 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information, or to find out how you can volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org. Recording by Andy Minter. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. by Edith in Only Somerville and Martin Ross. Chapter 1. Great Uncle McCarthy A resident magistracy in Ireland is not an easy thing to come by nowadays. Neither is it a very attractive job. Yet on the evening when I first propounded the idea to the young lady who had recently consented to become Mrs. Sinclair Yates, it seemed glittering with possibilities. There was, on that occasion, a sunset and a string band playing the gondoliers, and there was also an ingenuous belief in the omnipotence of a godfather of Philippas. The Philippa was the young lady who had once been a member of the government. I was then climbing the steeper scent of the captains towards my majority. I have no fault to find with Philippa's godfather. He did all and more than even Philippa had expected. Nevertheless, I had attained to the dignity of Mud Major, and had spent a good deal on postage stamps and on railway fares to interview people of influence before I found myself in the hotel at Skiborn opening long envelopes addressed to Major Yates R.M. My most immediate concern, as any one who has spent nine weeks at Mrs. Rafferty's hotel will readily believe, was to leave it at the earliest opportunity. But in those nine weeks I had learned, among other painful things, a little, a very little, of the methods of the artisan in the west of Ireland. Finding a house had been easy enough. I had had my choice of several, each with some hundreds of acres of shooting thoroughly poached and a considerable portion of the roof intact. I had selected one, the one that had the largest extent of roof in proportion to the shooting, and had been assured by my landlord that in a fortnight or so it would be fit for occupation. There's a few little odd things to be done, he said easily, a leak of paint here and there, and a slumber plaster. I am short-sighted. I am also of Irish extraction. Both facts that make for toleration, but even I thought he was understating the case. So did the contractor. At the end of three weeks, the latter reported progress, which mainly consisted of the fact that the plumber had accused the carpenter of stealing sixteen feet of his inch pipe to run a bell wire through, and that the carpenter had replied that he wished the devil might run the plumber through a reinsquill. The plumber, having reflected on the carpenter's parentage, the work of renovation had merged in battle, and at the next petty sessions I was reluctantly compelled to allot to each competent seven days, without the option of a fine. These and kindred difficulties extended in an unbroken chain through the summer months, until a certain wet and windy day in October, when with my baggage I drove over to establish myself at Shrelain. It was a tall, ugly house of three storeys high, its walls faced with weather-beaten slates, its windows staring, narrow and vacant. Round the house ran an area in which grew some loristinas and hollybushes, among ash-heaps and nettles and broken bottles. I stood on the steps, waiting for the door to be opened, while the rain sluiced upon me from a broken eaveshoot that had among many other things escaped the notice of my landlord. I thought of Philippa, and of her plan broached in today's letter, of having the hall done up as a sitting-room. The door opened and revealed the hall. It struck me that I had perhaps overestimated the possibilities. Among them I had certainly not included a flying floor, sweating with damp, and a reek of cabbage from the adjacent kitchen stairs. A large elderly woman with a red face and a cat-worn helmet-wise on her forehead swept me a magnificent courtesy as I crossed the threshold. Serrano's welcome, she began, and then every door in the house slammed in obedience to the gusts that drove through it, with something that sounded like, This is Cadogan, abandoned, her opening speech, and made for the kitchen stairs. Improbable as it may appear, my housekeeper was called Cadogan, a name made locally possible by being pronounced Cader Gorn. Only those who have been through a similar experience can know what manner of afternoon I spent. I am a martyr to colds in the head, and I felt one coming on. I made a lager in front of the dining-room fire, with the tattered leather screen and the dinner-table, and gradually, with cigarettes and strong tea, baffled the smell of musts and cats, and fervently trusted that the rain might avert a threatened visit from my landlord. I was then but superficially acquainted with Mr. Florence McCarthy Knox and his habits. At about four-thirty, when the room had warmed up, and my cold was yielding to treatment, Mrs. Cadogan entered and informed me that Mr. Flurry was in the yard, and would be thankful if I go out to him, for he couldn't come in. Many of the privileges of the female sex, had I been a woman, I should have unhesitatingly said that I had a cold in my head, being a man I huddled on a Macintosh, and went out into the yard. My landlord was there on horse-back, and with him there was a man standing at the head of a stout grey animal. I recognised with despair that I was about to be compelled to buy a horse. Good afternoon, Major, said Mr. Knox, in his slow sing-song brogue. It's rather soon to be paying your visit, but I thought you might be in a hurry to see the horse I was telling you of. I could have laughed, as if I were ever in a hurry to see a horse. I thanked him, and suggested that it was rather wet for horse-dealing. Oh! it's nothing when you're used to it, replied Mr. Knox. His gloveless hands were red and wet. The rain ran down his nose, and his covert coat was soaked to a sodden brown. I thought that I did not want to become used to it. My relations with horses have been of a purely military character. I have endured the Sandhurst Riding School. I have galloped for an impetuous general. I have been steward at regimental races. But none of these feats have altered my opinion that the horse, as a means of locomotion, is obsolete. Nevertheless, the man who accepts a resident magistracy in the south-west of Ireland, voluntarily retires into the prehistoric age, to institute a stable became inevitable. You ought to throw a leg away, said Mr. Knox, and you're welcome to take him over a fence or two, if you like. He's a nice flippant jumper. Even to my unexacting eye, the grey horse did not seem to promise flippancy, nor did I a tall desire to find that quality in him. I explained that I wanted something to drive, and not to ride. Well, that's a fine-ricken horse in a harness, said Mr. Knox, looking at me with his serious grey eyes, and you'd drive him with a sop of hay in his mouth. Bring him up here, Michael. Michael abandoned his efforts to kick the grey horse's forelegs into a becoming position, and led him up to me. I regarded him from under my umbrella with a quite unreasonable disfavour. He had the dreadful beauty of a horse in a toy-shop, as chubby, as wooden, and as conscientiously dappled. But it was unreasonable to urge this as an objection, and I was incapable of finding any more technical drawback. Yielding to circumstance, I threw my leg over the brute, and after pacing gravely round the quadrangle, formed the yard, and jolting to my entrance gate and back, I decided that as he had neither fallen down nor kicked me off, it was worth paying twenty-five pounds for him, if only to get in out of the rain. Mr. Knox accompanied me into the house, and had a drink. He was a fair, spare young man, who looked like a stable boy among gentlemen, and a gentleman among stable boys. He belonged to a clan that cropped up in every grade of society in the county, from Sir Valentine Knox of Castle Knox down to the Auctioneer Knox, who bore the attractive title of Larry the Liar. So far as I could judge Florence McCarthy of that ilk, occupied a shifting position about midway in the tribe. I had met him at dinner at Sir Valentine's. I had heard of him at an illicit auction held by Larry the Liar, a brandy stolen from a wreck. They were black Protestants, all of them, in virtue of their descent from a godly soldier of Cromwell, and all were prepared at any moment of the day or night to sell a horse. You'll have to find this place a bit lonesome out of the hotel, remarked Mr. Flurry sympathetically, as he placed his foot in its steaming boot on the harb. But it's a fine sound-house anywhere, and not so rooms in it. Though, indeed to tell you the truth, I was never through the whole of them since the time my great-uncle, Dennis McCarthy, died here. The dear knows I had enough of it that time. He paused and lit a cigarette, one of my best, and quite thrown away on him. The old tough flaws now, he resumed, I wouldn't make too free with them, but some of them would jump under you like a spring-bed. Many's the night I was in and out of those attics following my poor uncle when he had a bad turn on him, the horrors, you know, they were nights he never stopped walking through the house. Good Lord will I ever forget the morning when he saw the devil coming up the avenue. Look at the two horns on him, says he, and out with his gun and shot him, and began it with his own donkey. Mr. Knox gave a couple of short laughs. He seldom laughed, having in unnatural perfection the gravity of manner that is bred by horse-dealing, probably from the habitual repression of all emotion, saved disparagement. The autumn evening, grey with rain, was darkening in the tall windows, and the wind was beginning to make bullying rushes among the shrubs in the area. A shower of soot rattled down the chimney and fell on the hearthrug. More rain coming, said Mr. Knox, rising composedly. You'll have to put a goose down these chimneys some day soon. It's the only way in the world to clean them. Well, I'm for the road. You'll come out in the grey next week, I hope. The hounds will be meeting here. Give a roar at him, coming in at his jumps. He threw his cigarette into the fire, and extended a hand to me. Good-bye, Major. You'll see plenty of me and my hounds before you're done. That's a power of foxes and the plantations here. This was scarcely reassuring for a man who hoped to shoot Woodcock, and I hinted as much. Oh, is it the cock? said Mr. Flurry. Believe me, there never was a Woodcock yet that minded hounds. Now, no more than they'd mind rabbits. The best shoots ever I had here, the hounds were in it the day before. When Mr. Knox was gone, I began to picture myself going across country, roaring like a man on a fire-engine, while Philip put the goose down the chimney. But when I sat down to write to her, I did not feel equal to being humorous about it. I dilated ponderously on my cold, my hard work, and my loneliness, and eventually went to bed at ten o'clock, full of cold shivers and hot whiskey and water. After a couple of hours of feverish dosing, I began to understand what had driven great-uncle McCarthy to perambulate the house by night. Mrs. Cadogan had assured me that the Pope of Rome hadn't a better bed under him than myself. Wasn't I down on the new flog mattress they old master bought in Father Scanlon's auction? And by the smell I recognised that flog meant flock, otherwise I should have said that my couch was stuffed with old boots. I have seldom spent a more rich in night. The rain drummed with soft fingers on my window-panes. The house was full of noises. I seemed to see great-uncle McCarthy ranging the passages with flurry at his heels. Several times I thought I heard him. Whispering seemed borne on the wind through my