Chapter VII: Part 7

Here Miss Carty, the postmistress, had at first been greatly put out because every man in the Army, no matter what regiment they jined, good Munsthers or not, was all put into the same lot--the Expeditionary Force--where, for all they knew, they might be dyin' and fightin' with misfortunate furriners, Scotch and English. Explanation having proved vain, she gave it up and accepted the injustice. Mrs. Carty, who rolled to and fro deftly amid boxes and barrels, was a person of superior intelligence, greatly shocked just then at the hobnobbing of the English soldiers with the German thraitors at Christmas-tide.

"If it was rooses to get them over to their ditches and doctor them quietly, I could understand," declaimed Mrs. Carty; "but--but to be handin' out smhokes and dhrinks an' carryin' on pleasantly without an objec'! I have the sardines in, Miss Gheena. Thruppence a box extry, seein' the ways them under-minded boats has all the fish swhep from the say. Aisy for them to get a catch down below with the fish to be cot an' they slheepin'."

Gheena placed the sardines in the trap and got in gloomily.

They were hailed passing Mrs. Weston's door. Violet really brilliant in pale blue with a wide sailor hat on her toupee, and wearing purple shoes and stockings, was at it with Stafford.

"Watching for you," she said to Gheena, "to bring you in to tea."

Gheena observed with care how Stafford kept close to Violet as they went up the path, and looked really admiringly at her brilliant colouring and bright face.

"If she'd only let her feet out," said Darby, hobbling in.

Mrs. Weston did not excel in giving tea. It came up upon a brass tray, and was generally both stewed and chilly. Two bought cakes, crumbly and dry, and a plate of thick bread and butter were the eatables.

Mrs. Weston said frankly that tea was washy stuff, and called for the forgotten sugar.

Old Berthe, in frilled cap with banded grey hair, hobbled off rapidly. She was enveloped by many petticoats, and was a taciturn old woman, never going out or making friends.

"Poor Berthe is so anxious about her precious Switzerland," said Violet, "for fear it would go to war, and all her relations in France, and no way of hearing."

Gheena was still gloomy. She could not understand why her stepfather had grown suddenly unpleasant and niggardly, and why they seemed to collide so often. Lancelot, the wounded hero, rather interested her--she was kind-hearted enough to like waiting on him, and was even a little pleased at his dependence upon her.

After a cup of tepid tea and a prolonged period of Mr. Keefe glaring at Mr. Stafford, Gheena got up to go home. Darby having taken the lid off the teapot looked into it critically.

"Made with cold water and let heat, foreign fashion," he said. "Why not, Mrs. Weston, teach your old lady the English way?"

Violet said, "Imagine you knowing the other!" in a curious way.

"And some of you have left your pipe," called out Gheena. She had dropped a glove and stayed to hunt for it. She brought out an ornate carved pipe, lately used.

Violet said she thought it must be the Professor's as no one else claimed it, and took it back.

The Professor, whom they met toddling back from his walk, stopped to speak, and got asked in to Castle Freyne for tea. He thought the pipe was probably that wild Mrs. Weston's. "But her garden is tidier. She did rave at the man Guinane when she came back a few evenings ago, so high that I heard her scolding. Carefully, Darby; stand still, Topsy, you beast!"

The hurt of helplessness came back to Darby; he should have been helping Gheena out. It reminded him of what he was to see her spring to the pony's head and stop the little beast going on.

"You take care of the poor cripple, Gheena," he said gently.

Gheena's eyes filled with tears as she muttered denial. Darby swung up the shallow steps, his leg was undoubtedly growing stronger.

Later on he told Gheena all about the dispute over the race.

At the next meet, two days afterwards, Rourke rode up on the little dun.

"They have me shamed, Mr. Darby," he said, "with 'Afraid ye are,' and 'How many mile would ye be left behind in two?'"

Darby wondered.

"An' 'If ye're horse is good, pull him out.' So the match it will have to be--or Juliana Carty above at the farm, an' I have no great wish for her for a wife."

Janey rode up at the moment, her cheeks polished with soap, her tie well ironed, and her pretty face looking out under a fringe of brown hair, and James sighed.

"I have a wish for Janey," he said shyly. "An' so will ye settle all for the match, sir, I'll risk it."

Darby said hopefully that the thoroughbred might fall.

"Or he might not gallop as fast as he'd think," said Jamesey softly. "Ye'd niver know. Ye'd niver know."

The result of this was that after a good hunt and a kill, Darby took the two men home with him to settle matters.

"We will write it out proper," said Rourke, "so as to be sure."

Darby was familiar with matches. He wrote out that Mr. D. Rooney's That's the Boy, five years, by Barcol Lise, would be matched against Mr. J. Rourke's--here he lifted his pen.

"I have no right name for him," said Jamesey vaguely; "put me little dun horse, sir, five years."

"Dun horse, five years," wrote on Darby, "twenty pounds a side--over a natural course of three miles."

"An' let all have good coats on to keep warm waitin' for Rourke here," sneered Rooney.

"Yerself an' ye're dirty boastin'," returned Rourke, without the animosity which seemed natural.

"Will ye bet me five pounds I'm not in five minnits before ye cross the last fince?" stormed Rooney.

"I will so," said Jamesey firmly, pulling out some greasy notes which he handed to Darby.

Darby had a great deal to say to the match, and saw Janey, who was racked by doubt and fears.

