 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 4 The Waters of Strife I knew Bat Callaghan's face long before I was able to put a name to it. There was seldom a court day in Skiborn that I was not aware of his level brows and superfluously intense expression somewhere among the knot of corner boys who patronised the weekly sittings of the bench of magistrates. His social position appeared to fluctuate. I have seen him driving a car. He sometimes held my horse for me. That is to say, he sat on the counter of a public house while the Quaker slumbered in the gutter. And on one occasion he retired at my bidding to court jail, there to meditate upon the inadvisability of defending a friend from the attention of the police with the tailboard of a cart. He next obtained prominence in my regard at a regatta held under the auspices of The Sons of Liberty, a local football club that justified its title by the Patriot Green of its jerseys and its free interpretation of the rules of the game. The announcement of my name on the posters as a patron, a privilege acquired at the cost of a reluctant half-sovereign, made it incumbent on me to put in an appearance, even though the festival coincided with my petty sessions day at Skiborn. And at some five o'clock, on a brilliant September afternoon, I found myself driving down the stony road that dropped in zig-zags to the borders of the lake on which the races were to come off. I believed that this election of Loch Lohnan, as the scene of the regatta, was not unconnected with the fact that the secretary of the club owned a public house at the crossroads at one end of it. Nonetheless, the president of the Royal Academy could scarcely have chosen more picturesque surroundings. A mountain towered steeply up from the lake's edge, dark with the sad green of beach-trees in September, fur-woods followed the curve of the shore, and leaned far over the answering darkness of the water, and above the trees rose the toppling steepnesses of the hill, painted with a purple glow of heather. The lake was about a mile long, and, tumbling from its farther end, a fierce and narrow river fled away west to the sea some four or five miles off. I had not seen a boat-race since I was at Oxford, and the words still called up before my eyes a vision of smart parasols of gorgeous barges, of snowy-clad youths, and of low-slamed maw-triggers winged with the level flight of oars, slitting the water to the sway of the line of flatbacks. Certainly undreamed of possibilities in aquatics were revealed to me as I reigned in the Quaker on the outskirts of the crowd, and saw below me the Festival of the Sons of Liberty in full swing. Boats of all shapes and sizes, outrageously overladen, moved about the lake with oars flourishing to the strains of concertinas. Black swarms of people seized along the water's edge, congesting here and there round the dingy tents and stalls of green apples. And the club's celebrated brass band, enthroned in a wagonette, and stimulated by the presence of a barrel of porter on the box seat, was belching forth the boys of Wexford under the guidance of a disreputable ex-militia drummer in a series of crashing discords. Almost as I arrived, a pistol-shot set the echoes clattering round the lake, and three boats burst out abreast from the throng into the open water. Two of the crews were in shirt sleeves, the third wore the green jerseys of the football club. The boats were of the heavy sea-going builds, and pulled six oars apiece, oars of which the looms were scarcely narrower than the blades, and were of the two but a shade heavier. Nonetheless, the rowers started dauntlessly at thirty-five strokes a minute, quickening up, incredible as it may seem, as they rounded the mark-boat in the first lap of the two-mile course. The rowing was, in general style, more akin to the action of beating up eggs with a fork than to any other form of athletic exercise, but in its unorthodox way, it kicked the heavy boats along at a surprising pace. The oars squeaked and grunted against the thulepins, the coxons kept up with unceasing flow of oratory, and superfluous little boys in punts contrived to intervene at all the more critical turning-points of the race, only evading the flail of the oncoming oars by performing prodigies of waggling with a single oar at the stern. I took out my watch, and counted the strokes when they were passing the mark-boat for the second time. They were pulling a fraction over forty. One of the shirts-leaved crews was obviously in trouble. The other, with humped backs and jerking oars, was holding its own against the green jerseys, amid the blended yells of friends and foes. When for the last time they rounded the green flag, there were but two boats in the race, and the foul that had been imminent throughout was at length achieved with a rattle of oars and a storm of curses. They were clear again in a moment. The shirts-leaved crew getting away with a distinct lead, and it was at about this juncture that I became aware that the coxons had abandoned their long-handled tillers and were standing over their respective strokes, showing frantically at their oars, and maintaining the while a ceaseless ball of encouragement and defiance. It looked like a foregone conclusion for the leaders, and the war of cheers rose to friendly. The word cheering, indeed, is but a euphemism, and in no way expresses the serrated yell composed of epithets, advice and implications that was flung like a live thing at the oncoming boats. The green jerseys answered to this stimulant with a wild spurt that drove the bow of their boat within a measurable distance of their opponent's stroke oar. In another second a thoroughly successful foul would have been effected, but the cox of the leading boat proved himself equal to the emergency by unshipping his tiller, and with it dealing bow of the green jerseys such a blow over the head as effectually dismissed him from the sphere of practical politics. A great roar of laughter greeted this feat of arms, and a voice at my dog-cart's wheel pierced the clamour. More power to you, laddy me old darling! I looked down and saw Bat Callaghan with shining eyes and a face white with excitement, poising himself on one foot on the box of my wheel in order to get a better view of the race. Almost before I had time to recognise him, a man in the green jersey caught him round the legs and jerked him down. Bat Callaghan fell into the throng, recovered himself in an instant, and rushed white and dangerous at his assailant. The son of Liberty was no less ready for the fray, and what is known as Ireland as the father and mother of a row was imminent. Already, however, one of those unequal judges of the moral temperature of the crowd, the sergeant of the RIC, had quietly interposed his bulky person between the combatants, and the coming trouble was averted. Where battle was raging, the race was over, and the committee-boat was hemmed in by the rival crews, supplemented by craft of all kinds. The objection was being lodged, and in its turn objected to, and I can only liken the process to the screaming warfare of seagulls round a piece of carrion. The tumult was still at its height, when out of its very heart two four-award boats broke forth, and a pistol-shot proclaimed that another race had begun, the public interest in which was specially keen, owing to the fact that the rowers were stalwart country-girls who made up in energy what they lacked in skill. It was a short race, once round the mark-boat only, and like a successful farce it went with a roar from start to finish, foul after foul, each followed by a healing interval of calm, during which the crews, who had all caught crabs, were recovering themselves and their oars, marked its progress, and when the two boats, locked in an inextricable embrace at last past the winning-flag, and the crews, oblivious of judges and public, fell to untrammeled personal abuse and to doing up their hair, I decided that I had seen the best of the fun, and prepared to go home. It was, as it happened, the last race of the day, and nothing remained in the way of excitement, save the greased pole with the pigs lying in a bag at the end of it. My final impression of the Lothlonen regatta was of Callaghan's lithe figure, sleek and dripping against the yellow sky, as he poised on the swaying pole with the broken gold of the water beneath him. Limited as was my experience of the south-west of Ireland, I was in no way surprised to hear on the following afternoon from Peter Callaghan that there had been strokes the night before, when the boys were going home from the regatta, and that the police were searching for one Jimmy Foley. What do they want him for, I asked. Sure, it's a cordon as a man that was bringing a car of bogwood, was telling me, sir," answered Peter, pursuing his occupation of washing the dog-cart with unabated industry. They said Jimmy's wife went rar into the police, and she could get no account of her husband. I suppose he's beaten some fellow in his hiding, I suggested. Well, that made me, sir," asserted Peter respectfully. He plied his mop vigorously in intricate places about the springs, which would, I know, have never been explored save for my presence. It's what John Hennessy was saying that he was hard-set to get his horse past Chloe-and-Cross the way the blood was thrown about the road, resumed Peter. Surely we're fighting like wasps in it after-night. Who were fighting? Oh, I couldn't say indeed, sir. Some of them law-reakish lads from the town, I suppose," replied Peter with virtuous respectability. When Peter Cadogan was quietly and intelligently candid to pursue an inquiry was