Weston.

"It was the dog Crabbit what knocked down the stones, and not a rabbit," remarked the Professor, looking up. "Miss Freyne's dog."

"I said, add a 'c.'" Stafford scrambled lightly up the cliff. "I heard voices up there."

Darby, leaning on his stick, was hobbling away with Gheena and keeping pace easily enough with her active feet.

Gheena whisked round suddenly as they came to the little bridge over the sunk fence.

"If a man has been dreadfully hard up and gets enough money suddenly, he must have found some way of getting it," she said excitedly.

Darby referred her impolitely to "Enquire Within" or the Ready Reckoner. He had forgotten even simple addition himself.

What did she overhear down there to make her look like a boiling kettle with the spout corked, he said to himself, his eyes following Gheena with something of Crabbit's wistfully faithful look in them.

CHAPTER IX

"We shall hear something of how the war is really going on now," observed Dearest George excitedly. "Here is a letter from Eva's husband—the one that died, Matilda, years ago."

Naylour started, so that a bevy of eggs leapt from the china hen on to the floor, and Mrs. Freyne said "Gracious, Dearest, was it suspended animation?"—rather absently, as she watched them smash.

"It was the sister who died." George Freyne invariably bellowed at the slightest check to his flow of conversation. "Eva; she married a General. He was one then, rather. How idiotic you can be, Matilda! And he's been appointed inspector of something—remounts—is coming to Cara, and will stay Friday to Monday here—for Christmas, in fact. Great heavens, that old Naylour! He has had a stroke."

"It was the fear what the Masther said put on me," murmured Naylour contritely. "Not bein' sure what they might be able to do in war-time—an' the gran' eggs losht! Scarce a smhell of the fire they got to-day, Anne bein' repentant for overcookin' thim yestherday." He gathered up an uncooked omelette with two silver tablespoons, murmuring repentance.

"No—we will not have any more—in war-time," said George Freyne frigidly. "There is cold ham and toast. They were quite raw in any case. You can tell Anne."

The ham had worn down to the end which testifies to the good feeding of the pig which provided it, and was principally white fat. George Freyne's hungry resentment was not appeased by the appearance of a round and smoking poached egg done for his stepdaughter, accompanied by toasted ham.

"Anne does it on a fork," said Gheena cheerfully. "There was no waste of frying. Here, Crabbit." She put down half a plateful of ham for the red dog.

"And I am starving. Ring that bell, please, Matilda, and order up cold pheasant. Now, having all been sufficiently amusing, General Brownlow will be here on Friday, and I suggest we get Darby to alter the meet to Saturday, so that he can have a hunt. He rides well, or he used to—and so dreadfully fond of it. Eva died from a fall out hunting."

Darby said "Oh!" thoughtfully. He had not yet gone home, but was staying for Christmas Day. "We'll have to go out Stephen's Day," he said; "but I daresay, if we only draw one covert the extra day, they'll be all right, horses and everything."

"He will tell us news," said George Freyne emphatically, "news which these Comoniques deny us." (I write it according to pronunciation.) "He will have been at the War Office and seen people. And he's rather particular, Darby, and inclined to take things seriously, so we must try to keep the pack together, or nearly. I'll practise hard on the hunting-horn, and Keefe must try to get out, and ... then the horses. He'll want remounts."

"Twenty post-cards," said Darby. "I'll find them in the library, I suppose, George? and someone's sure to be forgotten, even then."

"There is a messenger over from Cahercalla to say that Masther Lancelot will be home to-morry—he has a cart with him," announced Naylour impatiently, "an' his mamma 'd like the loan of the bath-chair."

George Freyne went out fussily.

"Why Lancelot should bring a cart with him," said Mrs. Freyne vaguely. "So little room, I should have thought, on the troopships, unless it was the one which hurt him, as a memento. Gheena says a cart ran over him. Oh, thank you, Gheena darling, poached eggs for me and Darby. I was hungry."

Her pleasure in the forbidden breakfast and its hurried bolting before her husband came back made Mrs. Freyne too busy to hear Darby's murmur of "It was the messenger's cart, not Lancelot's."

"Dearest George gets quite faddy, you know," she apologized, "about everything, and we never spend our income—at least, I don't think so. Gheena, Mrs. Keefe thinks that last year's 'Unto Us' is in the attic here, and ought to do in a war year with fresh holly. She is not sure if the 'Hallelulias!' were used to stuff the cat pin-cushions for the bazaar, or if some of them came back as they were. What do you think, Gheena?"

"A cart-load of them came back," said Gheena, "and everyone can just put on holly-berries and save pounds of trouble."

"It is not in the lofts or the coach-houses; then where is it? for I must know." George Freyne drove Naylour and Maria the housemaid into the room before him. "A bath-chair in perfect order, which Mrs. Freyne's mother used."

"Unless they broke it up for firewood, sir," suggested Naylour, looking anxious.

"I lent it to Andy Cassidy's mother two years ago," said Mrs. Freyne, "and I think she died in it; and I would not have it back; she had something unpleasant, I know. Then I think it got broken. Tell the messenger, Naylour, that Mrs. Keefe has an excellent bath-chair and quite new. Oh, I did not ask you about lending it, Dearest, because probably you weren't here, or perhaps I thought you might have objected and one wheel was quite bad."

George Freyne carved pheasant furiously.

The days before Christmas were always feverishly occupied at Castle Freyne. Chunks of cow had to be distributed among the work-people, with tea and sugar and flour. Everybody the Freynes ever did anything for had to receive a goose or a turkey or game.

Mrs. Freyne agreed to the necessity for economy with a resolution which melted as wax at the faintest idea of putting it into practice.

"Everything died just as usual," she said placidly to her husband; "and as they were dead, it would be waste not to give them away, especially in war-time, Dearest, would it not?"

Mounds of parcels had been secreted by Gheena and sent to every acquaintance she had in France—cakes, sweets, plum-puddings and mince-pies, tobacco and socks. No man from the village missed having a parcel.

The day's papers merely contained the usual news of the winter deadlock, so there was no excitement to interfere with the long morning in the kitchen and the long stream of presents which went out.

Mrs. Freyne remarked on the unusual scarcity of pheasants, to be informed by stout Anne that the Masther was sellin' them same to Hourigans there in the city.