"For he'd be the slithery class of a husband, that Dan," she said fretfully; "one that does no credit to the good bit he'd get, an' he takes drink terrible. An' Jamesey cannot win, an' yet he has a smilin' face on him; an' he ordthered two new cushions for his side-car at Carey's yesterday to drive home from chapel on. He says he'd stand me three days in Dublin straight away if I'd fancy it, too. An' he without a chance!"

The date of the match was fixed for the second Thursday in January at one o'clock, until Rooney wrote to say that he must go to the big town, and could not get back until three, so it must be run then.

Now the hours after three early in January begin to get chill and dark, but it had to be.

Everyone related to the Rourkes and Rooneys poured in from all sides to see the match; the hillside was black with cars and carts; there was even a stall laden with glutinous leathery buns dotted with pink sugar, and surreptitious porter sold and consumed behind a flapping tent. The one bookmaker had returned, to close almost immediately up That's the Boy and take all he could get for Rourke's dun.

At a quarter-past three Rourke trotted up, his mount veiled in a brand-new American rug of superlative smartness, and bandaged all round with linen bandages.

"If it's racin' I am, it's racin' I may as well look," he said good-humouredly when chaffed.

Old Mr. O'Dea, who was stout and slow of movement, came up to say querulously that he heard it was childthers' nonsense putting out that dun at all. And that now maybe they'd hear no more boasting and chat.

James replied that with luck he might not, looking fixedly at the flushed countenance of his opponent.

Janey's father, coming to superintend, remarked to Rourke that if it was an accident his taking the cup, there was no call to make so much boast of it afther Mass, Janey listening with tears in her eyes.

Here Mr. Rooney broke in with, "An' he not able to win until Miss Gheena's pony had to be pulled off. An' the gibin' before all with 'Where was ye're racehorse?' or 'Will ye have a drink out of silver?'"

James Rourke's complete good-humour as he stood by the sheeted dun roused his opponent to further eloquence. Bitterly he informed the interested listeners that when Cup-winner James inquired where was the racehorse to-day, it was gone home, they could tell him, if any friends waited on in the could to see the thrickster come in.

Here Darby thought that if the matter was to be put to the proof, it might be better to start while there was a little light, and he looked thoughtfully at Rourke's reserved smile.

When Dan Rooney emerged from the chrysalis of his coat, as a butterfly in a pink jacket, dirty breeches and papery boots, his glitter wrought a groan of admiration from the crowd.

Old O'Dea, falling back to admire, suggested that he was the Boyo himself, the fine figure of a man, what there was of him. When James, quietly arrayed in his hunting kit, slipped the rug from his horse, leaving on the bandages, and it was observed that its tail was plaited up, fresh pleasantries broke forth.

Someone wished to know if Rourke imagined he owned The Tetrarch. A large Rooney cousin asked hilariously if Danny thought maybe that if he foxed the horse he was a racehorse he'd run faster, to which James replied pleasantly that he might, and backed himself for another pound.

Darby had laid out a fair course, over easy banks, and presenting no difficulties for a striding horse.

That's the Boy looked overtrained and tucked up. He lashed out irritably when mounted.

From the start Rooney adopted the hurricane-like tactics which he meant to win with. He tore away at racing pace, taking the first fence in his stride.

There were no horses to confuse the big youngster. He fled along at a pace which no one could possibly hope the dun to keep up with.

"All over," said Darby, putting up a pair of totally useless glasses, for it was growing quite dusk. "Poor Rourke won't see the way the other is going in half a mile."

But to everyone's astonishment the dun horse and quietly-dressed rider clung obstinately close to the comet-like flash of Dan Rooney's pink jacket. The rider of That's the Boy shook up the big horse to a pace which set him sprawling, and all but resulted in disaster at a bank. Sobered by this, he looked back angrily and pulled his horse together; he was a fine rider. Still going quite easily and slugging hard against his bit, the dun was close behind. Rooney sat forward, using as much jockey fashion as he could master, bumping uncomfortably at his jumps.

"Did ye dhrug him?" hurled Rooney over an irate shoulder, "that I can hear him so long?"

"Three gallons of whisky. Was it cloryform yours got?" was Rourke's reply, his tone preoccupied, for they were nearing the nasty little scramble in and out of the boreen.

Gheena and Darby had cut the two racers off at this point, and listened, smiling, to them.

"But I never saw Rooney adopt Tod Sloan's style before," said Darby; "and if he can't get the horse together, he'll fall at the boreen."

That's the Boy, consummately handled, dropped in and out just without a fall; the dun struck the far fence hard, grunted, and bundled somehow into the far field, shooting his rider off. With the boreen behind him and Rourke down, Rooney cheered as he galloped on.

But the fall took little more time than a clean jump would have done. James Rourke was up again as soon as his horse and sat back suddenly.

"Be dam to where the weight is! How can he win if it is not there at all!" he stormed as he changed his seat.

Next moment, in the fast falling dusk, the spectators roared to see the despised dun closing the gap, fighting his way to the big horse's quarters, to his girth, forging ahead.

At this stage Jane O'Dea fell upon her father's neck, clasping him closely as she wailed, "It was no boastin', Pappy, it was no boastin'," into the displeased ear of a man who had invested five pounds at evens on Rooney, and who thirsted for liberty of action to get something speedily on the other.

"If he wasn't boastin', then wasn't he lyin', to pretend to let the Rat up lasht time?" roared O'Dea, when his proffered crown on the dun had been promptly refused.

An enthusiastic cousin of Rooney's offered an even crown, hotly declaring, "It's cantherin' the man is, so as to make a race of it, and shame the other."

"If he is, he is beltin'," shrilled Janey, letting her parent go. "Beltin'!"

"He has the sphur out too," grunted her progenitor. "I'll make the crown double, if ye like, Tom Rooney."