seldom of much avail. Next day, in Skiborn, I met little Murray, the district inspector, very alert and smart in his rifle-green uniform, going forth to collect evidence about the fight. He told me that the police were pretty certain that one of the sons of Liberty, named Foley, had been murdered, but as usual the difficulty was to get any one to give information. All that was known was that he was gone, and that his wife had identified his cap, which had been found drenched with blood by the roadside. Murray gave it as his opinion that the whole business had arisen out of the row over the disputed race, and that there must have been a dozen people looking on when the murder was done. But so far no evidence was forthcoming, and after a day and a night of search the police had not been able to find the body. No," said Flurry Knox, who had joined us, and if it was any of those mountainy men did away with him you might scrape Ireland with a small tooth-cormon, you'll not get him. That evening I smoked an after-dinner cigarette, out of doors in the mild starlight, rolling about the rudimentary paths of what would, I hoped, someday be Philip's garden. The bats came stooping in at the red end of my cigarette, and from the cupboard behind the house I heard once or twice the delicate bark of a fox. Civilisation seemed a thousand miles off, as far away as the falling star that had just drawn a line of pale fire halfway down the northern sky. I had been nearly a year at Shrelaine House by myself now, and the time seemed very long to me. It was slow work putting by money, even under the austerities of Mrs. Gaduggan's regime, and though I had warned Philippa I meant to marry her after Christmas, there were moments, and this was one of them, when it seemed an idle threat. Peter, the strident voice of Mrs. Gaduggan, intruded upon my benetations. Paul told the Major his coffees with Nanum. I went gloomily into the house, and with the resignation born of adversity, swallowed the mixture of chicory and licorice, which my housekeeper possessed the secret of distilling from the best and most expensive coffee. My theory about it was that it added to the illusion that I had dined, and moreover that it kept me awake, and I generally had a good deal of writing to do after dinner. Having swallowed it, I went downstairs, and out past the kitchen regions to my office, a hideous white-washed room in which I interviewed policemen and took avid avids and did most of my official writing. It had a door that opened into the yard, and a window that looked out in the other direction, among lanky laurels and scrubby hollies, where lay the cat's main thoroughfare from the scullery window to the rabbit holes in the wood. I had a good deal of work to do, and the time passed quickly. It was Friday night, and from the kitchen at the end of the passage came the gabbling murmur in two alternate keys that I had learnt to recognise as the recital of a litany by my housekeeper and her nephew Peter. This performance was followed by some of those dreary and heart-rending yawns that are, I think, peculiar to Irish kitchens. Then such of the cats as had returned from the chase were loudly shepherded into the back scullery. The kitchen door shut with a slam, and my retainers retired to repose. It was nearly half an hour afterwards when I finished the notes I had been making on an adjourned case of stroke-hauling salmon in the Lonan River. I leant back in my chair and lighted a cigarette preparatory to turning in. My thoughts had again wandered on a sentimental journey across the Irish Channel when I heard a slight stir of some kind outside the open window. In the wilds of Ireland no-one troubles themselves about burglars. More cats, I thought, I must shut the window before I go to bed. Almost immediately there followed a faint tap on the window, and then a voice said in a hoarse and hurried whisper, Damn that one's Jim Foley, lest I'm look in the river. If I had kept my head I should have sat still and encouraged a further confidence, but unfortunately I acted on the impulse of the natural man, and was at the window in a jump, knocking down my chair and making noise enough to scare a far less shy bird than an Irish informer. Of course there was no one there. I listened with every nerve as taught as a violin-string. It was quite dark. There was just breeze enough to make a rustling in the evergreens so that a man might brush through them without being heard. And while I debated on a plan of action, though came from beyond the shrubbery, the jar and twang of a loose strand of wire in the pailing by the wood. My informant, whoever he might be, had vanished into the darkness from which he had come, as it recoverably has had the falling star that had written its brief message across the sky and gone out again into infinity. I got up very early the next morning and drove into Skiborn to see Murray and offer him my mysterious information for what it was worth. Personally, I didn't think it worth much and was disposed to regard it as a red herring drawn across the trail. Murray, however, was not in the mood to despise anything that had the suggestion to make, having been out till nine o'clock the night before without having been able to find any clues at the hiding-place of James Foley. The river's a good mile from the place where the fight was. He said, straddling his compasses over the Ordnance Survey map, and there's no sort of a role they could have taken him along, but a tip like this is always worth trying. I remember in the land-league time how a man came on Saturday night to my window and told me there were holes drilled in the chapel door to shoot a boy-cutted man through while he was at mass. The holes were there right enough and you may be quite sure the chap found excellent reasons for having family prayers at home next day. I had sessions to attend on the extreme outskirts of my district and could not wait, as Murray suggested, to see the thing out. I did not get home till the following day, and when I arrived I found a letter from Murray awaiting me. Your power is right. We found Foley's body in the river knocking about against the posts of the weir. The head was wrapped in its own green jersey and had been smashed in by a stone. We suspect a fellow named Bat Callahan who has bolted, but there were a lot of them in it. Possibly it was Callahan himself who gave you the tip. You can never tell how superstition is going to take them next. The inquest will be held to-morrow. The coroner's jury took a cautious view of the cause of the catastrophe and brought in the verdict of death by misadventure, and I presently found it to be my duty to call a magisterial inquiry to further investigate the matter. A few days before this was to take place I was engaged in the delicate task of displaying to my landlord, Mr. Flurry Knox, the defects of the pantry's sink, when Mrs. Cadogan advanced upon us with the information that the widow Callahan from Clowin would be thankful to speak to me and had brought me a present of a fine young goose. Is she coming over here looking for Bat? said Flurry, withdrawing his arm and the longest kitchen ladle from the pipe that he had been probing. She knows you're handy at hiding your friends, Mary. Perhaps it's that that's stopping the jean. Mrs. Cadogan turned her large red face upon her late employer. God knows I wish yourself were stuck in it, Master Flurry, the way in here Peter Custon the fool of the house when he's driving to watch these things in that unnatural little draught. Are you sure it's Peter that's all the cursing? retorted Flurry. I hear Father Scanlon has it in for you this long time for not going to confession. Well, how can I walk two-way to the chapel with God's burden on my feet? demanded Mrs. Cadogan in purple indignation. The blessed virgin undoubt her heck he knows well how hard she may get from them. If it wasn't for a pair of the majors Booty gave me, I'd be hard set to travel the house itself. The contest might have been continued indefinitely and I not struck up the swords with a request that Mrs. Callahan might be sent round to the hall door. There we found a tall grey-haired countrywoman waiting for us at the foot of the steps in the hooded blue cloak that is peculiar to the south of Ireland. From the fact that she clutched a pocket-hanker-chief in her right hand I augured a stormy interview but nothing could have been more self-restrained and even imposing than the reverence with which she greeted Flurry and me. Good-morning to your honours. She began with a dignified and extremely imminent snuffle. I ask your pardon for troubling you magey-yates but I haven't a one in the country to give me advice and I have no confidence only in your honours' experiments. Experience, she means, prompted Flurry. Didn't you get advice enough out of Mr. Murray yesterday? He went on aloud. I heard he was at clueing to see you and if he was itself his little advantage anyone would get out of that little whipper-snap of a snap-dragon. Responded Mrs. Callahan tartly. He was with me for a half-hour giving me every big rock of English till I had a reel in me head. I declare to you, Mr. Flurry, after you'd gone out of the house you wouldn't throw three fathins for me. The pocket-hanker-chief was here utilised. After which, with a heavy drone, Mrs. Callahan again took up her parable. I told him first and last I'd lose me life if I had to go into the court and if I did itself sure that Tornies would rip no more out of me than what he did himself. Did you tell him where was that? Inquired Flurry casually. At this Mrs. Callahan immediately dissolved into tears. Is it Bat? She howled. If the