George Freyne arrived at too frequent intervals to groan before the array of food, until the sound of his steps caused a laden rush to the rabbit-warren of sculleries and larders off the huge kitchen and a general concealment of anything which could be hidden speedily.

"We must slip away most of the parcels when Dearest George has gone to Cahercalla, Gheena, mustn't we? The Master is so dreadfully anxious that we should not be extravagant during the war, you see, Anne. Gentlemen have it constantly before them."

"There is a fire to keep going in the red room from this till Friday," announced Maria, coming down for coal. "The Masther says it is roarin' damp, and there is a telegram to go for Eysters, Phil—when ye are exercisin' the horses."

Phil remarked bleakly that it would be aisier to take ramble on the bicycle than be rubbin' muck off his horses for two hours afther the roads, and departed.

The afternoon was marked by the white fluff of last year's cotton-wool which pervaded carpets and chairs, and which Darby said was worse than snuff. Fresh holly duly dabbed with glass and ground sugar added a stickiness to which the fluff clung lovingly.

They all worked in the servants' hall, a long room in the basement, with a stone floor which chilled through meagre rugs, and took a heavy tea there flavoured with gum and fluff.

This was all a yearly amusement, generally tempered by piles of new and snowy cotton-wool for the texts.

"But this year we are not neglecting the beauty of the church, and still are saving money for the war," said Mrs. Keefe piously. "I wonder if the fluff will ever go off us again? That 'Unto Us' will look quite beautiful, especially if the sun doesn't shine on the 'Son'; that word is dreadfully yellow. If you put on more berries, Gheena, no one will know what it's meant for."

"And they'll think of German measles, too," said Darby gravely. "Mrs. Weston, you're the worst stitcher I've ever seen."

Violet Weston was clamping holly leaves to a piece of red calico nailed between two painted pieces of wood. They were intended to cover a pencilled text decorously, but instead were straying drunkenly off the lettering and leaping hopelessly up again, until a cypher message was the result.

"They prick so," said Mrs. Weston resentfully. "And we've all got to put them up to-morrow because you're hunting on Saturday. If they only were calico letters, but real holly." She sucked a finger. "That bay horse of mine is a very funny horse," she went on. "He stands still when he's tired, and gulps."

"He was pretty bad last year," said Darby sympathetically. "But you can turn him over for his own riding, you see, and get even that way."

Mrs. Weston dropped a lapful of holly leaves and stared with puzzled eyes.

"Oh, Mr. Keefe didn't know," she said blithely, "and here he is with Mr. Stafford." She looked swiftly at Gheena.

"Stafford drove me over to the Wireless Station," Keefe said importantly. "We thought some news might be in. And now we've come to help. I'll sit here near you, Mrs. Weston."

"I think they're so squashed probably they won't prick," said Mrs. Weston thoughtfully. "Oh, they did"—for Mr. Keefe got up hurriedly. "I'll hold the board if you finish the text. I am all sore."

Violet Weston was aggressively, brightly pretty in her light-coloured frieze skirt and jersey, with vermilion silk stockings framed by ultra-smart shoes. She was painted and thickly powdered, and told everyone her fringe was false; but something in her light-hearted good-humour made her difficult to resist.

Everyone's feet were lumps of ice, everyone's faces had flushed from hot tea and lack of air; sneezes not entirely born of fluff peppered the conversation.

The Vicar at some length put forward a plan of campaign which must end the war in a month. It included the crossing of the Rhine, a march into Berlin, and the permanent imprisonment of the Kaiser on Spike Island.

Mrs. Keefe then thought if there were more like her Albert at the front—he was called after the Prince of Wales—no, of course, the Prince Consort—who used their brains instead of merely running in and out of ditches, that the awful loss of life would soon end. In fact, Albert had volunteered to go as chaplain, and he might be attended to then.

The black back trail of the war was gone over many times—the great hopes which had fallen so heavily—Antwerp, which men said could hold out for six months.

"Betrayed by spies," said the Vicar bitterly. He went on to remark that man of God as he was, he would himself shoot a spy without compunction.

"After he had said a prayer, of course," temporized his wife soothingly.

The Rev. Albert Keefe did not reply. He came of a fighting race.

"General Brownlow will doubtless be able to tell us why the Germans did not take Paris," said George Freyne, coming in in a motor-coat, "and Lancelot comes to-morrow in the mail on crutches. He is not likely to rejoin. Some bone must come out."

"Fancy if we found a spy here!" giggled Violet Weston. "You just finish that 'towards men,' Mr. Keefe. I won't. How exciting it would be! And you know if it's true that there is a supply base for submarines about, there might easily be someone paying out the money, mightn't there?"

Again she looked at Gheena. Stafford flushed slowly, his lips set together.

Mr. Freyne, who had to have fresh tea—not China—and fresh hot cakes, and who was palpably annoyed because no one took a great deal of interest in Lancelot, his nephew, now remarked acidly that he had run into Mrs. Weston's on his way back to leave in a book which Annette had borrowed from her, and he was astonished to see how untidy her little back garden was. The man Guinane was absolutely useless to her, and he suggested her taking on old Dillon instead.

Violet Weston replied that she loved the boating on calm days, and that Guinane had promised her to grow peas and beans in the spring, and flowers she must grow herself, she supposed; but she liked Guinane.

The texts were piled against the wall; patient house-maids removed fluff, nails and leaves, and everyone thought of hot baths.

"I have asked them all to dinner for Christmas," said Mrs. Freyne presently. "It makes us forget how bad the war is when everyone talks of it, doesn't it, Dearest George?"

"Mr. Keefe will argue with the General," said Dearest George gloomily, "and Annette and Grace and Lancelot must come. But it is your house, my dear love," he added gloomily; "one cannot take back invitations."

General Brownlow was motored from Clonaheen on a blustering night. He proved to be an elderly but active person, with a lean, hatchet face, deeply-set eyes and a repressive manner. He brought his man—a particularly superior-looking person, not a soldier—and hoped they had expected a valet.

Mrs. Freyne thought hopefully that if the man was not rheumatic, a good deal of hot air from the red room must have gone into the little one next to it, and the man could sleep there.