The big, bewildered youngster sprang forward to the drub of the stick and the bite of the steel in his flanks. He gave of his best, but the little dun was a length ahead, striding along, pulling double, and his rider had not moved.

They landed over the last fence, the bay closed the gap, the dun surged forward. The crowd swayed and roared, leaping into traps which gave way and upset them, hurling up hats, jumping to get a better view. The one bookmaker, seeing the dun ahead, wondered if he had got straight to Heaven through the laxity of the authorities, and looked at his book with breath held hard. As they dashed up the long slope, Rooney dropped his reins a little, so that just at the post the bay closed upon him, and the dun's head was barely half a length in front.

"It was one of them hippodromic sirringes," gasped Rooney, dropping his tired right hand. "Nothin' less. Ye dam thraitor of a spy!" He rolled off, panting. "I protest, Mister Dillon. He has an artificial horse med with one of them hippodromic doses, an' it was near out of him an' he finishing."

There was no weighing in, catch-weights had been the order. Little Andy led off the panting dun, and Darby himself saw to the exhausted That's the Boy. A few more gruellings of this type would break any horse's spirit.

Mr. Rooney, bewildered, took consolation in liquid form, agreed with several people that he was hardly treated, then his pink coat gleaming in the dusk, he squared up to Mr. James Rourke to demand satisfaction.

"I'll show ye, ye Germin thraitor," he said bitterly, rolling the word on his tongue. "I'll show ye to drug horses!"

"Will some friend counsel Dan Rooney not to put up a fight?" said Rourke with reserve. "Seein' that he has more dhrink taken than I have meself, an' that his faytures will be concayled on him for a week if he thries it on."

Further pleasantries concerning the fact that James was afraid, and a rider to the effect that "Perhaps if Daniel Rooney's present features were hidden he would look all the better" from Rourke being exchanged, Rooney broke loose from restraining friends and rushed forward, his arms going like windmills and his face aflame. Rourke shortened matters by knocking him down scientifically.

From behind an enlarging nose Mr. Rooney, on the ground, considered that this was another bit of treachery, for he found that giddiness prevented him from getting up.

"Maybe the hippodromic sirringe in his hand," he gulped, "pricked into the nose on me face."

A voice suggested that if this was the case Dan Rooney should immediately get up and show them how fast he could run away, Dan, completing the crowd's good-humour by endeavouring--he was now exceedingly drunk--to gallop on his hands and knees, and finally being removed to an inside trap, where he swayed as a stricken pink flower and groaned drearily.

Darby drove over to Rourke's house next day to find the owner gaily gravelling the little path in front of the house, and whistling cheerily. Darby had come to buy the little dun; he wanted a handy horse and would have bought him before if he had not been afraid of his lack of pace.

James Rourke leant upon his shovel and rubbed his chin.

"If ye like to buy him for what he is," he said slowly, "a nate plodding fair and square little hunther, ye're welcome; but as a horse with great speed, no, Mr. Dillon. Ye're too big a friend to trade that way."

"Then how the mischief did he beat the big bay?" was what Darby uttered in astonishment.

James looked round cautiously. "Well, if one dun horse did not bate him," he said, "isn't there a book says 'All's fair in love and war,' sir--another did. The writing only said Dun, Mister Darby, there was no name. An' if I paid two hundred, he wouldn't risk it for less, for me cousin's little horse Custodian that won at Galway last year, and was second in Punchestown. Didn't James Rourke's dun horse win the race?"

"You--scoundrel!" said Darby, after a pause filled by uncontrolled laugh, he looked towards the stables.

"Oh, he went back the second next night," said James softly. "We walked him all the ways to Cortra. Andy did, an' it dark! I borryed Andy off Barty. I could not have lived in the place, Mr. Dillon, with all his boastin' if I either went out, an' was doing full-back all the time to his forward, or if I did not come out at all. An' for the twinty pound Janey an' meself sent it to the Belgums. Since it came from cheatin' soldiers, it is gone to thim that soldiers cheated."

An inkling of what had happened leaked out, as it was bound to, so delighting O'Dea that the banns were immediately put up, the old man giving Janey two extra cows because a certain young man deserved to get on in life.

Also, when a month later Darby drove up to present the couple with a silver sugar-basin and tea-spoons, he found Mr. Dan Rooney walking arm in arm with James Rourke, as they discussed the terms of sale of That's the Boy to the owner of Custodian, who realized that the bay had put in a really fine performance in running as he did--half fit, and never spared.

"To have been bate by that that niver could have bate me sickened me," said Rooney, beaming; "but to keep Custodian beltin' it for three mile, didn't I know me bay horse was a bit of exthry?"

*CHAPTER XII*

General Brownlow returned the grey horse, accompanied by a terse letter to his brother-in-law, couched in terms which made George Freyne feel that he was almost lucky to have escaped a drumhead court-martial.

"Lay down with our fattest commanding officer in the barrack square," wrote Brownlow, "and again with a young subaltern ordered to gallop with a message. Folds up like a deck-chair when he feels inclined, and I've got you out of it with difficulty by trying him for another week myself."

With a spirit chastened but not resigned, Dearest George got a cheque to return the money, and then looked bitterly at the array of new machinery in its shed.

The same post had brought a letter to Gheena, which simply said: "I managed it, my dear--that particular whistle which brought him down in a moment."

Tony Brownlow wrote again from England, telling his brother-in-law that as he--Tony--had just got George out of a nice difficulty, he didn't mind asking a favour. He wanted a home for his sister's child. She had lived with him. Now he was moving about, the girl was on the coast of Kent and he was nervous; besides, he would like her to be friends with that splendid monkey, Gheena.