twelve Apostles came down from heaven asking me where was Bat I could give them no satisfaction. The devil and no I know what's happened to him. He came home with me sober and good-natured from the regatta and the next morning he axed a fresh ape for his breakfast and God forgive me I wouldn't break the score I was taken to the hotel. And with that he slapped the cup of tea into the veil and went out the door and I never got a word of him since good nor bad. God knows to say God trouble with that poor boy and he the only one I have to look to in the world. I cut the matter short by asking her what she wanted me to do for her and sifted out from among much extraneous detail the fact that she relied upon my renowned wisdom and clemency to preserve her from being called as a witness at the coming inquiry. The gift of the goose served its intended purpose of embarrassing my position, but in spite of it I broke to the widow Callaghan my inability to help her. She did not, of course, believe me, but she was too well-bred to say so. In Ireland one becomes accustomed to this attitude. As it turned out, however, Bat Callaghan's mother had nothing to fear from the inquiry. She was by turn's deaf, imbecile, garrulously candid and furiously abusive of Murray's principal witness, a frightened lad of seventeen who had sworn to having seen Bat Callaghan and Jimmy Foley shaping at one another to fight. At an hour when, according to Mrs Callaghan, Bat was lying stretched on the bed-in with a sick stomach in consequence of the malignant character of the porter supplied by the last witness's father. It all ended as such cases so often do in Ireland in complete moral certainty in the minds of all concerned as to the guilt of the accused an entire impotence on the part of the law to prove it. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Bartholomew Callaghan and the clans of Callaghan and Foley fought rather more bloodily than usual as occasion served and at intervals during the next few months Murray used to ask me if my friend the murderer had dropped in lately to which I was wont to reply with condolences on the failure of the RIC to find the widow Callaghan's only son for her and that was about all that came of it. Events with which the present story has no concern took me to England towards the end of the following March. It so happened that my old regiment, the Fusiliers, was quartered at Windcastle within a couple of hours by rail of Philip's home where I was staying and since my wedding was now within measurable distance my former brothers and arms invited me over to dine and sleep and to receive a validictory silver claret jug that they were magnanimous enough to bestow upon a backslider. I enjoyed the dinner as much as any man can enjoy his dinner when he knows he has to make a speech at the end of it through much and varied conversation I strove like a nervous mother who cannot trust her offspring out of her sight to keep before my mind's eye the opening sentences that I had composed in the train. I felt that if I could only get away satisfactorily I might trust the Ayala, eighty-nine to do the rest and of that fount of inspiration there was no lack. As it turned out I got away all right though the sight of the double line of expectant faces and red mess jackets nearly scattered those precious opening sentences and I am afraid that so far as the various subsequent points went that I had intended to make I stayed away. However, neither Demosthenes nor a nationalist member at a cork election could have been listened to with more gratifying attention and I sat down, hot and happy, to be confronted with my own flushed visage hideously reflected in the glittering paunch of the carrot jug. Once safely over the presentation the evening mellowed into frivolity and it was pretty late before I found myself settled down to Wist at six many points in the ancient familiar way while most of the others fell to playing pool in the billiard room next door. I have played Wist from my youth up with the preternatural seriousness of a subaltern with the self-assurance of a senior captain with the privileged irascibility of a major and my eighteen months of abstinence at Chalane had only whetted my appetite for what I consider the best of games. After the long lonely evenings there with rats for company and for relaxation a deck of that specially deminiacal American form of patience known as Fulian it was wondrous agreeable to sit again amongst my fellows and to lay the longs on a severely scientific rubber of Wist as though Mrs. Cadogan and the skibborn bench of magistrates had never existed. We were in the first game of the second rubber and I was holding a very nice playing hand I had early in the game moved forth my trumps to battle and I was now in the ineffable position of scoring with the small cards of my long suit. The cards fell and fell in silence and Ballantine my partner raked in the tricks like a machine. The concentrated quiet of the game was suddenly arrested by a sharp unmistakable sound from the barricade outside the snap of a Lee Metford rifle. What was that? exclaimed Moffat, the senior major. Before he had finished speaking there was a second shot. By Jove those were rifle shots perhaps I'd better go and see what's up said Ballantine who was captain of the week going down his cards and making a bolt for the door. He had hardly got out of the room when the first long high note of the assembly sang out sudden and clear. We all sprang to our feet and as the bugle call went shrilly on the other men came pouring in from the billiard room and stampeded to their quarters to get their swords. At the same moment the mess sergeant appeared at the outer door with the face as white as his shirt front. The sentry on the magazine-gourd has been shot, sir. He said excitedly to Moffat. They say he's dead. We were all out in the barracks square in an instant. It was clear moonlight and the square was already alive with hurrying figures cramming on clothes and caps as they ran to fall in. I was a free agent these times and I followed the mess sergeant across the square towards the distant corner where the magazine stands. As we doubled round the end of the men's quarters we nearly ran into a small party of men who were advancing slowly and heavily in our direction. Here he is, sir," said the mess sergeant, stopping himself abruptly. They were carrying the sentry to the hospital. His buzzbee had fallen off. The moon shone mildly on his pale, convulsed face and foam and strange inhuman sounds came from within his lips. His head was rolling from side to side on the arm of one of the men who was carrying him. As he turned towards me I was struck by something disturbingly familiar in the face and I wondered if he had been in my old company. What's his name, Sergeant? I said to the mess sergeant. Private Harris, sir," replied the sergeant. He's only lately come up from the depot and this was his first time on sentry by himself. I went back to the mess and in the process of time the others strangled in, thirsting for whiskies and soda and full of such information as there was to give. Private Harris was not wounded. Both the shots had been fired by him as was testified by the state of his rifle and the fact that two of the cartridges were missing from the packet in his pouch. I hear he was a queer sulky sort of chap always," said Tomkinson, the subaltern of the day. But if he was having a triad's suicide he made a badly bad fist of it. He made as good a fist of it as you did on putting on your sword, Tommy," remarked Valentine, indicating a dangling white strap of webbing that hung down like a tail below Mr. Tomkinson's mess-jacket. Nerves, obviously, in both cases. The exquisite satisfaction afforded by this discovery to Mr. Tomkinson's brother-offices found its natural outlet in a bear-fight that threatened to become more or less general and in the course of which I slid away unosentatiously to bed in Valentine's quarters and took the precaution of barricading my door. Next morning when I got down to breakfast I found Valentine and two or three others in the mess-room and my first inquiry was for Private Harris. Oh! the poor chap's dead," said Valentine. It's a very queer business altogether. I think he must have been wrong in the top story. The doctor was with him when he came to out of the fit or whatever it was. No, Riley—that's the doctor you know, Irish, of course. By the way, poor Harris was an Irishman, too. Says that he could only jibber at first. But then he got better and he got out of him that when he had been on sentry-go for about half an hour he happened to look up at the angle of the barrack wall near where it joins the magazine-tire and saw a face looking at him over it. He challenged and got no answer, but the face just stuck there, staring at him. He challenged again. And then, as O'Reilly said, he just awped with his rifle and bleeds at it. Valentine was not about the common English delusion that he could imitate an Irish brogue. Well, what happened then? Well, according to the poor devil's own story the face just kept looking at him and he had another shot of it. And, my God Almighty, he said to O'Reilly, it was there always. While he was saying that to O'Reilly he began to chuck another fit and apparently went on chucking them till he died a couple of hours ago. One result of it is, said another man, that they couldn't get a man to go on sentry there alone last night. I expect we shall have to dub all the sentries there every night as long as we are here. Said the asses, remarked Tomkinson, but he said it without conviction. After breakfast we went out to look at the wall by