keyhole. Boards creaked in the room overhead, and once I could have sworn that a hand passed groping over the panels of my door. I am, I may admit, a believer in ghosts. I even take in a paper that deals with their culture, but I cannot pretend that on that night I looked forward to a manifestation of great-uncle McCarthy with any enthusiasm. The morning broke stormily, and I woke to find Mrs. Cadogan's understudy, a grimy nephew of about eighteen, standing by my bedside, with a black bottle in his hand. There was no bath in the house, sir, was his reply to my command. But me aunt said, Would you like a tagine? This alternative proved to be a glass of raw whiskey. I declined it. I looked back to that first week of housekeeping at Shrelaine, as to a comedy excessively badly staged, and striped with lurid melodrama. Towards its close I was positively homesick for Mrs. Rafferty's, and I had not a single clean pair of boots. I am not one of those who hold the convention that in Ireland the rain never ceases day or night, but I must say that my first November at Shrelaine was composed of weather of which my friend Flurry Knox remarked, You wouldn't meet a Christian out of doors, unless it was a snipe or a dispensary doctor. To this lamentable category must be I did a resident magistrate. Daily shrouded in Macintosh, I set forth for the petty sessions courts of my wide district. Daily in the inevitable atmosphere of wet frieze and perjury, I listened to indictments of old women who plucked geese alive of publicans whose hospitality to their friends broke forth uncontrollably on Sunday afternoons, of parties who in the language of the police sergeant were subtly defined as, not to say drunk, but in good fighting trim. I got used to it all in time. I suppose one can get used to anything. I even became callous to the surprises of Mrs. Cadogan's cooking. As the weather hardened, and the woodcock came in, and one by one I discovered and nailed up the rat-holes, I began to find life indurable, and even to feel some remote sensation of homecoming when the grey horse turned in at the gate of Shrelaine. The one feature of my establishment which I could not become anured was the pervading sub-presence of some thing or things, which for my own convenience I summarised as great-uncle McCarthy. There were nights on which I was certain that I heard the inebriate shuffle of his foot overhead, the touch of his fumbling hand against the walls. There were dark times before the dawn when sounds went to and fro, the moving of weights, the creaking of doors, a faraway wrapping, in which was a workman-like suggestion of the undertaker, a rumble of wheels on the avenue. Once I was impelled to the somewhat imprudent measure of cross-examining Mrs. Cadogan. Mrs. Cadogan, taking the preliminary precaution of crossing herself, asked me fatefully what day of the week it was. Friday, she repeated after me, Friday the Lord savers, it was a Friday the old Martha was buried. At this point a saucepan opportunally boiled over, and Mrs. Cadogan fled with it to the scullery, and was seen more. In the process of time I brought great-uncle McCarthy down to a fine point. On Friday nights he made coffins and drove herces. During the rest of the week he rarely did more than patter and shuffle in the attics over my head. One night, about the middle of December, I awoke, suddenly aware that some noise had fallen like a heavy stone into my dreams. As I felt for the matches it came again, the long grudging throne, and the uncompromising bang of the crossed door at the head of the kitchen stairs. I told myself that it was a draught that had done it, but it was a perfectly still night. Even as I listened, a sound of wheels on the avenue shook the stillness. The thing was getting past a joke. In a few minutes I was stealthily groping my way down my own staircase, with a box of matches in my hand enforced by scientific curiosity, but nonetheless armed with a stick. I stood in the dark at the top of the back stairs and listened. The snores of Mrs. Cadogan and her nephew Peter rose tranquilly from their respective lairs. I descended to the kitchen and lit a candle. There was nothing unusual there, except a great portion of the Cadogan-wearing apparel, which was arranged at the fire and was being serenaded by two crickets. Whatever had opened the door, my household was blameless. The kitchen was not attractive, yet I felt indisposed to leave it. Nonetheless, it appeared to be my duty to inspect the yard. I put the candle on the table and went forth into the outer darkness. Not a sound was to be heard. The night was very cold, and so dark that I could scarcely distinguish the roofs of the stables against the sky. The house loomed tall and oppressive above me. I was conscious of how lonely it stood in the dumb and barren country. Spirits were certainly futile creatures, childish in their manifestations, stupidly content with the old machinery of wraps and rumbles. I thought how fine a scene might be played on a stage like this, if I were a ghost. How bluely I would glimmer at the windows, how whimperingly chatter in the wind. Something whirled out of the darkness above me and fell with a flop on the ground, just at my feet. I jumped backwards, in point of fact I made for the kitchen door, and with my hand on the latch stood still and waited. Nothing further happened. The thing that lay there did not stir. I struck a match. The moment of tension turned to bathos as the light flickered on nothing more fateful than a dead crow. Dead it certainly was. I could have told that without looking at it. But why should it, that some considerable period after its death fall from the clouds at my feet? But did it fall from the clouds? I struck another match, and stared up at the impenetrable face of the house. There was no hint of solution in the dark windows. But I was determined to go up and search the rooms that gave upon the yard. How cold it was! I can feel now the frozen, musty air of those attics with their rat-eaten floors and wallpapers furred with damp. I went softly from one to another, feeling like a burglar in my own house, and found nothing in elucidation of the mystery. The windows were hermetically shut and sealed with cobwebs. There was no furniture, except in the end-room, where a wardrobe without doors stood in a corner, empty save for the solemn presence of her monstrous tall hat. I went back to bed, cursing those powers of darkness that had got me out of it, and heard no more. My landlord had not failed of his promise to visit my cupboards with his hounds. In fact, he fulfilled it rather more conscientiously than seemed to me quite wholesome for the cock-shooting. I maintained a silence, which I felt to be magnanimous on the part of a man who cared nothing for hunting and a great deal for shooting, and wished the hounds more success in the slaughter of my foxes than seemed to be granted to them. I met them all one red frosty evening as I drove down the long hill to my demean gates. Flurry at their head in his shabby pink coat and dingy britches, the hounds trailing dejectedly behind him and his half-dozen companions. What luck! I called out, drawing rain as I met them. None, said Mr Flurry briefly. He did not stop. Neither did he remove his pipe from the down-twisted corner of his mouth. His eye at me was cold and sour. The other members of the hunt passed me with equal order. I thought they took their ill look very badly. On foot, among the last of the straggling hounds, cracking a Carmen's whip and swearing comprehensively at them all, slouched my friend's slipper. Our friendship had begun in court, the relative positions of the dock and the judgment-seat forming no obstacle to its progress, and had been cemented during several days tramping after snipe. He was, as usual, a little drunk, and he hailed me as though I were a ship. A hoi-major yates, he shouted, bringing himself up with alert against my cart. It's hunting you should be in place of sending poor divils to jail. But I heard you had no hunting, I said. You heard that, did ye? Slipper rolled upon me an eye like that of a proflicate pug. Well, Begoth, you heard no more than the truth. But where are all the foxes, said I? Begoth, I don't know no more than your honour. I'm sure Elaine. That there used to be as many foxes in it as those crosses in the yard a-check. Well, well, I'll say nothing for it only that it's queer. Here, Venus, negrous, Slipper uttered a yell, whisky in a duration of two elderly ladies of the pack who had profited by our conversation stray away into an adjacent cottage. Well, good-night, Major. Mr. Flores has crossed his briars, and he helped me eat. He set off at a surprisingly steady run, cracking his whip and hooping like a madman. I hope that when I also am fifty I shall be able to run like Slipper. That frosty evening was followed by three others like unto it, and a flight of woodcock came in. I calculated that I could do with five guns, and I dispatched invitations to shoot and dine on the following day to four of the local sportsmen, among whom was, of course, my landlord. I remember that in my letter to the latter I expressed a facetious hope that my bag of cock would be more successful than his of foxes had been. The answers to my invitations were not what I expected. All, without so much as a conventional regret, declined my invitation. Mr. Knox added that he hoped the bag of cock would be to my liking, and that I need not be afraid that the hounds would trouble my cupboards any more. Here was war. I gazed in stupid faction at the crooked scroll in which my landlord had declared it. It was wholly and entirely inexplicable, and instead of going to sleep comfortably over the fire and my newspaper as a gentleman should, I spent the evening in irritated ponderings over this bewildering and exasperating change of front on the part of my friendly squireens. My shoot the next day was scarcely a success. I shot the woods in company with my gamekeeper, Tim Conner, a gentleman whose duties mainly consist of limiting the poaching privileges to his personal friends, and whatever my offence might have been, Mr. Knox could have wished me no bitterer punishment than hearing the unavailing shouts of Mark Cock and seeing my birds winging their way from the cupboards far out of shot. Tim Conner and I got ten couple between us. It might have been thirty if my neighbours had not boycotted me, for what I could only suppose was the slackness of their hounds. I was dog-tired that night, having walked enough for three men, and I slept the deep insatiable sleep that I had earned. It was somewhere round three a.m. that I was gradually awakened by a continuous knocking, interspersed with muffled calls. Great Uncle McCarthy had never before given tongue, and I freed one ear from blankets to listen. Then I remembered that Peter had told me that the sweep had promised to arrive that morning and to arrive early. Blind with sleep and fury, I went to the passage window and then desired the sweep to go to the devil. It availed me little. For the remainder of the night I could hear him pacing round the house, trying the windows, banging at the doors, and calling on Peter Cadogan as the priests of Baal called upon their God. At six o'clock I had fallen into a troubled dose when Mrs. Cadogan knocked at my door and imparted the information that the sweep had arrived. My answer need not be recorded, but in spite of it the door opened and my housekeeper, in a weird day's abbey, effectively lighted by the orange beams of her candle, entered my room. God forgive me, I had never seen one head hit as much as that sweep. She began. He's these three hours? Ah, what, three