The sum offered for her board and for keeping a horse for her was completely adequate. Her name was Mona, and she was commonly called Psyche, the sprite.

Mona Delorme arrived almost immediately afterwards. She was a fragile little person, reminding the imaginative of a moonbeam--pale, with silvery yellow hair and grey-green shadowy eyes, with slender feet and hands, and light quick movements.

Sturdy Gheena adored her fervently from the hour of meeting her at the station, and was calling her Psyche before they reached Castle Freyne.

Mona cried out at the homely beauty of the hills, at the wild sea caught in the long harbour, and the white spray at the point where it sprang up free in its might.

Her father had been Irish. She took the country to her heart with its grey lights and shadows, its kindly people, its carelessness and consequent happiness.

"The flour is not after coming from Cortra, Miss, nor the box of groceries from the stores," said Dillon at the station; "an' the Master axin' for sardines these two days past--an' Anne out of flour."

"We'll borrow some from Mrs. Brady, Dillon; I daresay the mistress forgot to write. How many of your boxes have you got, Mona? They generally lose a few. Only one gone, Pat? Wonderful!"

"It must come on in a day or two, Miss," said Pat hopefully. "The war has the world an' all muddled up."

Mona was welcomed by Mrs. Freyne. She was at home in ten minutes in the old house; told to call Mrs. Freyne Auntie, and not Aunt--at all costs, not Aunt Matilda. As their relationship was so remote as to be non-existent Mona agreed with faint surprise.

She had been given one of the huge bedrooms looking out on the front, a vast expanse of room, with heavy furniture solidly occupying as much space as it conveniently could--a mighty bed, huge wardrobes in which several spies might be hidden, an arm-chair which it took a strong man to wheel along, and a small grate of dubiously new origin lurking in the vast fireplace. Mr. Freyne had replaced all the old-fashioned bedroom grates by cheap and not too economical substitutes.

Here Psyche the Sprite declared she would be lost, but peered with joy across the expanse of tree-dotted lawn to the grey sea churning ill-humouredly between the low cliffs.

"And you mustn't wink lights at night or we'll have Mr. Keefe up," said Gheena. "We are dreadfully afraid of submarines down here."

Gheena, long limbed, tanned clear brown, with bright hair and deep grey eyes, sat upon the massive arm-chair, not in it, but poised on the broad arm, her arms clasped round her knees, and admired her guest whole-heartedly.

"Psyche," she said; "nothing else. A sprite, Uncle Tony said. I can hardly see you edgeways."

Mona's hands gripped the window-sill; they were slight fragile things, with delicate bones concealed by milk-white skin. Even her eyes were pale, grey-blue, misty and elusive.

"A man on a horse," she announced. "Yes, do call me Psyche; it's pretty. Such a good-looking man. There were no men in Kent, only a curate and some people with wives."

Gheena dropped off her perch to run to the window and see Darby talking to her mother. The unmarred side of his face was towards them. There was no hint of the twisted, shortened limb, and the seam which punctured his right cheek.

"Oh, Darby!" said Gheena. "Poor old Darby Dillon!"

Psyche, late Mona, wished to know if this Darby had no money at all.

Gheena explained very gently that Darby was a cripple, lame and twisted.

They went down together--sunlight and moonlight, ripe chestnut and a mistletoe berry--having, with the mysterious ease of which girlhood is capable, become fast friends.

Darby Dillon was just hobbling across the hall. He reddened, as he always did, when meeting strangers and the shame of his marring was stared at by new eyes, summed up and pitied. But this girl did not seem to look at him as though she noticed; she came up to tell him how already she loved this grey Ireland, and to ask eager questions about hunting and jumping, and the joys which she had only read of.

"I bought quite a lot of books and read them," she said. "A Badminton and Jorrocks, and oh, crowds of things! But I've only ridden on the roads, seen hunting once or twice from a motor, so I didn't understand. You see, we lived in Scotland before mother died, and then I was abroad. But I'm coming out here, even if I fall off."

"You won't make a hole in the ground," said Darby thoughtfully.

"You ride--like men in pictures," said Psyche.

Darby looked up sharply, his face flushing, to see if she was laughing at the cripple, but the new experience of being admired after years of tolerant pity made the flush deepen.

Dearest George corrected his stepdaughter several times as to her stupidity about Miss Delorme's name.

A veritable sprite, pale, in pale-hued clothes, Psyche flitted about and took in everyone. Her appreciation of Anne's scones was duly recorded in the kitchen. Her close questioning of the injured Lancelot was listened to by his mother and called impertinent. It was annoying to meet a girl who seemed to know every town in France, every spot where the English held the lines, and discomfiting for the hero to have to shufflingly evade questions impossible for him to answer.

"It is my belief," observed pale Psyche to Gheena, "that he never went beyond Boulogne."

Gheena replied quietly that she had guessed that for weeks, and Lancelot, who played the invalid in his khaki, looked at them narrowly.

All the Freynes' friends appeared, of course accidentally, to see the stranger, Mrs. Brady driving Mrs. Weston, who came to ask for some seeds for her garden, things to sow in a frame, and was distressed to find that January sowings needed great care and a skilled man. Mrs. Brady was depressed because the news was vile and hopeless. Stafford came merely to ask for tea. He yawned once or twice, apologizing with a start.

"It's being up all night," he said; "no sleep."

"Who on earth did you find to play cards with here?" said Gheena icily.

Mr. Stafford said "Er!" and grinned faintly.