the magazine. It was about eleven feet high with a coped top and they told me there was a deep and wide dry ditch on the outside. A ladder was brought and we examined the angle of the wall at which Harris said the face had appeared. He had made a beautiful shot, one of his bullets having flicked a piece off the ridge of the coping exactly at the corner. It's not the kind of shot a man would make if he'd been drinking, said Moffat, regretfully abandoning his first simple hypothesis. He must have been mad. I wish I could find out who his people are, said Brownlow, the adjutant, who had joined us. They found in his box a letter to him from his mother, but we can't make out the name of the place. By Joe Yates you're an Irishman, perhaps you can help us. He handed me a letter in a dirty envelope. There was no address given, the contents were very short, and I may be forgiven if I transcribe them. My dear son, I hope you are well as this leaves me at present. Thanks be to God for it. I am very much uneasy about the cow. She was swelled up this morning. She ran in and was frauding, and I did not do but to run up for Tom Sweeney in the minute. We are thinking it is too much laryls or an ear-rub, she took. I do not know what I will do with her. God help one that's alone with himself. I had not a day's luck since she went away. I am thinking then that once she is tired of looking for you. And so I remain your fond mother. Well, you don't get much of a lead from the cow, do you? And what the deuce is an ear-rub? said Brownlow. It's another way of spelling herb, I said, turning over the envelope abstractedly. The postmark was almost obliterated. But it struck me that it might be construed into the word skibhorn. Look here, I said suddenly, let me see, Harris. It's just possible I may know something about him. The sentry's body had been laid in the dead-house near the hospital, and Brownlow fetched the key. It was a grim little white-washed building without windows, save a small one of lancet shape high upon one gable, through which a streak of April sunlight fell sharp and slender on the white-washed wall. The long figure of the sentry lay sheeted on a stone slab, and Brownlow was his cap in his hand, gently uncovered the face. I leaned over and looked at it. At the heavy brows, the short nose, the small moustache lying black above the pale mouth, the deep-set eyes sealed in appalling peacefulness. The rose before me, the wild, dark face of the young man who had hung on my wheel, and yelled encouragement to the winning coxswain at the Loch Lone and Regatta. I know him, I said. His name is Callahan. The recordings are in the public domain. For further information, or to find out how you can volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org. It may or may not be agreeable to have attained the age of thirty-eight, but, judging from old photographs, the privilege of being nineteen has also its drawbacks. I turned over page after page for an ancient book in which were enshrined portraits of the friends of my youth. Singly, in David and Jonathan couples, and in groups in which I, as it seemed to my mature and possibly jawned this perception, always contrived to look the most immeasurable young bounder of the lot. Our faces were fat, and yet I cannot remember ever having been considered fat in my life. We indulged in low-necked shirts, in jamaima ties with diagonal stripes. We wore coats that seemed three sizes too small, and trousers that were three sizes too big. We also wore small whiskers. I stopped at last at one of the David and Jonathan memorial portraits. Yes, here was the object of my researches. This stout and earnestly romantic youth was Lee Kelway, and that fatuous and chubby young person seated on the arm of his chair was myself. Lee Kelway was a young man ardently believed in by large circle of admirers, headed by himself, and seconded by me, and for some time after I had left more than for Sandhurst I maintained a correspondence with him on large and abstract subjects. This phase of our friendship did not survive. I went soldiering to India, and Lee Kelway took honours and moved suitably on into politics, as is the duty of an earnest young radical with useful family connections and an independent income. Since then I had at intervals seen in the papers the name of the honourable Basil Lee Kelway mentioned as a speaker at elections, as a writer of thoughtful articles for the reviews. But we had never met, and nothing could have been less expected by me than the letter written from Mrs. Rafferty's hotel, Skiborn, in which he told me he was making a tour of Ireland with Lord Waterbury, to whom he was private secretary. Lord Waterbury was at present having a few days fishing near Kalani, and he himself, not being a fisherman, was collecting statistics for his chief on various points connected with the liquor question in Ireland. He had heard that I was in the neighbourhood and was kind enough to add that it would give him much pleasure to meet me again. With a stir of the old enthusiasm I wrote begging him to meet my guest for as long as it suited him, and the following afternoon he arrived at Shrelain. The stout young friend of my youth had changed considerably. His important nose and slightly prominent teeth remained, but his wavy hair had withdrawn intellectually from his temples. His eyes had acquired a statesman-like absence of expression, and his neck had grown long and bird-like. It was his first visit to Ireland, as he lost no time in telling me, and he and his chief had already collected much valuable information on the subject to which they had dedicated the Easter recess. He further informed me that he thought of popularising the subject in a novel, and therefore intended to, as he put it, master the Brogue before his return. During the next few days I did my best for Lee Gellway. I turned him loose on Father Scanlon. I showed him Mahona, our champion village, that boasts fifteen public houses out of twenty buildings of sorts and a railway station. I took him to hear the prosecution of a publican for selling drink on a Sunday, which gave him an opportunity of studying perjury as a fine art, and of hearing a lady, on whom police suspicion justly rested, profoundly summed up by the sergeant as, a woman who had the appearance of having knocked at a back door. The net result of these experiences has not yet been given to the world by Lee Gellway. For my own part I had, at the end of three days, arrived at the conclusion that his society, when combined with a notebook and a thirst for statistics, was not what I had used to find it at Oxford. I therefore welcomed a suggestion from Mr Flurry Knox that we should accompany him to some typical country races got up by the farmers at a place called Lichine, some twelve miles away. It was the worst road in the district, the races of the most grossly unorthodox character. In fact it was the very place for Lee Gellway to collect impressions of Irish life, and in any case it was a blessed opportunity of disposing of him for the day. In my guest's attire next morning I discerned an unbending from the role of cabinet minister towards that of sportsman. The outlines of the notebook might be traced in his breast pocket, but traversing it was the strap of a pair of field glasses, and his light grey suit was smart enough for Goodwood. Flurry was to drive us to the races at one o'clock, and we walked to Tory Cottage by the shortcut over the hill in the sunny beauty of an April morning. Up to the present the weather had kept me in a more or less apologetic condition. Anyone who has entertained a guest in the country knows the unjust weight of responsibility that rests on the shoulders of the host in the matter of climate, and Lee Gellway, after two drenchings, had become sarcastically resigned to what I felt he regarded as my mismanagement. Flurry took us into the house for a drink and a biscuit to keep us going, as he said till. We lifted some luncheon out of the castle and knocked people at the races, and it was while we were thus engaged that the first disaster of the day occurred. The dining-room door was open, so also was the window of the little staircase just outside it, and through the window travelled sounds that told of the close proximity of the stable-yard, the clattering of hooves on cobblestones, and voices uplifted in loud conversation. Suddenly from this region there arose a screech of the laughter peculiar to kitchen flirtation, followed by the clank of a bucket, the plunging of a horse, and then an uproar of wheels and galloping hoofs. An instant afterwards Flurry's chestnut cob in a dog-cart dashed at full gallop into view, with the rain streaming behind him and two men in hot pursuit. Almost before I had time to realise what had happened, Flurry jumped through the half-opened window of the dining-room like a clown at a pantomime and joined in the chase. But the cob was resolved to make the most of his chance, and went away down the drive and out of sight at a pace that distanced everyone save the kennel Terrier, who sped in shrieking ecstasy beside him. Oh, merciful Lord! exclaimed a female voice behind me. Lee Kelway and I were by this time watching the progress of events from the gravel, in company with the remainder of Flurry's household. A horse as distraught was another quest that he took, and all in the world I'd done was to slap a bucket of water and Michael out of the wind-air and to himself cut it in case of Michael. You'll never eat another bit, Brigidonegan, replied the cook, with the exulting pessimism of her kind. The master'll have your life. Both speakers shouted at the top of their voices, probably