hours? No, but all night, racing tally-work and tandem round the house to get at the chimneys. Well, for heaven's sake, let him get at the chimneys and let me go to sleep, I answered. Goaded to desperation. And you may tell him from me that if I hear his voice again I'll shoot him. Mrs. Cadogan silently left my bedside and as she closed the door she said to herself, The Lord save us. Subsequent events may be briefly summarised. At seven thirty I was awakened anew by a thunderous sound in the chimney and a brick crashed into the fireplace, followed at a short interval by two dead jackdaws and their nests. At eight I was informed by Peter that there was no hot water and that he wished the devil would roast the same sweep. At nine thirty when I came down to breakfast there was no fire anywhere and my coffee, made in the coach-house, tasted of soot. I put on an overcoat and opened my letters. About four-thor fifth in the uninteresting heap came one in an egregiously disguised hand. Sir, it began. This is to inform you your unsportsmanlike conduct has been discovered. You have been suspected this good while of shooting the Trilane foxes. It is known now you do worse. Parties have seen your game-keeper going regular to meet the Saturday early train at Salters Hill Station with your grey horse under a cart and your labels on the boxes and we know as well as your agent in Cork what it is you have in those boxes. Be warned in time. Your well-wisher. I read this through twice before its drift became apparent and I realised that I was accused of improving my shooting and my finances by the simple expedient of selling my foxes. That is to say I was in a worse position than if I had stolen a horse or murdered Mrs. Cadogan or got drunk three times a week in Skiborne. For a few moments I fell into wild laughter and then, aware that it was rather a bad business to let a lie of this kind get a start, I sat down to demolish the preposterous charges in a letter to Flurry Knox. Somehow as I selected my sentences it was borne in upon me that if the letters spoke the truth circumstantial evidence was rather against me. Mere lofty repudiation would be unavailing and by my infernal facetiousness about the woodcock I would effectively filled in the case against myself. At all events the first thing to do was to establish a basis and have it out with Tim Connor. I rang the bell. Peter, is Tim Connor about the place? He is not, sir. I heard him say he was going west the hill to mend the bound's fence. Peter's face was covered with soot. His eyes were red and he coughed ostentatiously. The sweeps after breaking one of his brushes were in your bedroom chimney, sir. He went on, with all the satisfaction of his class in announcing domestic calamity, he is above on the roof now and he'd be thankful to you to go up to him. I followed him upstairs in that state of simmering patience that any employer of Irish labour must know and sympathise with. I climbed the rickety ladder and squeezed through the dirty trapdoor involved in the ascent to the roof and was confronted by the hideous face of the sweep, black against the frosty blue sky. He had encamped with all his paraphernalia on the flat top of the roof and was good enough to rise and put his pipe in his pocket on my rival. Good-morning, major. That's a grand view you have up here," said the sweep. He was evidently far too well-bred to talk-shop. I travel every roof in the country and there isn't one where you get as handsome a prospect. Theoretically he was right, but I had not come up to the roof to discuss scenery and demanded brutally why he had sent for me. The explanation involved a recycle of the special genius required to sweep the Shrelain chimneys, of the fact that the sweep had in infancy been sent up and down every one of them by great-uncle McCarthy, of the three ass-loads of soot that by his peculiar skill he had this morning taken from the kitchen chimney of its present purity, the draught being such that it would draw up a young cat with it. Finally, realizing that I can endure no more, he explained that my bedroom chimney had got what he called a wind in it, and he proposed to climb a little way down in the stack to try what he get to come at the brush. The sweep was very small, the chimney very large. I stipulated that he should have a rope round his waist, and despite the illegality I let him go. He went down like a monkey, digging his toes and fingers into the niches made for the purpose in the old chimney. Peter held the rope, I lit a cigarette and waited. Certainly the view from the roof was worth coming up to look at. It was rough, heathery country on one side, with a string of little blue lakes running like a turquoise necklace round the base of a furry hill, and patches of pale green pasture were set amidst the rocks and heather. The silvery flash behind the undulations of the hills told where the Atlantic lay in immense plains of sunlight. I turned to survey with an owner's eye my own great woods and straggling plantations of larch, and despite a man coming out of the western wood, he had something on his back, and he was walking very fast, a rabbit poacher no doubt. As he passed out of sight into the back avenue he was beginning to run. At the same instant I saw on the hill beyond my western boundaries half a dozen horsemen scrambling by zigzag ways down towards the wood. There was one red coat among them. It came first at the gap in the fence that Tim Connor had gone out to mend, and with the others was lost to sight in the cupboard, from which in another instant came clearly through the frosty air, a shout of Gone to Ground! Tremendous horn blowings followed. Then all in the same moment I saw the hounds break in full cry from the wood and come stringing over the grass and up the back avenue towards the yard gate. Were they running a fresh fox into the stables? I do not profess to be a hunting-man, but I am an Irishman, and so it is perhaps superfluous to state is Peter. We forgot the sweep as if he had never existed and precipitated ourselves down the ladder, down the stairs, out into the yard. One side of the yard is formed by the coach-house and a long stable with a range of lofts above them, bland on the heroic scale in such matters that obtained in Ireland formally. These join the house at the corner by the back door. A long flight of stone steps leads to the lofts, and up these, as Peter and I emerged from the back door, the hounds were struggling, held to skelter. Almost simultaneously there was a confused clatter of hooves down the avenue, and flurry knocks came stooping at a gallop under the archway, followed by three or four other riders. They flung themselves from their horses and made for the steps of the loft, more hounds pressed, yelling on their heels. The din was indescribable and justified Mrs. Cadogan's subsequent remark that when she heard the noise she thought it was the end of the world and the devil collecting his own. I jostled in the wake of the party waiting in hay and nearly deafened by the clamour that was banded about the high roof and walls. At the farther end of the loft the hounds were raging in the hay, encouraged there too by the hoops and screeches of flurry and his friends. High up in the gable of the loft when it joined the main wall of the house there was a small door, and I noted with a transient surprise that there was a long ladder leading up to it. Even as it caught my eyes a hound fought his way out of a drift of hay and began to jump at the ladder, throwing his tongue vociferously and even clambering up a few rungs in his excitement. That's the way he's gone, roared flurry, striving through hounds and hay towards the ladder. Trumpeter has him. What's up there back at the door, major? I don't remember it at all. My crimes had evidently been forgotten in the supremacy of the moment. While I was futilely exerting that had the fox gone up the ladder he could not possibly have opened the door and shut it after him, even if the door led anywhere which at the best of my belief it did not. The door in question opened and to my amazement the sweep appeared at it. He gesticulated violently and over the tumult was heard to aservate that there was nothing above there only a way into the flu and any one would be destroyed with the soot. I got a blazes with your soot, interrupted flurry, already halfway up the ladder. I followed him, the other men pressing up behind me, that Trumpeter had made no mistake was instantly brought home to our noses by the reek of fox that met us at the door. Instead of a chimney we found ourselves in a dilapidated bedroom full of people. Tom Connor was there, the sweep was there and a squalid elderly man and woman on whom I had never set eyes before. There was a large open fireplace black with the soot the sweep had brought down with him and a small table stood a bottle of my own special scotch whiskey. In one corner of the room was a pile of broken packing cases beside these on the floor lay a bag in which something kicked. Flurry, looking more uncomfortable and non-plus than I could have believed possible listened in silence to the ceaseless harangue of the elderly woman. The hounds were yelling like lost spirits in the loft below but her voice pierced the uproar it was an unspeakably vulgar voice yet it was not the voice of a countrywoman and there were frowsy remnants of respectability about her general aspect. And is it you, Flurry Knox that's calling me a disgrace? Disgrace indeed, am I? Me that was your poor mother's own uncle's daughter and as good a McCarthy as ever stood in Trelane. What followed I could not comprehend owing to the fact that the sweep kept up a perpetual undercurrent of explanation to me as how he had got down the wrong chimney. I noticed that his breath stank of whiskey scotch, not the native variety. Never as long as Flurry Knox lives to blow a horn will he hear the last of the day that he ran his mother's first cousin to ground in the attic. Never while Mrs. Cadogan can hold a basting spoon will she cease to recount how on the same occasion she plucked and roasted ten couple of woodcock in one torrid hour to provide luncheon for the hunt. In the glory of this achievement her confederacy with the stowaways in the attic is wholly slurred over in much the same manner as the startling outburst of summons for Trespass, brought by Tim Connor during the remainder of the shooting season, obscured the unfortunate episode of the Bagged Fox. It was, of course, zeal for my shooting that induced him to assist Mr. Knox's disreputable relations in the deportation of my foxes and I have allowed it to remain at that. In fact the only things not allowed to remain were Mr. and Mrs. McCarthy Gannon. They, as my landlord informed me in the midst of vast apologies, had been permitted to squat at Shrelaine until my tenancy began, and having then ostentatiously and abusively left the house, they had, with the connivance of the Caduggans, secretly returned to roost in the corner attic, to sell foxes under the aegis of my name and to make inroads on my belongings. They retained me, on my belongings. They retained connection with the outer world by means of the ladder and the loft, and with the house in general and my whiskey in particular, by a door into the other attics, a door concealed by the wardrobe in which reposed great Uncle McCarthy's tall hat. It is with the greatest regret that I relinquish the prospect of writing a monograph on great Uncle McCarthy for a spiritualistic journal, but with the departure of his relations he ceased to manifest himself and neither the nailing up of packing-cases nor the rumble of the cart that took them to the station