Lancelot Freyne absorbed Gheena's attention when he found it possible. She must pour out his tea and put in cream and sugar. She was the only one who could plump up and arrange his cushions. She must show him the pictures in the _Daily Sketch_. Gheena was patiently pointing out varieties of somewhat indefinite horrors of war, when Doctor Mahaffy, a stout man, who did ten men's work in his big district, burst in to tell them that one of their workmen had broken his leg.

"Nat Leary. He was coming back in the dark last night from the point, and he tripped over something like a wire, he says. Whatever it was, it stunned him and tilted him over the shale cliff, where he was only found at one o'clock, half kilt."

"The steward said that he had not come to work," said Dearest George fussily. "And Nat was an unusually sober man."

Old Mahaffy remarked gruffly that that was apparently as unusual as usual in that way; but as he tripped something seemed to strike him and smother him, and he woke up to find himself on the shale bank with his leg doubled under him. He was too sick to move, or he'd have gone over into the sea, so he bawled until someone heard him.

Something, Gheena could not have told what, made her look sharply at Basil Stafford. He was staring at the doctor, his face tense and strained, with an anxious look in his tired eyes.

Violet Weston rustled her noisy underskirts across the room to Gheena; she moved trippingly, because her shoes generally hurt her feet, and whispered in Gheena's ear.

"Up all night," she said. "He let it out. Could there be any connection?"

The flush faded from Basil Stafford's face; he grew pale and his lips set bitterly.

"Well, it's a job for you, Keefe," he said, "to go and investigate, and I'll come with you. The cliffs are all overgrown above the shale bank, but the path is clear at the edge."

"He turned in through the furry bushes to take that way to his house," said the doctor. "I left him grand and cosy now. I will take some tea surely, Mrs. Freyne, for I am cold and tired. I'm getting an old man for that two-wheeled motor of mine."

"You must have some fresh," said Mrs. Freyne; "this would be stewed. Don't you think so, Dearest? And, besides, there isn't any. I remember the last cup I poured out was not really there at all."

"And in the name of Goodness, Lancelot," burst out the doctor, "didn't I tell you to use that foot and not be getting an atrophy in your leg from pasting it up on cushions?"

Lancelot, flushing, observed haughtily that the pain was too intense, and leant back as one who considers a matter fully discussed.

"I'd have a pain in a leg meself if I laid it up to be lookin' at it, and it only swollen and tender," remarked Mahaffy, with brutal frankness. "Unless it's sympathy you're after, Lancelot, and you do the Tango in your own room so as to soon fill out and get ready for more service."

At the thought of Lancelot in khaki gravely sitting before the looking-glass, Mrs. Freyne said: "Oh, good gracious. Dearest George, do you think?" and dropped three stitches of her involved muffler.

"Well, he should use it," observed the family practitioner, getting up. "He was always nervous from the hour he came into the world, and used to be peepin' at his bottle as if it might bite him. And now, Maria Louisa Deane has the measles--German, too--and over there I must get before I see roast goose to-night."

They tied pheasants on to the old fellow's bicycle and hung a basket of grapes on the handle and sent him off.

Lancelot, in offended majesty, sat gloomily among his cushions. Presently, when it was time to dress for dinner and get into slacks--he would wear no civilian clothes--he suddenly put both sticks into one hand, set his foot on the ground and collapsed against Gheena's shoulder with a strangled groan of anguish.

"There is really no use trying if it makes you make noises like that," said Matilda Freyne kindly. "Is there, Dearest? Though it's probably all nerves and really doesn't hurt a bit; and if you are going to try to use it, Naylour and George must help you. Gheena is not strong enough."

The invalid tearfully murmured that he wanted Gheena alone. His glance of reproach at Mrs. Freyne was a bitter one.

"He is a humbug," said Psyche, accepting Gheena's help in dressing. She had brought no maid. "And I do not care for your big lady in silk stockings."

When Gheena called Violet Weston a darling, Miss Delorme shook her head vigorously.

"The only thing that's wrong with her, Darby says," went on Gheena, "is that she wears a number eight shoe on a number ten foot and it hampers her. They're not such big feet really, if she did not squeeze them in those high-heeled shoes and wear such bright stockings."

When they came down again the little district inspector had just driven back from his examination of the cliffs. There were two shale banks along the verge, and until Leary got up again it would be impossible to say exactly where he had turned and fallen. He had told the doctor it was very dark, and he felt the gorse and wheeled, knowing he would find the gate leading to the path across to his house, but the gorse grew sixty yards from where they found him. They had looked everywhere, and the only thing they found was a small cork which smelt faintly of chloroform.

"We chloroformed a stray old cat last week," said Violet Weston absently, "at least Guinane did. He took it off somewhere to the cliffs, because I wouldn't have the poor thing done in the house."

"It's how striking a wire or a root as he turned to go in could have tumbled the man over the cliffs is what puzzles me," said Stafford. "The verge is several feet even from the path."

It was a matter of course that anyone coming late to Castle Freyne stayed to dinner. The meal was always elastic, with reserves of vast game pies and cold pheasants and other things, which Anne smilingly "slapped up" into hot dishes at a moment's notice.

Psyche sat next to Darby and talked of horses all the time, an eager, ill-informed but intelligent patter, which seemed to amuse him greatly.

To-morrow--no later--she would get a horse and practise jumping.

To-morrow, Darby said mildly, was a hunting day.

"But if I lean back and then forward," said Psyche excitedly, "I might not fall off. Gheena says I am to have her Redbird to begin on, because he's so very quiet and careful. And then I am to have a grey for my own riding."