because in spirit they still followed afar the flight of the cob. Lee Kelway looked serious as we walked on down the drive. I almost dared to hope that a note on the degrading oppression of Irish retainers was shaping itself. Before we reached the bend of the drive, the rescue party was returning with the fugitive, all with the exception of the kennel Terrier, looking extremely gloomy. The cob had been confronted by a wooden gate, which he had unhesitatingly taken in his stride, landing on his head on the farther side of the gate and the cart on top of him, and had arisen with a lame foreleg, a cut on his nose, and several other minor wounds. You'd think the brute had been fighting the cats with all the scratches and scrapes he had on him, said Flurry, casting a vengeful eye at Michael, and one shaft broken, and so is the dashboard. I haven't another horse in the place. They're all out at grass. So there's an end of the races. We all three stood blankly on the hall doorstep and watched the wreck of the trap being trundled up the avenue. I'm very sorry you had done out of your spot," said Flurry to Lee Kellway in terms of deplorable sincerity. Perhaps there's nothing else to do. You'd like to see the hounds. I felt for Flurry, but of the two I felt more for Lee Kellway as he accepted this alleviation. He disliked dogs and held the newest views on sanitation, and I knew what Flurry's kennels could smell like. I was lighting a precautionary cigarette when we caught sight of an old man riding up the drive. Flurry stopped short. Hold on a minute," he said. Here's an old chap that often brings me horses for the kennels. I must see what he wants. The man dismounted, and approached Mr. Knox, hat in hand, towing after him a gaunt and ancient black mare with a big knee. Well, Barrett began Flurry surveying the mare with his hands in his pockets. I'm not giving hounds meat this month, or only very little. Ah, master Flurry," answered Barrett. It's you that's pleasant. Is it given like a this one for the dogs to hate? She's a very, very strong young mare, no more than sixteen years of age, and you'd soon have been looking at her gain under a sidecar than eating your dinner. There isn't as much meat on her as a fat and a jacked dog," said Flurry, clinking the silver in his pockets as he searched for a matchbox. What are you asking for her? The old man drew cautiously up to him. Master Flurry, he said solemnly, I'll sell her to your honor for five pounds, and she'll be worth ten after you've given her a month's grass. Flurry lit his cigarette. Then he said, imperturbably, I'll give you seven shillings for her. Old Barrett put on his hat in silence, and in silence buttoned his coat and took hold of the stirrup-leather. Flurry remained immovable. Master Flurry said old Barrett suddenly, with tears in his voice, You almost make it eight, sir. Michael called out Flurry with apparent irrelevance. Run up to your father's and ask him would he lend me a loan of his sidecar. Half an hour later, we were, improbable as it may seem, on our way to Lysheen Races. We were seated upon an outside car of immemorial age, whose joints seemed to open and close again as it swung in and out of the ruts, whose tattered cushions stank of rats and mildew, whose wheels staggered and rocked like the legs of a drunken man. Between the shafts jogged the latest addition to the kennel larder, the eight-shilling mare. Flurry sat on one side and kept her going at the rate of not less than four miles an hour. Lee Kellway and I held on to the other. She'll get us as far as lynches, anyway, said Flurry, abandoning his first contention that she could do the whole distance as he pulled her onto her legs after her fifteenth stumble. And he'll lend us some sort of horse if it was only a mule. Do you notice that these cushions are very damp? said Lee Kellway to me in a hollow undertone. Smart, blamed two of them if they are! replied Flurry. I've no doubt they were out under the rain all day yesterday at the Mrs. Hurley's funeral. Lee Kellway made no reply, but he took his notebook out of his pocket and sat on it. We arrived at lynches at a little past three and were there confronted by the next disappointment of this disastrous day. The door of lynches' farmhouse was locked and nothing replied to our knocking except a puppy that walked hysterically from within. I'll go on to the races, said Flurry philosophically, picking his way round the manure heap. No matter, here's the filly in the shed here. I know he's had her under a car. An agitating ten minutes ensued during which Lee Kellway and I got the eight-chilling mare out of the shafts and the harness, and Flurry, with our inefficient help, crammed the young mare into them. As Flurry had stated that she had been driven before, I was bound to believe him, but the difficulty of getting the bit into her mouth was remarkable, and so also was the crab-like manner in which she sidled out of the yard with Flurry and myself at her head, and Lee Kellway hanging onto the back of the car to keep it from jamming in the gateway. Sit up on the car now, said Flurry, when we got out onto the road. I'll lead her on a bit. She's been ploughed any way one side of her mouth just tough as a gad. Lee Kellway threw away the wisp of grass with which he had been cleaning his hands and mopped his intellectual forehead. He was very silent. We both mounted the car, and Flurry, with the reins in his hand, walked beside the filly, who, with her tail clasped in, moved onward in a succession of short jerks. Oh, she's all right, said Flurry, beginning to run and dragging the filly into a trot. Once she gets started, hear the filly spy the pig in the neighbouring field, and despite the fact that she had probably eaten out of the same trough with it, she gave a violent sidespring and broke into a gallop. Now, Olaf, shouted Flurry, making a jump at the car and clambering on. If the trace is hold, we'll do it. The English language is powerless to suggest the view hallo with which Mr Knox ended his speech, or to do more than indicate the rigid anxiety of Lee Kellway's face as he regained his balance after the preliminary jerk and clutched the back rail. It must be said, for Lynch's filly, that she did not kick. She merely flared like a dog with a kettle tied to its tail from the pursuing rattle and jingle behind her, with the shafts buffeting her dusty sides as the car swung to and fro. Whenever she showed any signs of slackening, Flurry loosed another yell at her that renewed her panic, and thus we precariously covered another two or three miles of our journey. Had it not been for a large stone lying on the road, and had the filly not chosen to swerve so as to bring the wheel on top of it, I daresay we might have got to the races. But by an unfortunate coincidence both these things occurred. And when we recovered from the consequent shock, the tyre of one of the wheels had come off, and was trundling with cumbreous gaiety into the ditch. Flurry stopped the filly and began to laugh. Lee Kellway said something startlingly unparliamentary under his breath. Well, it might be worse," Flurry said consolingly as he lifted the tyre onto the car. We're not half a mile from a forge. We walked that half-mile in funereal procession behind the car. The glory had departed from the weather, and an ugly wall of cloud was rising up out of the west to meet the sun. The hills had darkened and lost colour, and the white bog cotton shivered in a cold wind that smelt of rain. By a miracle the smith was not at the races, owing, as he explained, to his having the toothaches. The two facts combined, producing in him a morosity only equaled by that of Lee Kellway. The smith's sole comment on the situation was to unharness the filly and drag her into the forge where he tied her up. He then proceeded to whistle viciously on his fingers in the direction of a cottage, and then he went to the forge on his fingers in the direction of a cottage, and to command in tones of thunder some unseen creature to bring over a couple of baskets of turf. The turf arrived in process of time on a woman's back and was arranged in a circle in a yard at the back of the forge. The tyre was bedded in it, and the turf was with difficulty kindled at different points. You'll not get to the races this day, said the smith, yielding to a sardonic satisfaction. The turf's wet, and I haven't one to do a hand's turn for me. He laid the wheel on the ground and lit his pipe. Lee Kellway looked palidly about him over the spacious empty landscape of brown mountain slopes patched with golden furs and seamed with grey walls. I wondered if he were as hungry as I. We sat on stones opposite the smouldering ring of turf and smote, and Flurry beguiled the smith into grim and calamitous confidences about every horse in the country. After about an hour, during which the turf went out three times and the weather became more and more threatening, a girl with a red petticoat over her head appeared at the gate of the yard and said to the smith, The horse has gone away from you! Where? exclaimed Flurry, springing to his feet. I met him walking west the road there below and when I thought to turn him towards the gallop. Pulled her head out of the head-style, said Flurry, after a rapid survey of the forge. She is near home by now. It was at this moment that the rain began. The situation could scarcely have been better stage-managed. After reviewing the position, Flurry and I decided that the only thing to do was to walk to a public house a couple of miles further on, feed there if possible, and go home. It was an uphill walk with mild generous raindrops striking thicker and thicker on