The General looked anxious, but was reassured by a murmur in a language not English and the departure of Hook with the bags.

The expected flood of information was not forthcoming at dinner. The lean man seemed only to have heard the usual rumours, and to be as firmly convinced as everyone that all the right men were in the wrong places, and that the one person to adjust matters had not yet been found. When he did talk, it was of Ireland and the Irish, and he grew absolutely cheerful when he heard of a prospective hunt.

"Met Lindlay," he jerked out. "Yes. Told me he he'd spared no money with the pack here; poor country but great sport. Any experience hunting?" he jerked out at Darby.

"Twenty years ... compressed," said Darby thoughtfully. "Hares, foxes, cats, dogs. May say I've a good deal now, I think, sir."

General Brownlow considered the list mentally. "Yes. India; jackals, dogs ... but cats. You don't mean tigers, Dillon?"

"No, cats," said Darby briefly. "They are ... well ... it's not exactly Lindlay's pack we're hunting here," he added.

"That man is making such a muddle of waiting," whispered Gheena, when her stepfather began to talk again. "He upset one plate of soup, and he's rigid now with the bread-sauce at mother's wrong side. She'll never notice him there."

Just then George Freyne, looking round fussily, remarked "Sauce for the General's partridge" very sharply to Naylour.

"Rooted with it he is," said Naylour in one of his audible asides. "Hurry along, young man, will ye!"

The young man feverishly left Mrs. Freyne's right hand and transferred himself to the General's, Naylour remarking "War ways," firmly removing the tureen and ordering the stranger to shove the bell for the lift.

"As curiously behaved as ever—this old country," said the General testily—"No, I've finished, thank you—this Ireland of yours, George. I spent the week before my wedding here, I remember."

George Freyne replied heatedly in defence of his country, answering his brother-in-law that Ireland was orderly and well regulated. "And if you mean the sauce, it was your man," added Mr. Freyne, in what he believed to be an undertone.

"Oh—er—my man; he's not used to butlering. The most annoying habit of the Irish is their inability to see the gravity of situations."

Darby rubbed his forehead quite slowly with his right hand, as with his left he set fire to a mince-pie.

"All the same in a hundred years. My poor Eva would say that when—when—well, when she ought not to have—when the month's expenditure was five pounds beyond her allowance, or something valuable died, or the impossible maids she brought from home smashed some of my Worcester. Dear me! She would train to distant meets when we could not possibly afford it. And ... 'I'll be dead such a long time, Tony,' she said to me when I remonstrated."

But a gleam of light and softness shone in the hard old eyes.

"She might box horses anywhere she wished to now," he said, sighing. "And she is not there to do it."

"Then you see, sir, she was right," said Darby gently. "She had her fun, and it did not matter as you pulled out and made money."

General Brownlow glared at Darby fiercely; then the gleam of softness reappeared, and he grunted thoughtfully, to remark after a pause that he'd never thought of it, but, after all, she was. And that he'd write to Tom her boy to say it didn't matter.... Then he lapsed into silence again, with something very like tears in his eyes.

When a telegram came for Stafford he read it with such a disturbed expression that General Brownlow asked softly if it was bad news.

"No. War news and no news." But Stafford's frown was not that of a man who had received a wire about nothing.

"You are not joining anything?" the General asked.

"Not at present, sir. I am tied here."

Stafford tore the telegram up, then walked to the fire and threw the pieces in carefully.

General Brownlow's man was a success in his own circle. Old Naylour reported upon him as a dacent boy, with a twisht of fun in him; this privately to Gheena.

It was a still, muggy night, and as the air in the library grew heavy with smoke, and the possibilities of making tricks at Bridge were carefully considered, Crabbit flung himself with a wild "Bow-wow" against the window panes. Naylour at the moment was putting down a large silver tray laden with syphons and decanters and a jug of boiling water. Gheena promptly let her dog out, letting in a sough of cold raw air, which struck the heavy heated atmosphere almost as with a blow.

Crabbit trailed off, yelping excitedly, followed by her owner with her light dress festooned above her arms and her airy petticoat fluttering round her ankles.

"Unless it is rabbits it is a man," said Naylour decidedly. "That Crabbit has the nose on him."

Someone asked if the dog would bite, and Gheena returned talking affably to General Brownlow's man, who, it appeared, had gone out for a stroll.

"Being devoted to the sea air, Miss," he said pleasantly, "and longing for a smell of it, cold as it is."

He came apologizing through the open window; his boots were very wet, almost as if he had walked in water.

Next morning, during a breakfast at which all war restrictions were removed, and Anne worked her blissful way with eggs and bacon and sausages, General Brownlow asked if a mount could be provided for his man, who loved a hunt, above all things, and Gheena offered her young horse heartily.

"He bucks a little, but he's a fine lepper," she said, "and his mouth is not quite made. Still, if the man didn't mind that—you see, you're riding Greybird as the best we've got, and we have to mount Mr. Keefe too."

The General's man, who had again been out to see the coast before breakfast, accepted gratefully, saying that any horse would do.

They drove to the meet, old Dillon coming to bring the General's car along, and found no hounds when they reached the fixture, cross-roads tracking through a boggy stretch with a small gorse-covert inset on rising ground just beyond.

Private information of the presence of a somebody from the War Office having trickled through, everyone who had a horse had turned out. The horses had been shaven above as well as below. Mrs. O'Gorman wore her best habit again, with grievous thoughts of how it had shrunk lying by. A glint of coppery sun came shining through a soft mist of clouds, the tang of salt mixing with the scent of peat.

When the Cahercalla Darracq, its tint a brilliant yellow, drove up, its occupiers seemed to consider that the non-arrival of hounds was of minor importance, since they supplied the event of the day.

For it held Lancelot in khaki, his leg extended in front of him upon a variety of cushions and supports, his face a little white, but not thin.

Lancelot Freyne was a long boy with a great deal of loose fat distributed unevenly. It inclined to his shoulders and cheeks, and then bulged out again in his thighs. He was loose-lipped and combined a desire to show his excellent imaginative powers with a meekness due to suppression from his infancy by his mother and elder sister.

The crowd of people round the car were slaves to the throb of his foot. He answered questions concerning the war with vigorous decision, and apparently had seen flocks of prisoners, and droves of guns, and yet was gloomy over it all.