This was Gheena's sop to her stepfather's ill-humour, as the grey was returned; it could thus be fed free of cost.

"And--oh!" Psyche started nervously.

"It's Crabbit snuffling and Dearest throwing an orange at him," observed Darby. "Yes. Crabbit is now worrying the orange."

Crabbit chased the orange across the room, bit it viciously, chased it again, and finally left it, torn open, pulpy, just beneath the feet of the man who had thrown it at him; so that when Mr. Freyne rose gracefully to open the door, his feet slipped on the smashed-up fruit and he disappeared from view, feet foremost under the table, accidentally hitting Lancelot's foot and eliciting a yowl of anguish from his nephew.

The upheaval of Dearest George, his garments now fragrant with orange juice, was coupled with deep threats directed against Crabbit's life--deeper still, because that interested animal came and sniffed at his head when he was on the ground.

"When Crabbit dies," said Gheena, calling up her red pet, "I shall marry next day, the very next. If the Professor won't have me, Doctor Mahaffy might; I could give him a motor to drive in."

Dearest George observed something concerning drivel, but he observed it under his breath and recognized the threat. Crabbit was not to suffer. So turning to Lancelot, he crushed his nephew by remarking irritably that soldiers had no business to squeal like rabbits.

The new-comer sang to them in a thin sweet voice, which was quite sprite-like, and she danced for them lightly and prettily, but not as well as usual, because she told Gheena she was thinking of hunting.

The meet was at Castle Freyne itself next day. It was without exception the worst meet on the card, with endless hunting through endless woods, of foxes with limitations as to sound limbs.

Mr. George Freyne, with the assistance of a reticent north-country keeper, trapped rabbits and carted them in the dawn or the dusk to the distant stations, sending them in bags by the cart of a "boy" of fifty-four by the name of Looney Rooney, who could keep his mouth shut on any subject for a shilling and open it for half a crown.

This matter of the rabbits Dearest George believed to be so sacred a secret that his amazement when a three-legger was run into and chopped was most loudly voiced.

"Those hang fisher chaps trapped all round the cliffs, and of course foxes strayed out."

"And I to poke into some queer-looking bags on Looney Rooney's cart two years ago," observed Darby once. "'Rabbits, you poaching villain,' I said to him. 'Whose rabbits?'

"'Don't be axin' me questions an' I'll tell ye no lies, Mister Darby,' he said, with his crooked old mouth under one ear. 'Here's half a crown to tell me whose,' I said. 'The shopman's,' he says, putting his mouth round until I thought he would have to get someone to feed him for the future through the back of his neck. 'Hee! Hee! the shopman's! Castle Brand,' says the old villain, whaling his jinnet into a trot, and he was a mile away when I realized that he had earned his half a crown."

Gheena, of course, knew nothing of this method of making money.

The scratch pack sat solemnly upon the lawn. They were now fit and in condition, yet in their hearts probably yearning for the many indifferent meals which they had picked up daily, instead of the one ample portion of meal and meat. Every woman who possessed a habit and saddle came out for the meet at Castle Freyne, and every man who could muster a horse.

Mr. Freyne had spent an anxious hour in the cellar, looking out some ginger cordial which had proved a failure, and which he meant to substitute for the usual excellent liqueurs provided for the hunting people.

"In war time they ought not to expect anything," he said fussily, as he decanted some inferior whisky into the old cut-glass decanters.

In the morning, a clear and sunshiny one, he saw the table ready in the hall before he went out, very important in peaked cap, to speak to the pack, and to proffer hospitality with the extremely whole-hearted air of the man who regrets it secretly. The offer comes quite quietly from those who delight in seeing their substance consumed.

The farmers took little mugs of liqueur coyly, coughing and wiping their mouths with a thanksgiving of "That's good entirely," or "Fine lightsome sthuff, Miss Gheena. Your good health, Miss! Your good health, Ma'am! Well now, one more, then."

Mr. Freyne watched without anxiety to see the distinct disappointment with which they would swallow the rather tired ginger cordial; but to his surprise, he saw Mr. Rooney cough with extra vigour, and hold out a withered hand for another go of that gran' little sthuff.

"And Matilda would have told me it was like water," he said genially, offering a drink to fat old O'Gorman as he pounded up upon his stout cob, leading his wife's lean mare. "Liqueur? Only the ginger cordial, or whisky and soda, or tea."

"Knowing Mrs. Freyne's ginger cordial, I'll have some," said O'Gorman, wiping his forehead. "That's a great plowder when you're late, Freyne, eight miles out of the town."

Miss Louisa O'Donnell, a coy and dark-haired damsel of uncertain years, also gladly accepted. She had gone through life offering unstinted admiration to mankind, hoping it might induce one of them to take it as a permanent tonic to his life; but she remained Louisa O'Donnell still--with a complexion which Darby said unkindly it was a good thing the rain washed sometimes, and a lean angular figure.

"Indeed, just the littlest taste, Mr. Freyne," she said sweetly. "My! isn't the hunting cap very becoming to a good-looking man. It will be quite a loss when we have the Master out again."

Dearest George preened peacock-wise in the sunshine, glared down at his white leathers and immaculate boots, and strode, spurs ringing on the gravel, towards the hall. "Gheena, two cordials."

But Gheena was on her way to coax pretty Jane O'Dea, a giggling bride-elect, from her horse and bring her in for some tea.

Dearest George ran up the shallow steps to note quite a crowd of men round the table in the hall, and then to call imperiously to his wife.

Her stout, fair comeliness set off by a well-made dark habit, she was standing talking to Stafford.