our faces. No one talked and the grey clouds crowded up from behind the hills like billows of steam. Lee Kellway bore it all with egregious resignation. I cannot pretend that I was at heart sympathetic, but by virtue of being his host I felt responsible for the breakdown for his light suit for everything and divined his sentiment of horror at the first sight of the public house. It was a long, low cottage with a line of dripping elm-trees overshadowing it. Empty cars and carts round its door and a babel from within made it evident that the race-goers were pursuing a gradual homeward route. The shop was crammed with steaming countrymen, whose loud brawling voices all talking together roused my English friend to his first remark since we had left the forge. Surely Yates we are not going to go into that place," he said severely. Those men are all drunk. Ah, not into signify, said Flurry, plunging in and driving his way through the throng like a plow. Here, Mary Kate, he called to the girl behind the counter, tell your mother we want some tea and bread and butter in the room inside. The smell of bad tobacco and spilt porter was choking. We worked our way through it after him towards the end of the shop, intersecting at every hand discussions about the races. Tom was very nice. He spared his horse all along and then he put into him. Well, at Gargan's car, the third horse was before the second, but he was going to wake in himself. I tell you, the mayor had the hind leg flashed in the forge. Clancy was deppin' in the saddle for her damn noise-race, whatever. We were in the inner room at last. A cheerless apartment, adorned with sacred pictures, a sewing machine and an array of supplementary tumblers and wine-glasses, but at all events we had it so far to ourselves. At intervals, during the next half-hour, Mary Kate burst in with cups and plates, cast them on the table and disappeared, but of food there was no sign. After a further period of starvation and of listening to the noise in the shop, Flurry made a sortie and after lengthy and unknown adventures reappeared carrying a huge brown teapot and driving before him Mary Kate with the remainder of the repast. The bread tasted of mice, the butter of turf smoke, the tea of brown paper, but we had got past the critical stage. I had entered upon my third round of bread and butter when the door was flung open and my valued acquaintance, Slipper, slightly advanced in liquor, presented himself to our gaze. His bandy legs sprawled consequentially. His nose was redder than a coal of fire. His prominent eyes rolled crookedly upon us and his left hand swept before him the attempt of Mary Kate to frustrate his entrance. God evening to my venerable friend Mr. Flurry Knox! He began in the voice of a town crier and to the honourable major Yeats and the English gentleman. This impressive opening immediately attracted an audience from the shop and the doorway filled with grinning faces as Slipper advanced further into the room. Why won't she at the races, Mr. Flurry? He went on, his roving eye taking a grip of us all at the same time. So the miss minutes and all the leaders was asking where are you? It would take some time to tell them that, Mr. Flurry, with his mouth full. But what about the racer, Slipper? Had you good sport? Sport is it. Give us a pleasant an afternoon every you seen. replied Slipper. He leaned against the side table and all the glasses on it jingled. Does your honour know old Riscoe? He went on, irrelevantly. Sure you do. He was in your honour's stable. That's what we were all saying. It's a great pity your honour was not there for the liking you had to Driscoe. But, Troll, said a voice at the door. There wasn't one in the bar any but was gathered in it though, and Troll continued Slipper with a quelling glance at the interrupter and there was tints for selling partal and whiskey as pliable as new milk and boys going round the tints outside feeling for heads with the big ends of their black thorns and all kinds of recreations and the sons and liberties peffler and drum band from Seagiborn. Oh, faith there was more out than running to look at the races than most playing in it. Arthur mentioned different occasions that the bandmaster was eating his lunch within in the whiskey tent. But what about Driscoe? said Flurry. Sure it's about him, I'm telling you. replied Slipper with the practised orator's watchful eye following audience. Tossed within in the same whiskey tent with the bandmaster and a few other lads we were buying a heap of the crackers when I saw me braved Driscoe landing in the tent and they paired him long boots on him in what had to shun our stock into his foot when your honour had him picking grass out of the stones behind in your yard. Well, said I to myself, we'll knock some spores out of Driscoe. Come here to me, a kosher, said I to him. I suppose it's some way weaken the legs, ya, says I, and the doctor put them on you the way people wouldn't trample you. May the devil choke it, says he, pleasant enough, but I knew where the blush he had he was vexed. Then I suppose it's a left tenant calder, ya, says I, your mother must be proud of you, says I, and maybe you'll lend her a loan of dim-waders when she's rinsing your bornein in the river, says I. There'll be work out of this, says he, looking at me both sour and bitter. Well, indeed I was thinking you're a blue-molded for want of a betan, says I. He was for fighting us then, but after we had impacificated with about a quarter of a nug in the spirits he told us he was going riding in the race. Then what'll you ride, says I? Old Bocock's mare, says he. Knife, says I, saying a great curse, is it that little stagene from the mountains? Sure, she's something about the one age with me-self, says I. Ben is the time, James E. Gagegan, and me-self she'll be driving her to Macroome with pigs and all sorts, says I, and is it left in stone was you wanted to go now? Faith as was and every variety of obstacle in it, says he. It'll be the best of your place, says I, to leg it away home after this. And all ride her so, says he. Let the devil ride her, says I. Lee Kellway, who had been leaning back seemingly half asleep, obeyed the hypnotism of Slipper's gaze and opened his eyes. That was now all the conversation that passed between himself and me-self, resumed Slipper. And there was no great delay after that till they said there was a race starting, and the dickens of one at all was going to ride, only two Driscoll and one Clancy. With that, then, I seen Mr. Kinahane, the petty sessions clack going round clear in the course, and I gathered for sure the neighbours, and we walked the fields hither and over till we seen the most of the obstacles. Then there is he now by the plantation, says I. If they get to come as far as this, believe me, you'll see spots, says I, and will be a convenient spot to encourage the mayor if she's anywhere weak in herself, says I, cutting something about five-foot of an ash sampling out of the plantation. That's your thought, says old Bulkock, that was travelling the racecourse, pigging a bit of paper doll with a thorn in front of every lip. I know the handiest place to face her at it. Well, I hadn't barely trimmed the ash-planned. Have you any jam, Mary Kate?" Interrupted Flurry, whose meal had been in no way interfered with by either the story or the highly-scented crowd who had come to listen to it. We have no jam or nitrakel, sir, replied the invisible Mary Kate. I hadn't the switch barely trimmed, repeated Slipper firmly. When I heard the people screeching, and I seen Driscoll and Clancy coming on, living an hour before them, an old Bulkock's mare bellowing and powdering along with me, that whatever obstacle wouldn't throw her down, faith she'd throw it down, and there's a traffic they had in it. I declare to me so, says I, if they continue on this way, there's a great chance some one of them will win, says I. You lie, says the bandmaster, in a trifle full some after luncheon. I do not, says I, in regard to seeing how supple them two boys is. You might observe, says I, that if they have no convenient way to sit in the saddle, they'll ride the neck of the hearth till such time as they get, on occasion, to lay it, says I. I shut your mouth, says the bandmaster. They're pocking out this way now, and may the devil admire me, says he. But Clancy has the other bet out, and the devil such a leather in a beltome old bow-cocks mare, as have you seen what's in it, says he. Well, when I seen them coming to me, and briskly about the length of the plantation behind Clancy, I led a couple of balls. Skelper, your big bro, says I. What gods in you that you aren't able to Skelper? The yell and the histrionic flourish of his stick, with which Slipper delivered this incident, brought down the house. Lee Kellway was sufficiently moved to ask me in an undertone if Skelp was a local term. Well, Mr. Flurry and gentlemen, recommenced Slipper. I declared here when old bow-cocks mare heard them roar, she stretched out her neck like a gander, and when she passed me out, she gave a couple of grunts and looked at me as ugly as a Christian. Ha! says I, given her a coupler, draws a dash-plant across the bottom of the tail, the way I wouldn't blind her. I'll make ye grunt, says I, I'll nourish ye. I knew well she was very frightful of the dash-plant since the winter Tommy and Sullivan had her under a sidecar. But now, in place of having any obligations to me, you'd be surprised if you heard the blasphemous expressions of the young boy that was riding her. And whether it was over-anxious he was, turning around the way I heard him cursing, or whether it was some Slither or