"You see, they really have such a lot of men," said Lancelot, watching his mother hang upon his words, "and they don't mind losing them, and then they have so many guns."

"Was it shrapnel or a bullet, poor Lancelot?" inquired Mrs. O'Gorman, clasping her stout hands.

Lancelot murmured "Field gun" in rather embarrassed tones and a little sulkily.

"A 'Jack Johnson' shell," Mrs. O'Gorman passed back, "and it didn't blow his foot off. You must have had a very strong boot, Lancelot dear."

Here General Brownlow backed away, struggling with a cough which seemed to have got out of control.

"And did you really bring the cart, Lancelot," asked Matilda Freyne, riding up, "as a souvenir? The cart which went on your poor toe, Gheena said."

Lancelot, his interesting pallor swallowed by a wave of fiery red, replied haughtily that no cart had gone over his toe, and glared at Gheena.

That damsel was employed in adjusting the young bay horse's bridle, and offering him to the General's man as one would a spoon to a child with strawberry jam but rhubarb underneath.

"Just saw the bits across, Hook, if he pulls very hard down hill. He won't pull going up. If he kicks, try to jerk his head up. He often rears instead, you know. And don't be afraid if he flies small fences; he won't fall. Just be careful the first time he gets his feet on to grass; he sobers down wonderfully when he's gone for a little."

The General's man grinned softly, landed lightly into the saddle, and got the young horse's head up with a determination which gave that high-spirited youngster quite a shock. The bay, christened Redbird—all Gheena's horses were birds, she said—observed that there was little room for him to play in, so settled down decorously to walk up and down with the other horses.

Darby looked feverishly for his hounds. Then he heard them coming.

"Get away on them, ye set of schamers," shrilled Andy's voice. "Get on to bed. Shame on ye, Grandjer an' Daisy, shame!"

"Wild as hawks they was," confided old Barty, who looked hot. "Here, there and elsewhere, an' ready to be at the clouds if they'd run along the bog for them."

Darby considered this possible.

"One cat they cot anonst to her," said Barty. "The chestnut is latherin' all over with the fear of Carty's lash, an' even the Rat is sober from chasin'."

General Brownlow removed a cigarette and said "My God!" to himself twice as he looked at the pack.

Home Ruler always led them, the relationship to a boar-hound never being quite concealed by a fox-hound's stern, with the tailless and aggressive Grandjer just behind.

The General prayed again, lifted his hat a little as if to admit air to his hair and looked at George Freyne.

"You mean to say they hunt," he jerked out. "You bought a hunting cap for this lot, George. And someone else has one, too. Three of you Masters, and, I say, Hook! Hook!"

For the General's man, riding up, also looked at the pack, and gave vent to an outburst of hideously clear laughter, which he made worse by putting up his hand to hide, as he rocked and backed away.

"Something I thought of, sir," he gulped at last respectfully. "Er—a tale—they told me."

"Move on, Barty," said Darby shortly; "it's twelve o'clock."

The way into the gorse cover lay past a stretch of bog-land which was thick with hares; then the black caps lined up behind the pack.

Daisy and Greatness broke away, throwing their tongues.

"Whip them off that hare, Barty. Get round them, Carty."

Darby was finding himself as a Master of Hounds; he no longer gave orders dubiously, but with a pointed bitterness of decision.

"It is no use to be larrupin' them for what they were used to," said Barty philosophically, as he rode the aggrieved Greatness off the line with a polo-player's skill.

"Home to bed, Greatness!" shrieked young Andy reproachfully. "Home to bed, ye schamer, ye! There is foxes beyant an' ye're wantin' yere nise on little better than rabbits."

"Lord above us! to be brought out for this," said Brownlow. "For this! Look at them! Hook, look out, man!"

The bay horse got his feet on the grass for the first time. Three mighty bucks carried him well on to the soft ground, where he stretched his head out and began to kick.

Mr. Hook, proving himself a horseman, if no butler, gave the big snaffle bit three jags, which took the youngster's head up, and bringing down his crop on the sleek bay quarters, got the big humped back up straight, and set the great brute going in the deep ground before he knew where he was. The bad example brought forth a series of squeals and light-hearted bounds from more sedate hunters, Gheena's roan compassing three excellent plunges, and Dearest George's old bay kicking his master on to his neck.

"If mine begins," said Matilda nervously.

"Oh, take him into the soft and he'll never lift you," suggested the General absently. "I hope that man won't be hurt. He's valuable. Well over!"

This, as the youngster swept a fair-sized bog trench with a snort of wrath.

Hounds went into covert now without requiring to be personally conducted. They had scarcely vanished when Home Ruler's great bay sounded sonorously, followed by Grandjer's short yap.

"Overture to the Valkyrie," said Brownlow thoughtfully; "full orchestra."

Darby cheered them quickly, his familiar cry being followed to-day by a bellow from his fellow Master George, in which "Forrard!" or "Tally ho!" and "Good boys!" seemed to be blended, but not satisfactorily mixed.

Beauty, in fact, climbed on the bank with an inquiring expression on her pale face.

"For Heaven's sake, George! You'll get their heads up! And Keefe squeaking the 'Gloria' at the other end! Well, if it isn't that, it's something out of tune. He'll go soon. They're rattling him, but be quiet."

Darby leant forward, twisted useless limbs forgotten now. He was on a horse's back, his grip firm there. He could ride as well as men who had never known pain. There was the prospect of a gallop over these small green fields, and of watching his hounds hunt—terriers, harriers, what you will, yet his hounds, and keen for blood.

"Yow—ow—ow!" the long harrier note towled out, soft and musical.

Mr. Freyne, greatly put out, rode away murmuring "Tally ho's!" to himself, so that onlookers should see that he was doing his part.

"There he goes!" An old dog fox, dark in colour and with a white tag to his brush, whisked out over the bank, looked back for a moment, and loped off straight through a patch of bog towards the pasture land.

"The best line. Give 'em time, will you! Easy, O'Gorman.... Steady there! Easy, George! You're the worst of the lot, nesting under your peaked cap, selling your country, man! Steady, will you!"

It took time to get the hounds on to the line, to get them settled down and cup on. Traitor and Sweetie and Spinster were given to hunting solemnly on in covert.