disturbed my sleep for the future. I understand that the task of clearing out the McCarthy-Gannon's effects was of a nature that necessitated two glasses of whiskey per man, and if the remnants of rabbit and jack-door disinterred in the process were anything like the crow that was thrown out of the window at my feet, I do not grudge the restorative. As Mrs. Cadogan remarked to the sweep a turk couldn't stand it. End of Chapter 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to find out how you can volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org Recording by Andy Minter Some experience of an Irish RM by Edith Inonis-Somerville and Martin Ross Chapter 2 In the Curran-Hilty Country It is hardly credible that I should have been induced to depart from my usual walk of life by a creature so uninspiring as the grey horse that I bought from Flurry Knox for £25. Perhaps it was the monotony of being questioned by every other person with whom I had five minutes conversation as to when I was coming out with the hounds. And being further informed that in the days when Captain Brown, a late Coast Guard officer, had owned the grey, there was not a fence between this and Malo big enough to please them. At all events there came an epoch-making day when I mounted the Quaker and presented myself at a meet of Mr Knox's hounds. It is my belief that six out of every dozen people who go out hunting are disagreeably conscious of a nervous system and that two of the six are in what is brutally known as a blue funk. I was not in a blue funk but I was conscious not only of a nervous system but of the anatomical fact that I possessed large round legs handsome in their way even admirable in their proper sphere but singularly ill-adapted for adhering to the slippery surface of the saddle. By fatal intervention of Providence the sport on this my first day in the hunting field was such as I could have enjoyed from a bath-chair. The hunting field was on this occasion a relative term implying long stretches of unfenced moorland and bog anything in fact save a field. The hunt itself might also have been termed a relative one being mainly composed of Mr Knox's relations and degrees of cousinhood. It was a day when frost and sunshine combined went to one's head like ice-champagne the distant sea looked like the Mediterranean and for four sunny hours the Knox relatives and I followed nine couple of hounds at a tranquil foot-base along the hills our progress mildly enlivened by one or two scrambles in the shape of jumps. At three o'clock I jogged home and felt within me the newborn desire to brag to Peter Cadogan of the Quaker's doings as I dismounted rather stiffly in my own yard. I little thought that the result would be that three weeks later I should find myself in a railway carriage at an early hour of a December morning in company with Flurrinox and four or five of his clan journeying towards an unknown town named Druncurran with an appropriate number of horses in boxes behind us and a van full of hounds in front. Mr Knox's hounds were on their way by invitation to have a day in the country of their neighbours the Curran Hilty Harriers and with amazing fortuity I had allowed myself to be cajoled into joining the party. A northerly shower was striking in long spikes on the glass of the window the atmosphere of the carriage was blue with tobacco smoke and my feet in a pair of new blucher boots had sunk into a species of arctic sleep. Well, you got my letter about the dance at the hotel tonight," said Flurrinox, breaking off a whispered conversation with his amateur whip Dr. Jerome Hickey and sitting down beside me. And we're to go out with the Harriers today and they were sure, Fox, for our hounds to-morrow. I tell you you'll have the best fun ever you had it's great country to ride. Fine honest banks that you can come racing at anywhere you like. Dr. Hickey, a set-and-ine young man with a long nose and a black torpedo beard, returned to his pocket the lancet which he had been trimming his nails. They're like the Tiberary Banks," he said. You climb down nine feet and you fall the rest. It occurred to me that the Quaker and I would most probably fall all the way, but I said nothing. I hear Tomsy Frudd has a good horse this season," resumed Flurrinox. Then it's not the one you sold him," said the doctor. I'll take my oath, it's not, said Flurrinox with a grin. I believe he has informed me still over that one. Dr. Jerome's moustache went up under his nose and showed his white teeth. Small blame to him. When you sold him a mare that was wrong of both her hind legs, do you know what he did, Major Yates? The mare was lame going into the fair and he took the two hind shoes off her poor flood that she'd kicked them off in the box, and that was why she was going tender, and he was so drunk that he believed him. The conversation here deepened into the trackless obscurities of horse-dealing. I took out my stylograph pen and finished a letter to Philippa with the feeling that it would probably be my last. The next step in the day's enjoyment consisted in trotting in cavalcade through the streets of Drumcarran with another northerly shower descending upon us, the mud splashing in my face and my feet coming torturingly to life. Every man and boy in the town ran with us. The Harriers were somewhat in the tumult ahead and the Quaker began to pull and hump his back ominously. I arrived at the meet considerably heated and found myself one of some thirty or forty riders who with traps and bicycles and foot people were jammed into the narrow road. We were late and a move was immediately made across a series of grass fields all considerably furnished with gates. There was a glacial gleam of sunshine and people began to turn down the collars for their coats. As they spread over the field I observed that Mr Knox was no longer riding with old Captain Hancock, the master of the Harriers but had attached himself to a square-shouldered young lady with effective coils of dark hair and a grey habit. She was riding a fidgety black mare with great decision and a not disagreeable smagger. It was at about this moment that the Harriers began to run fast and silently and everyone began to canter. They said nothing at all, said Dr Hickey, thundering alongside of me on a huge young chestnut. There might have been a hare here last week or a red herring this morning. I wouldn't care if you only got a warmus. For the matter of that I'd as soon hunt a cat as a hare. I was already getting quite enough to warm me. The Quaker's respectable grey head had twice disappeared between his four legs in a brace of most unsettling bucks and all my experiences at the riding school at Sandhurst did not prepare me for the sensation of jumping a briary wall with a heavy drop into a lane so narrow that each horse had to turn at right angles as he landed. I did not so turn but saved myself from entire disgrace by a timely clutch at the main. We scrambled out of the lane over a pile of stones and furs brushes and at the end of the next field were confronted by a tall stone-faced bank. Everyone, always accepting myself, was riding with that furious valor which is so conspicuous when neighbouring hunts meet and the leading half-dozen charged the obstacle at steeple-jace speed. I caught a glimpse of the young lady in the grey habit sitting square and strong as her mare topped the bank with flurry and the redoubtable Mr. Tomsey flood riding on either hand. I followed in their wake with a blind confidence in the Quaker and none at all in myself. He refused it. I supposed it was in token of affection and gratitude that I fell upon his neck. At all events I had reason to respect his judgment as before I had recovered myself the hounds were straggling back into the field by a gap lower down. It finally appeared that the hounds could do no more with the line they had been hunting and we proceeded to jog interminably. I knew not with her. During this unpleasant process flurry knocks bestowed on me many items of information chiefly as to the pangs of jealousy he was inflicting on Mr. Flood by his attention to the lady in the grey habit Miss Bobby Bennett. She'll have all old Hancock's money one of these days. She's his niece, you know and she's a good girl to ride but she's not as young as she was ten years ago. You'll be looking at a chicken a long while before you thought of her. She might take Tomsey some day if she can't do any better. He stopped and looked at me with a gleam in his eye. Come on and I'll introduce you to her. Before however this privilege could be mine the whole cavalcade was stopped by a series of distant yells which apparently conveyed information to the hunt, though to me they only suggested a red Indian scalping his enemy. The yells travelled rapidly nearer and a young man with a scarlet face and a long stick sprang upon the fence and explained that he and Patsy Laurie were after chasing a hare two miles down out of the hell above and near a dog nor a one with them but themselves and she was lying beat out under a bush and was minding her until the hounds would come. I had a vision of the humane Patsy Laurie fanning the hare with his hat but apparently nobody else found the fact unusual. The hounds were hurried into the fields the hare was again spurred into action and I was again confronted with the responsibilities of the chase. After the first five minutes I had discovered several facts about the Quaker. If the bank was above a certain height he refused it irrevocably. If it accorded with his ideas he got his four legs over and plowed through the rest of it on his stifle joints. Or if a gripe made this inexpedient he remained poised on top till the fabric crumbled under his weight. In the case of walls he butted them down with his knees or squandered them with his hind legs. These operations took time and the leaders of the hunt streamed farther and farther away over the crest of a hill while the Quaker pursued at the equitable gallop of a horse in the by-earth tapestry. I began to perceive that I had been adopted as a pioneer by a small band of followers who, as one of their number candidly explained like to have someone ahead of them to soften the banks and accordingly waited respectfully till the Quaker had made the rough places smooth and taken the raw edge off the walls. They, in their turn showed me alternative routes when the obstacle proved above the Quaker's limit. Thus, in ignoble confederacy I and the off-scouring of the current hilty hunt pursued our way across some four miles of country. When at last we parted it was with extreme regret on both sides. A river crossed our course with boggy banks pitted deep with the hoof-marks of our forerunners. I suggested it to the Quaker and discovered that nature had not in vain endowed him with the hind-quarters of the hippopotamus. I presumed the others had jumped it. The Quaker, with abysmal flounderings, walked through and heaved himself to safety on the farther bank. It was the dividing of the ways. My friendly company turned aside as one man, and I was left with the world before me and no guide saved the hoof-marks in the grass. The ease presently led me to a road on the other side of which was a bank consided to the Quaker's blacklist. The rain had again begun to fall heavily and was soaking in about my elbows. I suddenly asked myself why in Heaven's name I should go any farther. No adequate reason occurred to me, and I turned in what I believed to be the direction of drum-curran. I rode on for possibly two or three miles without seeing a human being, until from the top of a hill I described a solitary lady-rider. I started in pursuit. The rain kept blurring my