"Yes, Dearest. Naylour, two glasses."

Mr. Freyne, receiving them, noted with surprise that the hue of the liqueur was green, and turned in amazement, giving the tray to Naylour, who shuffled, a white-haired Ganymedes, out amongst the crowd.

"And oh, Dearest George," beamed Matilda Freyne, "I found the old cordial which was never corked properly put out by mistake, and you were outside, so I got out the green Chartreuse you put away when war was declared instead. The other things were locked up, and the Chartreuse was handy in the dining-room press. Wasn't I right, Dearest?"

Dearest George looked bleakly at the bottles of his favourite liqueur which were being opened by Keefe; on the floor stood a degraded row of bottles of the cordial. Green Chartreuse to the farmers! Outside he heard O'Gorman's oily voice.

"I wouldn't mind another glassful, Naylour. I'm beat trotting the whole way, and that's great stuff, not like ginger cordial at all now, is it?"

Mr. Freyne made curious noises in his throat.

"Never," observed Darby softly to Miss Delorme, "be economical without your wife's knowledge. I've never known anyone so hard to corner as Matilda. She reminds me of chasing jelly with a fork; it's always so soft and pleasant, and always at the other end of the plate when you think you've got it."

Darby looked at his watch, but there was no hurry. If a little piece of Castle Freyne was left undrawn no one would grumble except George.

The gathering was suddenly enlivened by shouts from outside--Phil's, as he "practised" the new young lady over some bushes made up on the lawn.

"Sit back! Hould ye howlt! Great begorra! Now, at it agin!"

"Oh, it's lovely!" gasped Psyche, as she bumped from the saddle, gripped the mane, and yet was still there, hanging on.

"Don't be afeard, ye are still above," comforted Phil. "Let ye lane back when ye'd feel him hop and straighten yerself when he dhrops, and the Queen of England couldn't do more. That's bether. Now agin."

Redbird, a sedate little horse, now felt the spirit of the morning enter into him, and suddenly did a little jump not over the bushes.

Psyche understood a buck-jump; she sat down to it with a little coo of delight, and raced once more at the fence.

In a very pale grey habit she was as sprite-like riding as on foot.

"If we do not move on," said Mr. Freyne ill-humouredly, "we shall never leave this place."

Darby thought this a sound opinion. He limped off to his horse slowly, watching with amusement Miss Delorme's spirited efforts to master the balance of a jump.

The rejected grey was brought to the step by Phil, George explaining with disgust how he had been returned for some private spite.

"The quietest soort of a horse ever I seen," said Jamesey Rourke, and whistled absently.

It was unfortunately quite like the signal which Greybird had completely at heart.

At Darby's side, Mr. Freyne was moving off, feeling that all eyes were upon him, when without warning the Greybird died for his country with extreme spirit, decanting his rider on to the wet grass.

"Oh, heavens! someone whistled!" said Gheena. "It's two whistles sharply given, and he's got it on his mind now, and he's on the croquet hoops." The grey stood up, his saddle scratched, his side smeared, with a benign expression on his good-tempered face.

"The megrums," said Rourke, excitedly catching the horse. "The megrums he has, the craythur."

Gheena explained softly. Mr. Freyne, smeared with green, remounted with bitter dignity and noisy comment.

The woods behind the house soon rang with the towling harrier note, until Grandjer, rushing out, pinned a small yellow fox which had one paw badly injured.

"Those dreadful men on the cliffs," said Mr. Freyne pompously. "Dreadful--my foxes!"

Looney Rooney, limping through the crowd, muttered "Shopman's rabbits!" happily, and grinned at Darby.

"Dirty German thing, trapping!" said Darby curtly. "If Lindlay comes back and finds out who does this, he'll make Huns of them for the time being, I tell you."

Mr. Freyne nursed the cheek injured by the croquet hoop and remained silent.

They drew on through the long wood at the foot of the hill, trying every yard of it, monotony varied by the occasional slaying of a rabbit by Grandjer or Beauty, both adepts at it. Wherever Darby rode, little Miss Psyche was on his heels. To be with the Master was hunting for her.

She squealed nearly as loud as the rabbits when the hounds gave tongue and were rated; she wailed for a hunt. She put her horse over fallen trunks of trees and piped shrilly that she had learnt to sit on at the jumps. She viewed a squirrel with a "Tally ho!" which made the wood ring.

"Now look here!" said Darby firmly. "That's not a fox. And I'll do the hollering away."

"It had a long tail," said Miss Delorme equally firmly, "and it was red. And suppose I see a fox and you don't see the fox, am I to say nothing because I am not sure it is a fox?"

Darby gave it up politely. He pulled up to rub his head and say "Hounds noses," looking straight into the small pale face and the big grey-green eyes half hidden by a tangle of dark brown eyelashes.

"They'll be off on the scent of Cupid in a minnit," he said, "or Endymion. Siren would be a better name for you, Miss Moonbeam."

They scrambled through a hole in the boundary bank, and got out into poor pasture fields to draw more woods on the crest of a hill.

"When you run across to that--" said Psyche, pouting. That was the opposite cliff across the harbour.

"--Do you have to swim?" she asked.

"No, there's a ferry," said Darby gravely. "The fox hails it first. Then it comes back for me and the hounds and the hunt servants, and the others wait on the shore for their turn; that's the way we cross the sea, hunting here."

A small bank reared its barrier across the grass. Darby's horse scrambled over contemptuously, Miss Delorme rushing at it wildly, and recovering by the breastplate when the bustled Redbird bungled.