"Forrard! Away! Away! Away!" Barty's screech equalled that of John Peel.

Long and thrilling it rang out, echoed by soprano efforts from little Andy, blissfully waiting for the Rat to run away, and with throaty notes from Carty at the lower side of the gorse.

"Get away on forrard!" sang out George Freyne energetically to the crowd round him. There was only one good track across the bog. This permission sent several people ambling along it, wondering if the hounds would soon join them.

Mr. Keefe's effort—he had to do something for a General—was "Yoicks! Tally ho!" which he kept trying from C in alt. down to the bass G, to see which note suited his voice.

"Pretty nonsensical our leaving all the Master's work to Dillon," he muttered, and tried his part again, the lower key completely startling Miss Carrie Hourigan that she dropped her whip so that she might get to her beads under her habit.

"Thinking it was a gun out of a Zeppelin," she said pallidly. "Will you pick the whip up, Mr. Keefe, like a love, now?"

"Sorry, a Master," bustled Keefe; "this way, Mrs. Weston. Keep the track." He did it again on the high note.

"You'll certainly break something if you try so high," said Violet. "And you're distracting Mr. Dillon, so do stop."

Hounds were on now. They towled away, Home Ruler leading over the springy tussocks, every hound hunting, every tongue thrown.

The General's man sobered the young horse by pulling him straight at the spongiest piece of ground, through which they laboured and heaved, and the bay was in hand as they jumped an ugly bog drain and landed on sound grass.

The pace was fair, hounds running steadily over light springy land, fenced by small narrow-topped banks.

"It's hunting, after all." Brownlow's hatchety severe face relaxed to a look of positive surprise as he took his horse by the head and pulled out to the right of hounds. How many years ago since he had ridden there before, just before his wedding, with the bright girl whom he had met in England and come over to marry—seeing her send along a half-broken chestnut filly as if she were the possessor of three necks?

Gheena swung past him now, the same glow of delight on her young face, her eyes as ecstatically happy; but her mount was a hunter, trained and fit to go.

"Look out there! A drop!"

Gheena put the roan at a brake of brambles overgrowing a slimy spot with a heavy drop outside on to a rutty cart-track. It took a clever horse to balance on the mixture of crumbling earth and shale and slide down without a mistake.

"One way of doing it." General Brownlow looked to his right, to see his man on the bay sail sleepily into the air and clear even the boreen at the landing side.

The pace had been steady enough to shake off people who wanted to look before they leapt. The Field had thinned out. Hounds bent to the right along a rushy, sour field when scent failed a little, and headed for the road which wound its grey ribbon up the side of a steep hill.

On this something yellow caught the eye. Home Ruler's bolt was shot, but Grandjer and Beauty stopped on the low bank on to the road and looked up anxiously, thus explaining to the noisy crew behind that they were at fault.

"He has gone right back, Darby," said Annette Freyne excitedly. "So don't try on. He turned here. Oh, Lance, this is nice for you! So lucky, General, for our invalid." But at this point Darby's voice roared out immediate orders to have that car stopped. "You headed him, you something goldfish!" yelled the man, who was rapidly growing used to his position in life. "You canaries, chirrupping there, when no one wants you."

"Canaries! with a wounded hero from the front," said Mr. Freyne's mother, after a long hurt pause. "If he did see a fox, who could object, really, Darby! And canaries!"

"I'll intern you if you don't put it out!" roared Darby.

"Put it out or I'll arrest you!" blared the General, with sudden fierceness, to Lancelot.

"And it isn't as if she always started," wailed Annette. "They're crossing the road lower down; he must have gone on that far," she said a moment later, fixing baleful eyes on Darby's back. "To be so rude to us!"

George Freyne's elder sister, who was large, and muddy as to complexion, kept murmuring Darby's insults incessantly, so that when she said "Go on" for a change, Annette, her daughter, told the man to start the canary, and was accused, despite her thirty years, of impertinence to her mother.

Beauty meantime had towled across the road, followed by Daisy, Home Ruler and Spinster, and they carried on across a field of sodden ploughed upland, which would have taxed the noses of the fox-hounds sorely.

The fox had not only gone some time, but he was twisting with the ease of the unpressed animal, looking for holes here and there, and making for Craughwell Woods in front of him, where he hoped to find an open earth.

In this he was mistaken. He was hunted doggedly and slowly up and down the big woods, the long harrier note echoing among the trees, until in a downpour of rain he broke again, slipping away for the Craughwell river, which swelled bank-high in flood.

Now Darby knew too well that there were only two possible passages across the stream, one by the bridge on the road, an unlikely line, and the other a slippery ford half a mile up, where if a fox crossed, he generally made for Ardhee Cross, about three miles off and up hill, a line through series of small woods and high straggling hedges.

Darby galloped for the ford, a large contingent at his heels, to be stopped by a locked gate which even his heated language could not blast open.

Gheena flew down the long avenue to the bridge in the road, with her stepfather, General Brownlow and a few others clattering behind her. She found an open gate and splashed up two low-lying fields, to find hounds at fault in a wide expanse of sown winterage dotted with sullen little pools of water.

If Darby had been there he would have let them alone. He knew their noses. George Freyne's moment was come; his black cap sat as a crow upon his head, and his office as first Master was heavy on him. He would show his brother-in-law. And just at that moment Daisy, staring about, put a hare up out of a tussock near the hedge and towled off in its wake by herself.

"Tally ho! One of the brutes has got it!" shouted George Freyne. "Here the others. Tally ho! Forrard on!"

Gheena shrieked out that a small boy had viewed a hare away and that she could hear the horn up the river.

The assistant Master, ignoring this, whistled and blew and cheered until General Brownlow rocked on his horse.

In a moment everyone was ordered to get round hounds. Futile groans emanated from the horn. Mrs. Freyne cantered vaguely round the pack and asked them politely to go up to George.

Mr. O'Gorman bellowed, and a variety of youths whipped until the pack, upset and hustled, had reached the tuft vacated by the hare.

"It's ... immense," gurgled the General, almost sobbing. "Blow again, George! Whirrrr, and I know it's a hare! There are two hounds hunting right-handed up-stream by the bank from which they checked!