eyeglass, but it seemed to me that the rider was a schoolgirl with her hair hanging down her back, and that her horse was a trifle lame. I pressed on to ask my way and discovered that I had been privileged to overtake no lesser person than Miss Bobby Bennett. My question was to the root led to information of a varied character. Miss Bennett was going that way herself. Her mayor had given her what she called a thousand-and-a-half. Whereby she had strained her arm and the mayor her shoulder, her habit had been torn, and she had lost all her hairpins. I am an awful object, she concluded. My hair is the plague of my life out-hunting. I declare I wish the goodness I was bald. I struggled to the level of the occasion with an appropriate protest. She had really very brilliant grey eyes, and her complexion was undeniable. Philippa has since explained to me that it is a mere male fallacy that any woman can look well with her hair down her back. But I have always maintained that Miss Bobby Bennett with the rain glistening on her dark dresses looked uncommonly well. I shall never get it dry for the dance tonight," she complained. I wish I could help you," said I. Perhaps you've got a hairpin or two about you," said she, with a glance that had certainly done great execution before now. I disclaimed the possession of any such tokens, but volunteered to go and look for some at a neighbouring cottage. The cottage door was shut, and my knockings were answered by a stupefied-looking elderly man. Conscious of my own absurdity, I asked him if he had any hairpins. I didn't see a hair this week," he responded in a slow bellow. "'Hairpins,' I roared, "'has your wife any hairpins?' "'She has not,' then, as an afterthought, "'she's dead these ten years.'" At this point a young woman emerged from the cottage, and with many coy grins plucked from her own head some half-dozen hairpins, crooked and grey with age, but still hairpins, and as such well worth my shelling. I returned with my spoil to Miss Bennett, only to be confronted with a fresh difficulty. The arm that she had strained was too stiff to raise to her head. Miss Bobby turned her handsome eyes upon me. "'It's no use,' she said plaintively. "'I can't do it.'" I looked up and down the road. There was no one in sight. I offered to do it for her. Miss Bennett's hair was long, thick and soft, but also slippery with rain. I twisted it conscientiously as if it were a hay-rope, until Miss Bennett with a new repressible shriek told me it would break off. I coiled the rope with some success, and proceeded to nail it to her head with the hairpins. At all the most critical points, one if not both of the horses moved, hairpins were driven home into Miss Bennett's skull, and were with difficulty plucked forth again. In fact a more harrowing performance can hardly be imagined, but Miss Bennett bore it with the heroism of a pincushion. I was putting the finishing touches to the coiffure, when some sound made me look round, and I beheld at a distance of some fifty yards the entire hunt approaching us at a foot-pace. I lost my head, and instead of continuing my task I dropped the last hairpin as if it were red-hot and kicked the quaker away to the far side of the road, thus, if it were possible, giving the position away a shade more generously. There were fifteen riders in the group that overtook us, and fourteen of them, including the whip, were grinning from ear to ear. The fifteenth was Mr. Tomsy Flood, and he showed no sign of appreciation. He shoved his horse past me and up to Miss Bennett, his red moustache bristling, truculants in every outline of his heavy shoulders, his green coat was muddy and his hat had a cave in it. Things had apparently gone ill with him. The criticism was held out for almost two miles and a half. I do not give them because they were not amusing, but they all dealt ultimately with the animosity that I, in common with himself, should henceforth have to fear from Mr. Flood. Oh, he's a holy terror, he said conclusively. He was riding the tails off the hounds today to beat me. He was near killing me twice. We had some words about it, I can tell you. I very nearly took my whip to him, of a fellow I never saw. He wouldn't so much stop us to catch Bobby Bennett's horse when I picked her up. He was riding so jealous. He's a girl, mind you, and such a crumpler as she got, too. I declare she knocked her groan out of the road when she struck it. She doesn't seem so much hurt, I said. Hurt? said Flurry, flicking casually at a hand. You couldn't hurt that one unless you took a hatchet to her. The rain had reached a pitch out of the question, and we bumped home at that intolerable pace and owned as a hound's jog. I spent the remainder of the afternoon over a fire in my bedroom in the Royal Hotel Drum Curran. Official letters to write having mercifully provided me with an excuse for seclusion, while the bar and the billiard-room hummed below, and the Quaker's three-cornered gallop reaped its inevitable revenge upon my person. As this process continued and I became proportionately embittered, I asked myself, not for the first time, what Philippa would say when introduced to my present circle of acquaintances. I have already mentioned that a dance was to take place at the hotel, given, as far as I could gather, by the leading lights of the Curran Hilty Hunt. A less jockened guest than the wreck who, at the pastoral hour of nine, crept stiffly down to chase the glowing hours with flying feet, hardly have been encountered. The dance was held in the coffee-room, and a conspicuous object outside the door was a saucer-bath full of something that looked like flour. "'Grab your feet in that,' said Flurry. That's French chalk. There hadn't time to do the floor, so they hit on this dodge. I complied with this encouraging direction and followed him into the room. Dancing had already begun, and the first sight that caught my eye was Miss Bennet in a yellow dress while sing with Mr. Tomsey Flood. She looked very handsome, and in spite of her accident she was getting round the sticky floor and her still more sticky partner with the swing of a racing-cutter. Her eye caught mine immediately and with confidence. Clearly our acquaintance, that in the space of twenty minutes had blossomed tropically into hairdressing, was not to be allowed to wither, nor was I myself allowed to wither. Men, known and unknown, remained with me with partners till my shirt cuff was black with names, and the number of dances stretched away into the blue distance of tomorrow morning. The music was supplied by the organist of the church, who played with religious unction and at the pace of a processional hymn. I put forth into the melle with a junior Bennet, inferior in calibre to his bobby, but a strong goer, and I fear made but a sorry debut in the eyes of Dr. Curran. By the moment I bumped into the unforeseen orbits of those who reversed and of those who walked their partners backwards down the room with faces of ineffable supremacy. Being unskilled in these intricacies for an elder civilisation, the younger Miss Bennet fared but ingloriously at my hands. The music pounded internably on until the heel of Mr. Flood put a period to our sufferings. The nasty dirty filthy brute shrieked the younger Miss Bennet with a single breath. He stormed the gown off my back. She whirled me to the cloakroom. We parted mutually unregreted at its door, and by I fear common consent evaded our second dance together. Many, many times during the evening I asked myself why I did not go to bed. Perhaps it was the remembrance that my bed was situated some ten feet above the piano in a direct line. But whatever the reason, and found me still working my way down my shirt-cuff, I sat out as much as possible and found my partners to be, as a body, pretty talkative and ill-dressed, and during the evening I had many and varied opportunities of observing the rapid progress of Mr. Knox's flirtation with Miss Bobby Bennet. From number four to number eight they were invisible, that they were behind the screen in the commercial room might be the cloud presence in the passage outside. At number nine the young lady emerged for one of her dances with me. It was a barn dance, and particularly trying to my momentless stiffening muscles. But Miss Bobby, whether in dancing or sitting out, went in for the rigor of the game. She was in as hard condition as one of her uncle's hounds, and for a full fifteen minutes I capered and swooped beside her, larding the lean earth as I went replying but spasmodically to her even flow of conversation. That'll take the stiffness out of you, she exclaimed, as the organist slowed down reverentially to a conclusion. I had a bet with Flurry and Oxo with that dance. He said you weren't up to my weight at the pace. I led her forth to the refreshment table, and was watching with awe her fearless consumption of cleric cup that I would not have touched for a sovereign when Flurry were the partner on his arm's strolled past us. Well, you've won the gloves, Miss Bobby," he said. Don't you wish you may get them? Gloves without the G, Mr. Ox," replied Miss Bennet in a voice loud enough to catch the end of the passage, where Mr. Thomas Flood was burying his nose in a very brown whisky and soda. Your hair's coming down," retorted Flurry, asked Major Lates if he can spare you a few hairpins. Swifter than lightning Miss Bennet hurled a macaroon with her retreating foe, missed him and subsided laughing onto a sofa. I moped my brow and took my seat beside her, wondering how much longer I could live up to the social exegences of Drum Curran. Miss Bennet, however, proved excellent company. She told me artfully and inched my inch, all that Mr. Flood had said to her on the subject of my hairdressing. She admitted that she had, as a punishment, cut him out of three dances of flurry knocks. When I remarked that in fairness they should have been given to me, she darted a very attractive glance at me and pertinently observed I had not asked for them. As steals the dawn into a fevered room and says, Be of good cheer, the day is born. So did the rumour of supper pass among the chaperones, male and female. It was obviously due to a sense of the fitness of things that was apportioned to me, and I found myself in the gratifying position of heading with her the procession to supper. My impressions of Mrs. Bennet are few but salient. She wore an apple-green satin dress and filled it tightly. Wisely mistrusting the hotel supper she had imported sandwiches and cake in a pocket handkerchief. And, warmed by two glasses of sherry, she made me the recipient of the remarkable confidence that she had but two back teeth in her head, but thank God they met. When with the other starving men I fell upon the remains of the feast I regretted that I had declined her offer of a sandwich. Of the remainder of the evening I am unable to give a detailed account. Let it not for one instant be imagined that I had looked upon the wine of the Royal Hotel when it was red, or indeed any other colour. As a matter of fact I had aspired an inconspicuous corner in the entrance hall to smoke the cigarette and subsequently sank into uneasy sleep. Through my dreams I was aware of the measured pounding of the piano, of the clatter of glasses at the bar, of wheels in the street, and then more clearly a flurry's voice assuring Mrs. Bennet that if she'd only wait for another dance he'd get the RM out of bed to do her hair for her. And then again oblivion. At some later period I was dropping down a chasm on the Quaker's back and landing with a shock. I was twisting his mane into a chenille when he turned round his head and caught my arm in his teeth. I