Home Ruler put his nose down with sudden interest, Beauty following suit. A fox had been about. They spoke to the line in the larch wood, when the whip-like tasselled boughs scratched unwary faces as they rode through. It was a stale line. Darby cheered them, hoping the fox might be lying in some clumps of gorse outside, from which there was even the possibility of a hunt.

Violet Weston's tall bay snorted and whistled as they climbed the steep hill. She was attended by her small red-faced swain, who was endeavouring to conceal from his thoughts that green Chartreuse in the morning will mount to the head.

A nip from his flask to assure himself made him happier; he found that irritability passed to loquacious cheeriness, and it took a second nip to bring a thorough glow of sweet peace.

Then he discussed the war and his work, explaining how much of it all entailed upon him--constant rushes to the Wireless Station, where they were ordered to let no one in now; incessant false alarms; the arranging of everything in case of invasion.

"You know that man with the broken leg still says he was too far in to have fallen over," he said. "He said he was amongst the gorse inland when he was tripped up and fell."

"Drunk, of course?" said Mrs. Weston.

"A teetotaller," said Mr. Keefe, again staving off irritability; "and now we have some whisper of wireless messages being sent off the coast."

"Mrs. Weston and I," said Gheena, riding up, "are going to search right along the cliffs for caves and holes. We might find where the petrol base is, if there is one, and then you'll be promoted."

Little Keefe snapped out that he did not believe in the rumours.

Beauty towled out her long note; a fox had been somewhere about.

"You must take off those lovely shoes of yours if you're going for long walks on the cliffs," remarked Keefe fatuously. "Never do it on those heels you wear, Mrs. Violet."

A minute later Stafford, who had ridden to their right, came up to Gheena. She was on the young horse, managing it perfectly, her bright face glowing as she played with his mouth.

"Look here," he said earnestly, "you are not to attempt to look along these cliffs, you two girls. Have you thought what it might mean if there really was a base, and desperate men earning their living by holding it? As their lives would certainly be over if they were found, do you think they would let you two come back quietly to tell the police?"

Miss Freyne withered him with a look before she inquired icily who had told Mr. Stafford of their intention.

Basil Stafford observed with some confusion that he'd heard of it--er--somehow.

Gheena replied that she did not remember mentioning it until that morning, and then only to two people who took an interest in the war.

At this Basil Stafford shot out "Steady," his voice shaking a little.

"Well, you can't," she replied with firmness.

"I can take an interest in folly," he observed after a pause, speaking with the extreme sweetness which marks distinct ill-humour.

"Keep off those cliffs, Miss Freyne. You see, there really is a war somewhere, a real war, and the German Emperor is not yet at Runnymede."

"You'd like us to keep off the cliffs," said Gheena. "No doubt."

Mr. Stafford suddenly allowed his ill-humour to pass to laughter.

"War includes many things which you have not even dreamt of," he said, grinning. "Keep away from it."

To which Gheena returned that so far as she could see, people kept away from it who ought to be in it, or perhaps they did not keep away.

Here she stopped abruptly and Darby's voice rose cheerily. They had found.

Scent was of the poorest. A small red fox, put up out of a clump of gorse, loped into the wood, and though they hunted fairly well in covert, even the harrier noses were at fault outside.

This fox topped the hill and made for a clump of trees about a mile away across rough heathery ground.

When the wood had given up the branch-slashed and irritated Field, they kept to a boggy track leading to the spinny where they were making for--all but Darby, who rode with his hounds, risking the rough broken ground and the narrow rotten fences, mere uprights of soft earth, darned together with heather and fern. At his heels, exactly upon them, came Miss Delorme, crying "Oh! Oh! glorious!" as her horse stumbled and slipped, left completely to himself.

Gheena also left the track. One was glad of any excitement; hunting out of Castle Freyne and the bumpy going was practice for the youngster. It would do him good, too, to flounder on the ugly little banks.

Darby looked round. On his heels came fair, pale Psyche, radiant with sheer joy, her reins flapping, her whole mind full of the rush of the pack in front, of the towling, yapping notes as Home Ruler led and every hound gave tongue, the soft fresh air against her face, the whole unsounded mystery of it in her blood. At his left Gheena, the too eager youngster, held well together, the girl sitting down in her saddle, her hands low, giving and taking to her impetuous mount, both so young, so full of sheer keen life, both with all their limbs their own, both unknowing trouble.

The glow in their faces lashed the Master with a whip of bitterness. Here, as they rode, he was on an equality, able to ride a hunt as well as they could, to sit his horse as easily; but if any difficulty came, if he had to get down, he would be Darby the cripple, limping and crumbling through life--asking for help to get back on to his horse.

"Ou--ich!" was the exclamation trailing in his wake as they came to a nasty trappy little bank, a mere mound of boggy earth flung up and held loosely together by coarse grass, bramble vines and heather. The bay, ridden all loosely at it, did his own steadying and propping, the latter with a sufficient swift decision to fling Psyche out on to his neck, where she balanced precariously, gripping at the breastplate.

"Ooo-iche!" came a happy crow of triumph as the little figure got back into the saddle. "Oh, Mr. Dillon, he full-stopped quite suddenly."

"Hold his head," grinned Darby. "Full-stop him yourself, or you'll be in a ditch."

The fox tried the spinny, and as Phil upon the cart-pony put it, took a swee-gee out around the hills. A more abominable country it would be difficult to imagine--lumps of tussocky ground rising out of sullen little boggy places, bogs on the summits of the hills and loose slaty stones, with a few tortuous tracks showing the ways of moderate safety here and there.