"And I've never known a fox turn this way," wailed Gheena. "It's a part we absolutely left to the foot dogs."

Hounds got on; they were always enthusiastic. They circled round the next field and turned where the hare had turned up by a straggling hedge.

"Fox never ran that way," said the General; "back again, round this field, I believe."

Then they crossed the road and over a bog and crawled on over a steep hill, to encounter at the bottom a vast and ragged ditch, unpleasantly vague as to its depth and very decided as to its width. When Gheena and the General had got over with a scramble, they found themselves completely alone in another driving storm of rain and hounds disappearing into grey misty distance over a high bank.

"That's the Quilty bog near the sea, utterly unrideable," said Gheena hopelessly. "The fishermen can only go through by paths." They floundered along the edge, keeping to the driest parts of the cart track, which was only used in summer, with deep ruts and patches from which the rapidly tiring horses had to wrest their limbs free, and came to a slightly better road with a surface of loose stone, to look across two miles of bog on one side and on to the sea at the other. Far off, faintly, they could hear the sound of hounds hunting.

Gheena pulled up her roan, now black with bog slime and sweat, and pointed hopelessly to the track which they must wallow over again if they followed the line taken by the circling hare.

General Brownlow's refusal ever to go along that track again was short but soldier-like in its decision.

"Even to catch the German Emperor," he said emphatically.

"We'll ride up here to the road, then," said Gheena dejectedly; "we pass the Wireless Station this way." She added that it was nine miles home, and she wondered where her young horse and Hook had got to.

"He made a good hand of that young horse," said Gheena reflectively. "If you could leave him here for a week any time I wouldn't mind at all."

The rain cleared off, leaving them both in the dripping stage with the wind drying them in chilly gusts. The horses stepped carefully on the pointed flints, cheering up as they turned on a twisty road between high banks, with the Wireless Station close by.

Here, as they jogged on, they were astonished to see a khaki-coloured car draw up at the door and Hook just coming out with a coastguard.

"Lost everything, sir," he explained, "and hopped into the car to look for you. Hunt reported in this direction, so I came to inquire."

Gheena looked thoughtful. Strangers were not admitted to the portals as a rule.

The coastguard's suggestion of fire and shelter for the horses sounded tempting. There were sheds at the back where an old farm had stood. Hook led the horses away, and Gheena felt gladly the scorch of cheeks which a hot room brings after a battering in the open air.

The coastguard's room was a typical one, ornamented with large conch shells and lumps of coral, and everything arranged with sailor's neatness.

They only stayed for a few minutes. General Brownlow was rheumatic and exceedingly damp, and as they watched the gate, they saw Violet Weston, her hunting hat changed for a picturesque hood, her bright colouring outlined in white furs and her expression one of piteous entreaty.

She had driven round to look for Gheena and her car had gone out. It would not start without the battery, which seemed run down. If they could put it on for half an hour she would wait. Then she saw Gheena and repeated her piteous tale. Hook, just behind, dropped off Whitebird and came forward. He respectfully suggested that he might start the car or set things right.

After a few futile tugs at the handle he lifted the bonnet.

"But are you a mechanic?" said Violet; "because if you're not, please don't mess at her. Someone did once, and I had to get a man from Dublin afterwards."

"Someone," said Hook, "has been messing her a little, Ma'am. Poking their noses into what doesn't concern them," he added softly, his face hidden.

Violet Weston whispered to Gheena. The name Stafford was repeated more than once. And, as if conjured up by it, Stafford's two-seater purred round the bend and his brakes went on with a jar.

"Darby's wailing like Rachael, a few miles back," he said. "He had one couple of hounds with him, and he's thirsting for someone's blood. He's looking for hounds now. George Freyne I met at Ardhee Cross, swearing you hunted a fox on until he lost you, and everyone who could has gone home. I came on to take someone home if I could, and to find the hounds."

Hook took his head out of the bonnet and swung the handle of Violet's car again, starting it easily.

"Just a little adjustment," he said. "And if you leave your battery here, they'll run it and I'll fetch it to-morrow, Ma'am."

"I wish to goodness I was coming out again on Monday," grunted Brownlow, as he got into his car. "I can quite see where Dillon got so much experience now."

As General Brownlow slithered round stiff bends with constant inquiries as to who planned Irish roads, they came upon the drenched Master—it was raining again—collecting his pack just outside the bog. They had just run the hare back and eaten her.

"We'd have been up to Ardhee Cross if George had let 'em alone," he said bitterly. "Matilda says he cast them so beautifully, so he has gone home now, imagining himself John Peel and Ashton Smith rolled into one." Then he whispered to Barty, who pulled a hare's pate from Daisy's jaws, and Darby with a grin attached it to his saddle.

Castle Freyne was quite full. It was simpler after a long day for people who were not staying to bring their clothes and not go home to change, so the house was all bustle when they got in. Anne, in the basement, was basking in a torrid heat, with two amateur kitchen-maids sitting among piles of feathers in the scullery and at least three turkeys ready to bake. Christmas was Christmas in Anne's eyes. The discarding of sodden garments, the joys of very hot water, preceded tea for those who had hunted. It was laid in the dining-room to-day, and included poached eggs and fried ham.

Lancelot was ensconced by the fireplace, roasting slowly, his leg propped on another chair and his expression one of heated misery.

"You may talk of hunting, Darby," said the second Master, bursting in happily; "but we left you to-day, my boy. Whatever took you off up by the ford? We struck the line just where I galloped to, guessing we should, and I clapped them on, and we ran over the big fields."

Mr. Freyne, completely happy, bustled in to enlarge on his success. How he had cast the hounds, and cheered them, despite some absurd blowing of Darby's, up the river, and how they had run on after the fox.

Darby leant on his stick and grunted.

"The fox which Darby had absolutely said was a hare. Over the big fields, running like pigeons, across Clanchy's, up Dhura Hill, fluting, and—er—then"—George Freyne looked inquiringly at his brother-in-law—"my mare refused—and afterwards——"

"They went on to a very large bog," said the General dryly, "and we—Gheena and I—lost them."

Mr. Freyne sat down to enjoy his tea; lost hounds tell no tales, he said importantly; that no doubt they were beaten there.