awoke with the dew of terror on my forehead to find Miss Bennet leaning over me in a scarlet cloak with a hood over her head and shaking me by my coat sleeves. Major Yeats! she began at once in a hurried whisper I've come to you to find Flady Knox and tell him there's a plan to feed his hounds at six o'clock in the morning for Mr. Knox's hunting. Well, you know! I asked, jumping up. My little brother told me he came in with us to-night to see the dance and he was hanging around in the stables and he heard one of the men telling another there that there was a dead mule in an outhouse in Brides Alley all cut up ready to give to Mr. Knox's hounds. But why shouldn't they get it? I asked in sleepiest stupidity. Is it to fill them up with an old mule just before they're going out hunting? Hurry and tell Mr. Knox. Don't let Tomsey Flood see you telling him or anyone else. Oh, then it's Mr. Flood's game, I said, grasping the situation at length. It is, said Miss Bennet, suddenly turning scarlet. He's a disgrace. I'm ashamed of him. I'm done with him. I resisted a strong disposition to shake Miss Bennet by the hand. I can't wait, she continued. I made my mother drive back a mile. She doesn't know a thing about it. I left my purse in the cloakroom. Good night. Don't tell a soul but Flurry. She was off and upon my incapable shoulders rested the responsibility of the Enterprise. It was just past four o'clock and the last barhouse of the last waltz were being played. At the bar a lot of men with Flurry in their midst were tossing odd man out for a bottle of champagne. Flurry was not in the least drunk. A circumstance worthy of remark was happening, and I got him out into the hall and unfolded my tidings. The light of battle lit in his eye as he listened. I knew Tonsie was shaping for a mischief, he said coolly. He's taken as much liquor as all stiffen the tinker, and he's only half drunk this minute. Hold on till I get Jerome Hickey and Charlie Knox their sober. I'll be back in a minute. I was not present at the Council of War, thus hurriedly convened. I was overwhelmed when they returned, that we were all to hurry on. My best evening pumps have never recovered from the subsequent proceedings. They, with my swelled and aching feet inside them, were raced down one filthy lane after another, until somewhere on the outskirts of Drumcurran Flurry pushed open the gate of a yard and went in. It was nearly five o'clock on that raw December morning, low down in the sky a hazy moon shed a diffused light. My houses were still and dark. At our footsteps an angry bark or two came from inside the stable. Wished, said Flurry, I say a word to them before I open the door. At his voice a chorus of hysterical welcome arose. Without more delay he flung open the stable door, and instantly we were all knee deep in a rush of hounds. There was not a moment lost. Flurry started at a quick run out of the yard with the whole pack pattering at his heels. Charlie Knox vanished. Dr. Hickey and I followed the hounds, smashing into puddles and hobbling over patches of broken stones till we left the town behind and hedges arose on either hand. Here's the house," said Flurry, stopping short at a low entrance gate. Many is the time I've been here when his father had it. This'll be a queer thing if I can't find a window I can manage, and the old cookie has as deaf as the dead. He and Dr. Hickey went in at the gate of the hounds. I hesitated ignomely in the mud. This isn't an RM's job," said Flurry in a whisper, closing the gate in my face. You'd better keep clear of house-breaking. I accepted his advice, but I may admit that before I turned for home a sash was gently raised, a light had sprung up in one of the lower windows, and I heard Flurry's voice saying, over, over, over to his hounds. There seemed to me to be no interval at all between these events, and the moment when I woke in bright sunlight to find Dr. Hickey standing by my bedside in a red coat with a tall glass in his hand. It's nine o'clock," he said. I'm just after waking Flurry Knox. There wasn't once stirring in the hotel till I went down and pulled the boots from under the kitchen table. It's well for us the meats in the town, and, by the by, your grey horse has four legs on him the size of bolsters this morning. He won't be fit to go out, I'm afraid. Drink this anyway, you're in the want of it. Dr. Hickey's eyelids were rather pink, but his hand was as steady as a rock. The whiskey and soda was singularly un-tempting. What happened last night? I asked eagerly as I gulped it. Oh, it all went well, very nicely, thank you," said Hickey, twisting his black beard to a point. We benched as many of the hounds in Flood's bed as it fit, and we shot a lot into the room. We had them just comfortable when he heard Hickey below at the door. He broke off and began to snigger. Well, I said, sitting bolt upright, well, he got in at last and he lit a candle then. That took him five minutes. He was pretty tight. We were looking at him over the banisters until he started to come up, and, according to he came up, we went on up the top flight. He stood admiring his candle for a while on the landing, and we wondered he didn't hear the hounds snuffling under the door. He opened it then, and on the minute three of them bolted out between his legs, Dr. Hickey again paused to indulge in metastophilia and laughter. Well, you know, he went on, when the man in poor Tonsy's condition sees six dogs jumping out of his bed, he's up to make a wrong diagnosis. He gave a roar and pitched the candlestick at them and ran for his life downstairs and all the hounds after him. Gone away, screeches that devil flurry felting downstairs on top of him in the dark. I believe I screeched, too. Good heavens, I gasped. I was well out of that. Well, he were, admitted the doctor. However, Tonsy bested them in the dark, and he got the ground in the pantry. I heard the cups and saucers go as he slammed the door on the hounds' noses, and the minute he was in, Flurry turned the key on him. They are real dogs, Tommy, my buck, said Flurry, just acquired him, and there we left him. Was he hurt, I asked, conscious of the triviality of the question. Well, he lost his brush, replied Dr. Hickey. Old Mary-legs tore the cult-tails off him. We got them on the floor when we struck a light. Flurry has them to nail on his kennel door. Charlie Knox had a pleasant time, too. He went on with the man that brought the barrel-load of meat to the stable. We picked out the tastiest bits and changed them round Flood's breakfast table for him. They smelt very nice. Well, I'm delaying you with my talking. Flurry's hounds had the run of the season that day. I saw it admirably throughout from Miss Bennet's pony-cart. She drove extremely well in spite of her strained arm. End of Chapter 2 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to find out how you can volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org Recording by Andy Minter Some Experiences of an Irish RM by Edith Inonis-Somerville and Martin Ross Chapter 3 Trinket's Cult It was Petty Sessions Day in Skiboron, a cold grey day of February. A case of trespass had dragged its burden of cross summons and cross swearing far into the afternoon, and when I left the bench my head was singing from the bellowings of the attorneys and the smell of their clients was heavy upon my palate. The streets still testified to the fact that it was market-day and I evaded, with difficulty, the sinuous course of carts full of suddenly-screwed people and steered an equally devious one for myself among the groups anchored round the doors of the public houses. Skiboron possesses among its legion of public houses one establishment which, timorously and almost imperceptibly, proffers tea to the thirsty. I turned in there, as was my custom on court days, and found the little dingy den known as the Lady's Coffee Room in the occupancy of my friend Mr. Florence McCarthy Knox who was drinking strong tea and eating buns with serious simplicity. It was a first and quite unexpected glimpse of that domesticity that has now become a marked feature of his character. You're the very man I wanted to see, I said, as I sat down beside him at the oil-cloth-covered table. A man I know in England who is not much of a judge of character has asked me to buy him a four-year-old down here, who would rather be stuck by a friend than a dealer, I wish you'd take over the job. Flurry poured himself out another cup of tea and dropped three lumps of sugar into it in silence. Finally he said, there isn't a four-year-old in this country that I'd be seen dead with at a pig fair. This was discouraging from the premier authority on horse-flesh in the district. But it isn't six weeks since you told me you had the finest filly in your stables that were folding the county cork, I protested. What's wrong with her? Oh, is it that filly? said Mr Knox with a lenient smile. She's gone these three weeks from me. I swapped her and six pounds for a three-year-old Anne Munger Colt and after that I swapped the colt and nineteen pounds for that band and horse I rode last week at your place. And after that again I sold the band and horse for seventy-five pounds to old Welty and I had to give him back the money. You see, I did pretty well with the filly after all. Yes, yes, oh, rather, I assented, as one dizzily accepts the propositions of a bimetallist and you don't know of anything else. The room in which we were seated was closely screened from the shop by a door with a muslin-covered window in it. Several of the panes were broken and at this juncture two voices that had for some time carried on a discussion forced themselves upon our attention. Bigging your pardon for contradicting you, ma'am, said the voice of Mrs. McDonald, proprietress of the tea-shop, and a leading light in skiborn dissenting circles, shrilly tremulous with indignation. If the servants I recommend you won't stop with you, it's no fault of mine. If respectable young girls are set picking grats out of your gravel in trace of their proper work, certainly they will give warning. The voice that replied to me as being a notable one, well-bred and imperious. When I take a barefooted slut out of a cabin, I don't expect her to dictate to me what her duties are. Flurry jerked up his chin in noiseless laugh. It's my grandmother, he whispered. I bet you Mrs. McDonald doesn't get much change out of her. If I set her to clean the pig-sty, I expect her to obey me. Continued the voice in accents that would have made me 40 pig-sties, and she desired me to do so. Very well, ma'am, retorted Mrs. McDonald. If that's the way you treat your servants you needn't come here again looking for them. I consider your conduct is neither that of a lady nor a Christian. Don't you, indeed? replied Flurry's grandmother. Well, your opinion doesn't greatly distress me. But to tell you the truth, I don't think you're much of a judge. Didn't I tell you should scar? Flurry, who was by this time applying his eye to a hole in the muslin curtain. She's half. He went on, returning to his tea. She's a great character. She's 83 if she's a day, and she's as sound on her legs as a three-year-old. Did you see that old chandelier done of hers in the street a while ago, and a fellow on the box with the red beard on him like Robinson Crusoe? That old mare that was on the near side. Drink it, her name is. His mighty near clean breader. I can tell you her foals are worth a bit of money. I had heard of old Mrs. Knox of Ossolus. Indeed, I had seldom dined out in the neighborhood without hearing some new story of her and her remarkable menage. But it had not yet been my privilege to meet her. Well, now, went