Slide, came to our bow-cocks mare, I don't know, but she was bet up again the last obstacle, but too. Before you could say schnipes, she was standing on her two ears beyond into the field. I declared to ye on the virtue of me, or she stood that way till she reconnoitre which side would risk all fall, and she turned about then and rolled on him as cosy as if he was meadow-grass. Slither stopped short. The people in the doorway groaned appreciatively. Mary Kate murmured, The Lord save us! The blood was drove out through his nose and ears, continued Slither, with a voice that indicated the cream of the narration, and you'd hear his bones cracking on the ground, you'd have petted the poor boy. Good heavens! said Lee Kelway, sitting up very straight in his chair. But he heard Slither, asked Flurry casually, What is it? Echoed Slither in high scorn. Killed on the spot! He paused to relish the effect of the dénouement on Lee Kelway. Oh, diva, so pleasant an afternoon ever you've seen! And indeed, Mr Flurry, it's what we were all saying as our great pity your honour was not there for the liken you had for Driscoll. As he spoke the last word, there was an outburst of singing and cheering from a carload of people who had just pulled up at the door. Flurry listened, went back in his chair, and began to laugh. It scarcely strikes one as a comic incident, said Lee Kelway, very coldly to me. In fact, it seems to me that the police thought, Show me, Slither, bolder voice in the shop, Show me that dirty little underloper till I have his blood, and I the race one only for him soaring the mare on me. While such you say, I tell you he did, he left seven slaps on the way the handle of a hay rake. There was in the room in which we were sitting, a second door leading to the back-yard, a door consecrated to the unobtrusive visits of so-called Sunday travellers. Through it, Slither faded away like a dream, and simultaneously a tall young man with a face like a red-hot potato tied up in a bandage, squeezed his way from the shop into the room. Where is Driscoll? said Flurry. Since it wasn't the teeth of the rake he left on the mare, you needn't be talking. Lee Kellway looked from one to the other with a wilder expression in his eye than I had thought he capable of. I read in it a resolve to abandon Ireland to her fate. At eight o'clock we were still waiting for the car that we had been assured should be ours directly at return from the races. At half-past eight we had adopted the only possible course that remained and had accepted the offers of lifts on the laden cars that were returning to Skiborn. An eye presently was gratified by the spectacle of my friend Lee Kellway wedged between a roulette table and its proprietor on one side of the car, with Driscoll and Slither mysteriously reconciled and excessively drunk, seated locked in each other's arms on the other. Flurry and I, somewhat similarly placed, followed on two other cars. I was scarcely surprised when I was informed that the melancholy white animal in the shafts of the leading car was Old Bocock's much-enduring steeple-chaser. The night was very dark and stormy, and it is almost superfluous to say that no one carried lamps. The rain poured upon us, and through wet and wind Old Bocock's mare set the pace at a rate that showed she knew from bitter experience what was expected from her by gentlemen who had spent the evening in the public house. Behind her the other two tired horses followed closely, incited to emulation by shouting, singing, and a liberal allowance of whip. We were a good ten miles from Skiborn, and never had the road seemed so long, for mile after mile the half-seen low wall slid past us with occasional plunges into caverns of darkness under trees. Sometimes from a wayside cabin a dog would dash out to bark at us as we rattled by. Sometimes our cavalcade swung aside to pass with yells and counter-yells, crawling carts filled with other belated race-goers. I was nearly wept through, even though I received considerable shelter from a Skiborn publican who slept heavily and irrepressibly on my shoulder. Driscoll on the leading car had struck up an approximation to the wearing of the green when a wavering star appeared on the road ahead of us. He grew momently larger. He came towards us apace. Flurry, on the car behind me, shouted suddenly, That's the mail-car with one of the lamps out. Tell those fellows ahead to look out! But the warning fell on deaf ears. When those can stop the blaze of grass from growing as they grow howled five discordant voices oblivious of the towering proximity of the star. A Bianconi mail-car is nearly three times the size of an ordinary outside car and when on a dark night it advances, cyclops-like, with but one eye it is difficult for even a sober driver to calculate its bulk. Above the sounds of melody there arose the thunder of heavy wheels, the splashing trample of three big horses, then a crash and a turmoil of shouts. Our cars pulled up just in time and I tore myself from the embrace of my publican to go to Lee Kellway's assistance. The wing of the Bianconi had caught the wing of the smaller car flinging old Bocock's mare on her side and throwing her freight headlong on top of her, the heat being surmounted by the roulette-table. The driver of the mail-car unshipped his solitary lamp and turned it upon the disaster. I saw that Flurry had already got hold of Lee Kellway by the heels and was dragging him from under the others. He struggled up, hapless, muddy and gasping, with Driscoll hanging on by his neck, still singing the wearing of the green. A voice from the mail-car said incredulously, "'Lee Kellway!' a spectacle face glared down upon him from under the dripping spikes of an umbrella. It was the right honourable the Earl of Waterbury, Lee Kellway's chief returning from his fishing expedition. Meanwhile, Slipper in the ditch did not cease to announce that, "'Devil so pleasant an afternoon, never you seen as what was in it!' End of Chapter 5 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 in Only Somerville and Martin Ross Chapter 6 Philip as Fox Hunt No one can accuse Philip and me of having married in haste. As a matter of fact, it was but little under five years from that autumn evening on the river when I had said what is called in Ireland the hard word, to the day in August when I was led to the altar by my best man and was subsequently led away from it by Mrs. Sinclair Yates. About two years after the five had been spent by me at Shrolain in ceaseless warfare with drains, eaveshoots, chimneys, pumps, all those fundamentals in short that the ingenuous and improving tenant expects to find established as a basis from which to rise to higher things. As far as rising to higher things went, frequent ascents to the roof to search for leaks summed up my achievements. In fact, I suffered so general a shrinkage of my ideals that the triumph of making the whole doorbell ring blinded me to the fact that the rat-holes in the hall floor were nailed up with pieces of tin biscuit boxes and that the casual visitor could instead of leaving a card have easily written his name in the damp on the walls. Philip, however, proved adorably callous to these and similar shortcomings. She regarded Shrolain and its floundering, foundering menace of incapable in the light of a gigantic picnic in a foreign land. She held long conversations daily with Mrs. Cadogan in order, as she informed me, to acquire the language. Without any ulterior domestic intention she engaged kitchen-maids because of the beauty of their eyes and house-maids because they had such delightfully picturesque old mothers and she declined to correct the phraseology of the parlour-maid whose painful habit it was to whisper Do you choose cherry or clary when proffering the wine? Fast days perhaps afforded my wife her first insight into the sterler realities of Irish housekeeping. Philip had what are known as high-church proclivities and took the matter seriously. I don't know how we're to manage for the servant's dinner tomorrow, said, coming into my office one Thursday morning, Julia says she promised God this long time that she wouldn't eat an egg on a fast day and the kitchen-maid says she won't eat herrings without their fried with onions and Mrs. Cadogan says she will not go to them extremes for servants. I should let Mrs. Cadogan settle the menu herself, I suggested. I asked her to do that, replied Philip, and she only said she thanked God she had no appetite. The lady of the house here fell away into unseasonable laughter. I made the demoralising suggestion that as we were going away for a couple of nights we might safely leave them to fight it out and the problem was abandoned. Philip had been much called on by the neighbourhood in all its shades and grades and daily she and her trousseau frocks presented themselves at hall-doors of varying dimensions in due acknowledgement of civilities. In Ireland, it may be noted, the process known in England as summering and wintering, a newcomer, does not obtain. Sociability and curiosity are like for bid delay. The visit to which we owed our escape from the intricacies of the fast day was to the noxies of Castle Knox, relations in some remote and tribal way of my landlord, Mr. Flurry, of that ilk. It involved a short journey by train and my wife's longest basket-trunk. It also, which was more serious, involved my being lent a horse to go out cubbing the following morning. At Castle Knox we sank into an almost forgotten environment of draught-proof windows and doors of deep carpets of silent servants instead of clattering belligerents. Philip had told me afterwards that it had only been by an