Darby said slowly that Beauty could never be beaten. She would run the spectral huntsman across a glacier if she got her nose down.

"Then he got in," said George Freyne. "You got them in the road. He got in."

"Or went out in a submarine," suggested Darby; "that bog touches the sea."

Mr. Freyne, ignoring this, repeated accounts of various items of his own dash and skill, of his certainty of its being the line of a fox, and how by his determination he had shown General Brownlow sport.

"But they did not lose him in the bog." Darby limped to the table. "They killed at the verge of the road just as I came up."

Dearest George looked up.

"And I brought you the head," said Darby, putting the hare's astounded dead face on a plate before his host. "Daisy had it."

"The only thing to be regretted is that I may never see this hunting again," said General Brownlow, breaking the silence which followed, his eyes on the hare's pate lying close to the strawberry jam.

CHAPTER X

Christmas at Castle Freyne came in formally about ten o'clock with the advent of the wran boys at the dining-room windows.

Gheena fumed furiously before the sacrifice of tiny feathered things, and was ignored by her stepfather, who supported old customs principally because no one else wished him to. Custom also dictated that everyone's presents should repose on their plates; so that they waited in hunger to slash string and express rapture, and the table was littered with bits of twine and wrapping paper.

Gheena rhapsodized over a new bag of severe green leather with jail-like clasps, then embracing her stepfather with the fervour expected of her. She put it aside to pick up a variety of other oddments, amongst them a cigarette-case from "V.W." with Gheena scratched across its tortoiseshell form in silver. At the bottom of the heap she discovered her mother's string of pearls, long coveted, and exclaimed shrilly.

Dearest George grunted gratitude over two new pipes, a tobacco jar and a box of cigars, and a note-case for the new paper money from his wife.

Her plate was obliterated by a vast edifice in glass, destined to hold flowers and glimmering with a dull green hideousness.

"Got it over from London, you see, Matilda," said her husband, beaming. "Badly wanted for the drawing-room shelf to take the everlastings."

Gheena dived again, to find a big turquoise charm, with "For Luck" on it, from Darby, and a pair of race-glasses with no name.

Hooking the charm on the pearls, where it did not look at home, Gheena turned over everything once more to find some note about the race-glasses, and heard Dearest George repress, with extreme difficulty, the words which he would have used concerning a litter on the floor, if he had not been opening the case containing Gheena's present of a pipe, and had to say "Thank you, my dear," instead.

"I wanted race-glasses," said Gheena, "but who? Darby, you're a duck!"

Darby smiled as he hobbled to his meagre array of presents. Gheena always gave him a box of cigarettes. There were no little mementoes from loving girls for Darby Dillon now.

"But I say who?" said General Brownlow, picking up a little silver matchbox. "I got Psyche's letter yesterday."

"I thought you wouldn't mind—that there'd be nothing on your plate," apologized Gheena shyly. "And mother sent the cigarettes. Oh!" This as the old man kissed her rather tenderly.

The theatrical advent of Lancelot with his mother and sister guarding his crutches, intercepted the sorting of presents. He came so plainly expecting general sympathy, to be installed in an arm-chair with a small table by his side, and his mother fussily superintending every mouthful of his breakfast.

They went to church presently, where the cotton-wool texts looked brave, if a little tired, and the usual smell of roast stove and drying cushions pervaded the airless atmosphere. Mr. Brady completely forgot the season when he touched upon the war. He took for his text the writing on the wall, and forgot that too, as he plunged into metaphor as difficult to follow as modern tactics; for in a breath he compared the Germans with burrowing snakes and carrion-seeking eagles, both of which expressions were listened to with rapture by his wife, and made the General and Darby tap their heads softly. Mr. Brady then explained smoothly how even as a God-fearing nation we wanted nothing but peace, and the best way to get it was to go and kill every man Jack of German traitors and treaty violators, until there were only grey-beards and infants left. "And, of course, the prisoners," he added, regretfully.

"The Redeemer of the world," he said, "never meant an army which warred on women and children to dominate humanity, and to-day, in the words of the Bible, it 'was to us to go forth and kill.'"

If he had not got on to the National Anthem very quickly someone would have cheered.

"Even if we are fighting, the texts will never do for next year," said Mrs. Keefe in the doorway. "So what would you think, Mrs. Freyne, of stuffing pillows for the troops with them now while the wool is fairly dry."

A fine rain was falling outside, and the gleam of wintry sunshine somewhere behind it; the day was very cold.

The heavy appetite engendered by church made George Freyne fidget, when Gheena delayed him by rushing off with Violet Weston. Mrs. Weston was brilliant in rather crude mauve, with sky-blue silk stockings on, and held Gheena's arm very affectionately as they whispered together.

The old Professor beamed at them all, a beam with sadness in it.

"In Germany they love Christmas so," he said gently. "The Gretchens and the Annas romp like children over their presents; they all over-eat themselves and everywhere is the smell of pine needles and candles which have burnt themselves out—the 'Tannen-baum.' The women are as bad as the men, you say, Mr. Freyne, because they look now as ever, when they are told to look. They clap their poor hands now for war as they did for the beauty of the Christmas-tree. Christmas, with empty chairs near the fire—is it not sad for all?"

"How you can say one word for the brutes who lamed my Lancelot," said Mrs. Augustus Freyne, "I do not know, Professor."

The Professor said humbly that he only spoke for humanity and Christmastide.

"We are astonished to hear the dreadful people ever mentioned," said Mrs. De Burgho Keane heavily. "After all, if there were no dreadful fat mothers there would be no brutal sons to run about murdering and rapining." Here Mrs. Keane stopped to consider if that was quite the right word, especially in the churchyard path, because the Professor chuckled softly and Darby grinned. Changing the conversation, Mrs. Keane objected to last year's texts as disrespectful to the season.

Mrs. Brady uneasily remarked that the cotton-wool was to make pillows, and it will all look quite nice with the lights up this evening.

Mrs. De Burgho Keane replied energetically that the evening would not concern her. She passed on to interrogate Lancelot as he hopped to the motor, and wished to know if the brutal Germans really laughed when they wounded people, or if that was a newspaper lie.