on Flurry in his slow voice. I'll tell you a thing that's just come into my head. My grandmother promised me a foal of trinkets the day I was one and twenty, and that's five years ago. And due to one I've got from her yet. You never were at Ossolus. No, you were not. Well, I tell you, the place there is like a circus with horses. She has a couple of score of them running wild in the woods like deer. Oh, come! I said. I'm a bit of a liar myself. Well, she has a dozen of them anyhow. That's in good colds, too, some of them. But they might as well be donkeys for all the good they are to me or anyone. It's not once in three years she sells one. And there she has them walking after her for bits of sugar like a lot of dirty lap-dogs." Ended Flurry with disgust. Well, what's your plan? Do you want me to make her a bid for one of the lap-dogs? I was thinking," replied Flurry with great deliberation, that my birthday's this week. And maybe I could work a four-year-old coat of trinkets she has out of her in order of the occasion, and sell your grandmother's birthday present to me?" Just that, I suppose," answered Flurry with a slow wink. A few days afterwards a letter from Mr. Knox informed me that he had squared the old lady, and it would be all right about the cold. He further told me that Mrs. Knox had been good enough to offer me with him a day's snip-shooting on the celebrated Osolus bogs, and he proposed to drive me there convenient. Most people found it convenient to shoot the Osolus night-bog when they got the chance. Eight o'clock on the following Monday morning saw Flurry, myself and a groom packed into a dog-cart with port-manteau, gun-cases and two rampant red-setters. It was a long drive, twelve miles at least, and a very cold one. We passed through long tracks of pasture country, fence by fence in every one of which the biggest dog-fox in the country had gone to ground, with not two feet measured accurately on the handle of the whip between him and the leading hound, through bogs that imperceptibly melted into lakes, and finally down and down into a valley where the fir trees of Osolus clustered darkly round a glittering lake, and all but hid the grey roofs and pointed gables for Osolus Castle. There's a nice stretch of a demean for you, remarked Flurry, pointing downwards with the whip, and one little old woman holding it all in the heel of her fist. We're able to hold it she is too, and always was, and she'd lived twenty years yet if it's only to spite the whole lot of us, and when all's said and done, goodness knows how she'd leave it. It strikes me that you were lucky to keep her up to her promise about the cold," I said. Flurry administered a composing kick that set us under the seat. I used to be rather a pair-twitter, he said, after a pause, but mind you, I haven't got him yet, and if she gets any notion I want to sell him, I'll never get him, so say nothing about the business to her. The tall gates of Osolus shrieked on their hinges as they admitted us, and shot with a clang behind us in the faces of an old mare and a cuttle of young horses who foiled in their break for the excitements of the outer world, turned and galloped defiantly on either side of us. Flurry's admirable cob hammered on, regardless of all things, save his duty. He's the only one I have that I'd trust myself here with," said his master, flicking him approvingly with the whip. There are plenty of people afraid to come here at all, and when my grandmother goes out driving, she has a boy in the box with a basket full of stones to peg at them. Target the dickens here she is herself. A short, upright old woman was approaching, preceded by a white woolly dog with sore eyes and a bark like a tin trumpet. We both got out of the trap and advanced to meet the lady of the manor. I may summarise her attire by saying that she looked as if she had robbed a scarecrow. Her face was small and incongruously refined. The skinny hand that she extended to me had the grubby tan that bespoke the professional gardener and was decorated with a magnificent diamond ring. On her head was a massive purple velvet bonnet. I am very glad to meet you, Major Yates," she said, with an old-fashioned precision of utterance. Your grandfather was a dancing partner of mine in the old days at the castle, when he was a handsome young aide-de-camp there, and I was—you may judge for yourself what I was. She ended with a startling little whoo-to laughter, and I was aware that she quite realised the world's opinion of her and was indifferent to it. Our way to the bogs took us across Mrs. Knox's home farm and through a large field in which several young horses were grazing. Dear, now, that's my fellow," said Flurry, pointing to a fine-looking colt, the chestnut with the white diamond on his forehead. He'll run into three figures before he's done, but we'll not tell that to the old needy. The famous, also less bogs, were as full of snipe as usual and a great deal fuller of water than any bogs I had ever shot before. I was on my day, and Flurry was not, and as he is ordinarily an infinitely better snipe-shot than I, I felt at peace with the world and all men, as we walked back, wet through, at five o'clock. The sunset had waned, and a big white moon was making the eastern tower of Orseless look like a thing in a fairy-tale or a play when we arrived at the hall door. An individual, whom I recognised as the Robinson Crusoe coachman, admitted us to a hall the like of which one does not often see. The walls were panelled with dark oak up to the gallery that ran round three sides of it. The balusters of the wide staircase were heavily carved, and blackened portraits of Flurry's ancestors on the spindle-side stared sourly down on their descendant as he tramped upstairs with the bog mould on his hobnail boots. We had just changed into dry clothes when Robinson Crusoe shoved his red beard round the corner of the door with the information that the mistress said we were to stay for dinner. My heart sank. It was then barely half past five. I said something about having no evening clothes and having to get home early. Chard, the dinner will be in another half-hour," said Robinson Crusoe, joining hospitably in the conversation, and asked for evening clothes. God bless ye! The door closed behind him. Never a-mind, said Flurry. I dare say you'll be glad enough to eat another dinner by the time you get home. He laughed. Poor Slipper, he added inconsequently, and only laughed again when I asked for an explanation. Old Mrs. Knox received us in the library where she was seated by a roaring turf fire which let the room a good deal more effectively than the pair of candles that stood beside her in tall silver candlesticks. Ceaseless and implacable growls from under her chair indicated the presence of the woolly dog. She talked with confounding culture of the books that rose all around her to the ceiling. Her evening dress was accomplished by means of an additional white shawl, rather dirtier than its congeners. As I took her into dinner, she quoted Virgil to me, and in the same breath screeched an objugation that a being whose matted head rose suddenly into view behind an ancient Chinese screen, as I have seen the head of a Zulu woman pier over a bush. Dinner was as incongruous as everything else. Detestable soup in a splendid old silver tureen that was nearly as dark in hue as Robinson Crusoe's thumb. A perfect salmon, perfectly cooked on a chipped kitchen dish, and cut glass as is not easy to find nowadays. Sherry, that has flurry subsequently remarked, would burn the shell off an egg, and a bottle of port draped in immemorial cobwebs, worn with age and probably priceless. Throughout the vicissitudes of the meal Mrs. Knox's conversation flowed on undismayed, directed sometimes at me, she had installed me in the position a friend of her youth, and talked to me as if I were my own grandfather, sometimes at Crusoe with whom she had several heated arguments, and sometimes she would make a statement of remarkable frankness on the subject of her horse-farming affairs to flurry, who, very much on his best behaviour, agreed with all she said, and risked no original remark. As I listened to them both, I remembered with infinite amusement how he had told me once that a pet name she had for him was Tony Lumpkin, and that no one but herself knew what she meant by it. It seemed strange that she made no allusion to drink its cold, or to flurry's birthday, but, mindful of my instructions, I held my peace. As at about half-fast eight we drove away in the moonlight, Flurry congratulated me solemnly on my success with his grandmother. He was good enough to tell me that she would marry me to-morrow if I asked her, and he wished I would, even if it was only to see what a nice grandson he'd be for me. A sympathetic giggle behind me told me that Michael on the back seat had heard and relished the jest. We had left the gates of Osilus about half a mile behind, when, at the corner of a by-road, Flurry pulled up. A short, squat figure arose from the black shadow of a fursbush, and came out into the moonlight, swinging its arms like a cabman, and cursing audibly. Oh, mother, oh, mother, Mr. Flurry! What kept you at all? To have perished the crows to be waiting here the way I am these two hours. Ah, such a mouth-slipper, said Flurry. Who, to my surprise, had turned back the rug and was taking off his driving-coat. Oh, you couldn't help it. Come on, yeasts, we've got to get out here. What for, I asked, in not unnatural bewilderment? It's all right. I'll tell you as we go along, replied my companion, who was already turning to follow Slipper up the by-road. Take the trap on Michael, and wait at River's Cross. He waited for me to come up with him, and then put his hand on my arm. You see, Major, this is the way it is. My grandmother's given me that coat right enough, but if I waited for her to send him over to me, I'd never see a hair of his tail. So we just thought that as we were over here we might as well take him back with us, and maybe you'll give us a help with him. He'll not be altogether too handy for a first go-off. I was staggered. An infant in arms could scarcely have failed to discern the fishiness of the transaction, and I begged Mr. Knox not to put himself to this trouble on my account, as I had no doubt I could find a horse for my friend elsewhere. Mr. Knox assured me there was no trouble at all, quite the contrary. And there, since his grandmother had given him the coat, he saw no reason why he should not take him when he wanted him. Also, that if I didn't want him, he'd be glad enough to keep him himself. And finally, that I wasn't the chap to go back on a friend, but I was welcome to drive back to Sri Lanka with Michael this minute if I liked. Of course I yielded in the end. I told Flurry that I should lose my job over the business, and he said I could then marry his grandmother, and the discussion was abruptly closed by the necessity of following Slipper over a locked five-barred gate. Our pioneer took us over about half a mile of country, knocking down stone gaps where practicable, and scrambling over tall banks in the deceptive moonlight. We found ourselves at length in a field with a shed in one corner of it. In a dim group of farm buildings, a little way off, a light was shining. Wait here," said Flurry to me in a whisper. The less nice the better. It's an open shed, and we'll just step in and coax him out. Slipper unwound from his waist a halter, and my colleagues glided like spectres into the shadow of the shed, leaving me to meditate on my duties as resident magistrate, and on the questions that would be asked in the house by our local member when Slipper had given away the adventure in his cups. In less than a minute, three shadows emerged from the shed where two had gone in. They had got the colt. He came out as quiet as a calf when he winded the sugar, said Flurry. It was well for me I filled my pockets from my grandmother's sugar-basin. He and Slipper had a rope from each side of the colt's head. They took him quickly across a field towards a gate. The colt stepped daintily between them over the moonlit grass. He snorted occasionally, as if it were meanable. The trouble began later, and was due, as trouble often is, to the beguilements of a short cut. Against the mature judgment of Slipper, Flurry insisted on following a route that he assured as he knew as well as his own pocket, and the consequence was that in about five minutes I found myself standing on top of a bank, hanging onto a rope, on the other end of which the colt dangled and danced, while Flurry with the other rope lay prone in the ditch, and Slipper administered to the bewildered colt's hind-quarters such chastisement as could be mentioned on. I have no space to narrate in detail the atrocious difficulties and disasters of the short cut, how the colt set to work to buck, and went across a field dragging the faithful Slipper, literally vant out there after him, while I picked myself inignumining out of a briar-patch, and Flurry cursed himself black in the face, how we were attacked by ferocious cur-dogs, and I lost my eyeglass, and how as we neared the river's cross Flurry aspired the police-patrol on the road, and we all hid behind a rick of turf, while I realised in fullness what an exceptional ass I was to have been beguiled into an enterprise that involved hiding with Slipper from the Royal Irish Constabulary. Let it suffice to say that Trinket's infernal offspring was finally handed over on the highway to Michael and Slipper, and Flurry drove me home in a state of mental and physical overthrow. I saw nothing of my friend Mr Knox for the next couple of days, by the end of which time I had worked up a high polish on my misgivings, and had determined to tell him that under no circumstances would I have anything to say to his grandmother's birthday present. It was like my usual luck that, instead of writing a note to this effect, I thought it would be good for my liver to go across the hills to Tory Cottage and tell Flurry so in person. It was a bright blustery morning after a muggy day. The feeling of spring was in the air, the daffodils were already in bud, and crocuses showed purple in the grass on either side of the avenue. It was only a couple of miles to Tory Cottage by way across the hills. I walked fast, and it was barely twelve o'clock when I saw its pink walls and clumps of evergreens below me. As I looked down at it, the chiming of Flurry's hounds in the kennels came to me on the wind. I stood still to listen, and could almost have sworn that I was hearing again the clash of maudlin bells hard at work on May morning. The path that I was following led downwards through a large plantation to Flurry's back gate. Hot wafts of some hideous cauldron at the other side of the wall apprised me of the vicinity of the kennels and their cuisine, and the fir trees round were hung with gruesome and unknown joints. I thanked heaven that I was not a master of hounds, and passed on as quickly as might be to the whole door. I rang two or three times without response. Then the door opened a couple of inches and was instantly slammed in my face. I heard the hurried paddling of bare feet on oilcloth, and a voice, Hurry, Bridgie, hurry, there's quality at the door. Bridgie, holding a dirty cup on with one hand, presently arrived, and informally that she believed Mr. Knox was out about the place. She seemed perturbed, and she cast scared glances down the drive while speaking to me. I knew enough of Flurry's habits to shape a tolerably direct course for his whereabouts. He was, as I had expected, in the training paddock, a field behind the stable yard in which he had put up practice jumps for his horses. It was a good-sized field in it, and Flurry was standing near one of these with his hands in his pockets, singlely unoccupied. I supposed that he was prospecting for a place to put up another jump. He did not see me coming and turned with a start as I spoke to him. There was a queer expression of mingled guilt and what I can only describe as divulment in his gray eyes as he greeted me. In my dealings with Flurry Knox I have since formed the habit of sitting tight in the general way when I see that expression. Well, who's coming next, I wonder? He said as he shook hands with me. It's not ten minutes since I had two of your damned pealers here searching the whole place for my grandmother's colt. What! I exclaimed, feeling cold all down my back. Do you mean the police have got hold of it? They haven't got hold of the colt, anyway, said Flurry, looking sideways at me from under the peak of his cap, with the glint of the sun in his eye. I got worried in time before they came. What do you mean, I demanded? Where is he? For heaven's sake, don't tell me you've sent the brute over to my place. It's a good job for you, I didn't," replied Flurry, as the police are on their way to Shrilla on this minute to consult you about it. You! he gave utterance to one of his short diabolical fits of laughter. He's where they'll not find him anyhow. Oh! it's the funniest hand they ever played. Oh! yes, it's devilish funny. I've no doubt, I retorted, beginning to lose my temper, as is the manner of many people when they're frightened. But I give you fair warning that if Mrs. Knox asks me any questions about it, I shall tell her the whole story. All right," responded Flurry. And when you do, don't forget to tell her how you flogged the colt out onto the road over her own bound's ditch. Very well," I said hotly, I may as well go home and send in my papers. They'll break me over this. Ah! hold on, Major," said Flurry soothingly. It'll be all right. Nobody knows anything. It's only on spec the old lady sent the bobbies here. She'll all keep quiet, it'll all blow over. I don't care," I said, struggling hopelessly in the toils. If I meet your grandmother and she asks me about it, I shall tell her all I know. Please, God, you will not meet her. After all, it's not more than once in the blue moon that she began Flurry, even as he said the words his face changed. Holy fly! he ejaculated. Isn't that her dog coming into the field? Look at her bonnet over the wall. Hade, hide for your life! He caught me by the shoulder and shoved me down among the first bushes before I realised what had happened. Get in there. I'll talk to her. I may as well confess that at the mere sight of Mrs. Knox's purple bonnet my heart had turned to water. In that moment I knew what it would be like to tell her how I, having eaten her salmon and capped her quotations and sunk her best port, had gone forth and helped to steal her horse. I abandoned my dignity, my sense of honour. I took the first bricles to my breast and wallowed in them. Mrs. Knox had advanced with vengeful speed. Already she was in high altercation with Flurry at no great distance from where I lay. Varying sounds of battle reached me and I gathered that Flurry was not, to put it mildly, shrinking from that economy of truth that the situation required. Is it that curvy longback brute? You promised him to me a long time ago but I wouldn't be bothered with him. The old lady uttered a laugh of shrill derision. Is it likely I'd promise you my best cult and still more is it likely that you'd refuse him if I did? Very well, ma'am. Flurry's voice was admirably indignant. Then I suppose I'm a liar and a thief. I'd be more obliged to you for information if I hadn't known it before. Responded his grandmother with lightning speed. If you swore to me on a stack of bibles you knew nothing about my cult I wouldn't believe you. I shall go straight to Major Yates and ask his advice. I believe him to be a gentleman in spite of the company he keeps. I writhed deeper into the firs' bushes and thereby discovered a sandy rabbit run along which I crawled with my cat well over my eyes and the firs' needles stabbing me through my stockings. The ground shelved a little, promising profounder concealment, but the bushes were very thick and I laid hold of the bare stem of one to help my progress. It lifted out of the ground in my hand, revealing a freshly cut stump. Something snorted not a yard away. I glared through the opening and was confronted by the long horrified face of Mrs. Knox's cult mysteriously on a level with my own. Even without the white diamond on his forehead I should have divined the truth. But how in the name of wonder had Flurry persuaded him to couch like a woodcock in the heart of a firs' break? For a full minute I lay astillous death for fear of frightening him while the voices of Flurry and his grandmother raged on alarmingly close to me. The cult snorted and blew long breaths through his wide nostrils, but he did not move. I crawled an inch or two nearer and after a few seconds of cautious peering I grasped the position. They had buried him. The small sand-pit among the firs had been utilised as a grave. They had filled him in up to his withers with sand and a few firs' bushes artistically disposed around the pits had done the rest. As the depths of Flurry's guile was revealed laughter came on me like a flood. I gurgled and shot apoplectically and the cult gazed at me with serious surprise until a sudden outburst of barking close to my elbow administered a fresh shock to my tottering nerves. Mrs. Knox's woolly dog had tracked me into the firs and was now baying the cult and me with mingled terror and indignation. I addressed him in a whisper and with perfidious endearments advancing a crafty hand towards him the while made a snatch for the back of his neck, missed it badly and got him by the ragged fleece of his hind-quarters as he tried to flee. If I had flayed him alive he could hardly have uttered a more deafening series of yells. But like a fool, instead of letting him go I dragged him towards me and tried to stifle the noise by holding his muzzle. The tussle lasted engrossingly for a few seconds and then the climax of the nightmare arrived. Mrs. Knox's voice, close behind me, said Let go of my dog this minute, sir. Who are you? Her voice faded away and I knew that she also had seen the cult's head. I positively felt sorry for her at her age there was no knowing what effect the shock might have on her. I scrambled to my feet and confronted her. Major Yeats! she said there was a deathly pause. Will you kindly tell me? said Mrs. Knox slowly. Am I in bedlam or are you? And what is that? She pointed to the cult and that unfortunate animal recognising the voice of his mistress uttered a hoarse and lamentable whinny. Mrs. Knox felt around her for support found only first prickles gazed speechlessly at me and then to her eternal honour fell into wild cackles of laughter. So I may say did Flurry and I I embarked on my explanation and broke down. Flurry followed suit and broke down too. Overwhelming laughter held us all three disintegrating our very souls. Mrs. Knox pulled herself together first. I acquit you Major Yeats I acquit you though appearances are against you it's clear enough to me you've fallen amongst thieves. She stopped and gloured at Flurry. Her purple bonnet was over one eye. I'll thank you sir, she said, to dig out that horse before I leave this place and when you've dug him out you may keep him. I'll be no receiver of stolen goods. She broke off and shook her fist at him. Upon my conscience Tony I'd give a guinea to have thought of it myself.