Lancelot replied vaguely, the tail of his eye on the General. It was a secret carefully preserved that he had not gone beyond Boulogne. His foot was badly crushed, and he was not likely to see service again.

Then came the heaviness of Christmas luncheon. A meal which was always faintly neglected by Anne, who had dinner upon her mind, to say nothing of roast beef and plum pudding backed up by cheap sherry in the kitchen.

When it was over George Freyne helped Lancelot his nephew to his study, where he talked to him long and seriously.

A wounded man possessed the privilege of sympathy. Now was the hour to lay siege to Gheena's heart. Lancelot was not at all averse to life at Castle Freyne on a large income. The fear which he felt for his cousin Gheena now would easily turn to sulky authority when he found his position secure. A boy who had been indulged for his twenty-three years, was not likely to be a very pleasant companion through life.

Dearest George, moving his mind on its narrow ledge of cunning, decided that a new régime of petty tyranny would make his stepdaughter inclined to take her liberty at all costs, and Lancelot had promised faithfully that the Dower House would never be his father-in-law's position.

Gheena, through the soft cold which was turning to frost outside, wandered off by the sea. It shimmered in steely restlessness, mouthing white-toothed at the brown rocks. Cold held the world in its grip, the brown world looked icy, the shingle as though its touch would hurt in its chill.

"And out in the North Sea they keep watch," said a voice behind Gheena, "with the wind we find here cutting, there as a knife, and spray freezing on their eyelashes, and constant anxiety."

"And those dreadful submarines," said Gheena, turning to see Stafford, who had come up quietly over the grass.

"Which they threaten to blockade us with in the early spring."

"And—you believe there are bases here—men who help them?" said Gheena.

Mr. Stafford said dreamily that money would do anything.

"You have wanted it badly?" said Gheena.

Basil Stafford shot a swift look at Gheena as he answered that he had once wanted it so badly that he would have sold a limb to get it.

"I suppose," said Gheena, walking on, "that you won't keep to the drains after the winter here. You'll join something."

"You're not thinking of putting a white feather in my mince-pie for dinner, are you?" he said gravely. "There are other ways of helping besides wearing khaki, Miss Gheena, helping on war."

Gheena repeated "Helping on war" with sarcastic emphasis, and told Crabbit not to chase seagulls.

Crabbit leapt forth in swift pursuit of an elusive bird, a stately gull, which sailed off and then bobbed down into the icy sea, floating there gracefully, Crabbit immediately putting his paws into the water, trying to pretend that he had only come down to take the temperature. Then he pounced on something in the line of flotsam, and galloped back to Gheena to lay the offering at her feet.

It was a pocket-handkerchief of large size.

Gheena said "Crabbit, you beast!" turning away; but Stafford bent down and picked the sodden rag up; then dropped it again with a sharp exclamation and looked out to sea.

"We'll go back." Gheena walked towards the house. The kitchen chimney was absolutely pouring out smoke, heaving against the evening light.

"After all," said Stafford, "if there had been no war someone else would have been employed for the drainage, and I should never have come here."

Gheena, nose in air, considered the evening sky.

He laughed slightly bitterly.

"And it doesn't much matter when I go away again, I suppose," he said. "There is the Professor on the cliffs. He must have sampled every rock in the place by now."

"And also Hook, coming back." Gheena stopped to look at the General's man. "He seems to do everything except look after his master, that man of the General's."

Hook and the Professor met upon the cliffs and spoke. Then the valet overtook them.

"Been right away to the point, sir," he said to Stafford. "Regular nest of caves and holes, this coast."

"There are some that one can see the water going into, but are quite hidden," said Gheena. "I believe there are entrances from the land. I know of a way down to one of those caves. My old nurse, who came from the village out there, said there were two or three others, but she never showed them to me."

Hook stroked his chin thoughtfully.

"One is curious. It's just over there, if you'd like to see it, with the tide coming in its ease."

Stafford looked longingly at the lighted house, for Gheena was already flying back through the scrum of trees and out on to the chill low cliffs with the sea moaning below. Here, diving through a tangle of dead bracken and unpleasantly live gorse, she came to a hole in the ground, caught a lichen-covered slab of slaty rock and dropped out of sight, remarking cheerily that it was pitch dark and very slippery.

The cliff ran out just there in bare slaty stone, with stunted fuchsias clinging in the crevices, and brambles creeping along, long and thorny.

To get goatwise from slab to slab in a grey gloom of almost complete darkness, with the touch of the stones biting numbly, was not pleasant, but the two men followed Gheena down.

"Here is the shingle. The sea is up. Oh——"

For Stafford snapped on an electric torch and a dripping gloomy cavern came into view. It smelt dankly salt, and cold sea-water was pouring along the wet floor, sluicing in through inlets in the rock.

One could imagine sightless slimy fish in there living in the deep pools in the rocks, chill weeds and noisome things. The sea echoed outside, slushing and gurgling, and the swelling rim of water creeping in through hidden channels was ghost-like in its grey upward movement.

"But there's no outlet," was what Hook said thoughtfully.

Stafford said it was like a nightmare, snapped off his torch and scrambled for the entrance.

The grey dusk outside was sweet daylight after the gloom below. Hook thanked them, and they scurried back to the house, through wisps of white mist which were rising in the hollows..

"Your cousin is being helped in to tea." The blinds were not drawn, and the surrounded entrance of Lancelot could be plainly seen, with a chair being made ready for him and footstools arranged.

"He went out to fight," said Gheena sympathetically. "Whether it was a cart or shrapnel, he did go out to try to be hit."

Basil Stafford's lips came together with a snap.

Lancelot complained of pain at tea-time. He carped at his mother and invited Gheena to adjust his cushions. When she had done that, he asked her for more tea, because she knew the exact quantities of cream and sugar—and then he begged her to show him Punch's Almanack.

The well of pity in which so much female reason drowns kept Gheena attending to the invalid and forbearing to say sharp things. He had gone out bravely and done his best.

She listened while he fretted and grumbled because now he could never do anything; his soldier's life was over for quite a year, if not more, when the war must be over. He talked of what he might have done, and of the loneliness at Cahercalla.

The big dining-room table had to have a leaf put in it for dinner that night. The Freynes had collected everyone in the village, down to the Professor, who came in baggy evening clothes and square-toed boots.