effort that she had restrained herself from snatching up the train of her wedding-gown as she paced across the wide hall on Little Sir Valentine's arm. After three weeks at Shrelaine she found it difficult to remember that the floor was neither damp nor dusty. I had the good fortune to be of the limited number of those who got on with Lady Knox. Chiefly, I imagine, because I was as a worm before her and thankfully permitted her to do all the talking. Your wife is extremely pretty, she pronounced autocratically, surveying Philip her between the candle-shades. Does she ride? Lady Knox was a short, square lady with a weather-beaten face and an eye decisive from long habits of taking her own line across country and elsewhere. She would have made a very imposing little coachman and would have caused her stable helpers to rule the day they had the presumption to be born. It struck me that Sir Valentine sometimes did so. I'm glad you like her looks, I replied, as I fear you will find her terribly despicable otherwise, for one thing she not only can't ride, but she believes that I can. Oh, come, you're not as bad as all that, my hostess was good enough to say. I'm going to put you up on Sorcerer to-morrow, and we'll see you at the top of the hunt, if there is one. That young Knox hasn't a notion how to draw these woods. Well, the best run we had last year out of this place was with Flurry's hounds, struck in Miss Sally, sole daughter of Sir Valentine's house and home, from her place halfway down the table. It was not difficult to see that she and her mother held different views on the subject of Mr. Flurry Knox. I call it a criminal thing in any one's great-grandfather to rear up a preposterous troop of sons and plant them all out in his own country. Lady Knox said to me, with apparent irrelevance, I detest collaterals, blood may be thicker than water, but it is also a great deal nastier. In this country I find that fifteenth cousins consider themselves near-relations if they live within twenty miles of one. Having before now taken in the position with regard to Flurry Knox, I took care to accept these remarks as generalities, and turn the conversation to other themes. I see Mrs. Yates is doing wonders with Mr. Hamilton. said Lady Knox presently, following the direction of my eyes, which had strayed away to where Philippa was beaming upon her left-hand neighbour, a mildewed-looking old clergyman who was delivering a long dissertation, the purport of which we were happily unable to catch. She always had a gift for the church, I said. Not curates, said Lady Knox in her deep voice. I made haste to reply that it was the elders of the church who were venerated by my wife. Well, she has her fancy and old Eustace Hamilton. He's elderly enough, said Lady Knox. I wonder if she'd venerate him as much if she knew that he had fought with his sister-in-law, and they haven't spoken for thirty years. Though, for a matter of that, she added, I think it shows his good sense. Mrs. Knox is rather a friend of mine, I've entered. Is she? Well, she's not one of mine," replied my hostess with her usual definiteness. I'll say one thing for her. I believe she's always been a sportswoman. She's very rich, you'll know, and they say she only married old Badger Knox to save his hands from being sold to pay his debts. And then she took the horn from him and hunted them herself. Has she been rude to your wife yet? No? Well, she will. It's a mere question of time. She hates all English people. You know the story they tell of her. She was coming home from London, and when she was getting her ticket, the man asked if she had said a ticket for York. No, thank God. Cork, said Mrs. Knox. Well, I rather agree with her, said I. But why did she fight with Mr. Hamilton? Oh, nobody knows. I don't believe they know themselves. Whatever it was, the old lady drives five miles to Fort William every Sunday, rather than go to his church, just outside her own back gates. Lady Knox said, with a laugh like a terrier's bark, I wish I'd fought with him myself, she said. He gives us forty minutes every Sunday. As I struggled into my boots the following morning, I felt that Sir Valentine's acid confidences on cub hunting, bestowed on me at midnight, did credit to his judgment. A very moderate amusement, my dear major, he had said, in his little dry voice, you should stick to shooting. No one expects you to shoot before daybreak. It was six o'clock as I crept downstairs, and found Lady Knox and Miss Sally at breakfast, with two lamps on the table, and a foggy daylight oozing in from under the half-raised blinds. Philippa was already in the hall, pumping up her bicycle, in a state of excitement at the prospect of her first experience of hunting, that would have been more comprehensible to me than going to ride a strange horse, as I was. As I bolted my food, I saw the horses being led past the windows, and a faint twang of a horn told me that Flurry Knox and his hounds were not far off. Miss Sally jumped up. If I'm not on the cockatoo before the hounds come, I shall never get there, she said, hobbling out of the room in the toils of her safety habit. Her small, alert face looked very childish under her riding-hat. The lamplight struck sparks out of her thick coil of golden-red hair. I wondered how I had ever thought her like her prim little father. She was already on her white cob when I got to the hall door, and Flurry Knox was riding over the glistening wet grass with his hounds, while his whip, Dr. Jerome Hickey, was having a stirring time with the young entry and the rabbit-holes. They moved on without stopping, up a back avenue, and a tall and dripping trees to a thick laurel-covered at some little distance from the house. Into this the hounds were thrown, and the usual period of fidgety inaction set in for the riders, of whom all told there were about half a dozen. Lady Knox, square and solid on her big, confidential hand-grey, was near me, and her eyes were on me and by mount. With her rubicant face and white collar she was more than ever like a coachman. Sorcerer looks as if he suited you well, she said, after a few minutes of silence, during which the hounds rustled and crackled steadily through the laurels. He's a little high on the leg, and so are you, you know, so you show each other off. Sorcerer was standing like a rock, with his good-looking head in the air and his eyes fastened on the cover. His manners so far had been those of a perfect gentleman, and were in marked contrast to those of Miss Sally's carb, who was sidling, hopping and snatching unappeasably at his bit. Philippa had disappeared from view down the avenue ahead. The fog was melting, and the sun threw long blades of light through the trees. Everything was quiet, and in the distance the curtained windows of the house marked the warm repose of Sir Valentine, and those of the party who shared his opinion of cubbing. Hark! Hark! to cry there! It was Fleury's voice, away at the other side of the covert. The rustling and brushing through the laurels became more veerment, and then passed out of hearing. He never will leave his hounds alone, said Mrs. Knox, disapprovingly. Miss Sally and the cockatoo moved away in a series of heraldic capers towards the end of the laurel plantation, and at the same moment I saw Philippa on her bicycle, shoot into view on the drive ahead of us. I've seen a fox! She screamed, white, but I believe to have been personal terror, though she says it was excitement. It passed quite close to me. Which way did he go? Bellowed a voice, which I recognized as Dr. Hickey's, somewhere in the deep of the laurels. Down the drive, returned Philippa, with a peahen quality in her tones, with which I was quite unacquainted. An electrifying screech of gone-away was projected from the laurels by Dr. Hickey. Chanted Flurry's horn at the top of the covert. This is what he calls cubbing, said Lady Knox, a bit of farce, but nonetheless he loosed her sedate monster into a canter. Sorcerer got his hind legs under him and hardened his crest against the bit and re-all hustled along the drive after the flying figure of my wife. I knew very little about horses, but I realized that even with the hounds tumbling hysterically out of the covert and the cockatoo kicking the gravel into his face, Sorcerer comported himself with the manners of the best society. Up a side road I saw Flurry Knox opening half of a gate and cramming through it. In a moment we also had crammed through and the turf of a pasture field was under our feet. Dr. Hickey lent forward and took hold of his horse. I did likewise, with the trifling difference that my horse took hold of me and I steered for Flurry Knox with single-hearted purpose. The hounds already afield ahead being merely an exciting and noisy accompaniment of this endeavour. A heavy-stone wall was the first occurrence of note. Flurry chose a place where the top was loose and his clumsy-looking brown mare changed feet on the rattling stones like a fairy. Sorcerer came at it tense and collected as a bow at full stretch and sailed steeply into the air. I saw the wall far beneath me with an unsuspected ditch on the far side and I felt my hat following me at the full stretch of its guard as we swept over it. Then with a long slant we descended to earth some sixteen feet from where we had left it and I was possessor of the gratifying fact that I had achieved a good-sized fly and had not perceptibly moved in my saddle. Subsequent disillusioning experience has taught me that but few horses jump like sorcerer so gallantly, so sympathetically and with such supreme mastery of the subject. But nonetheless the enthusiasm that he imparted to me has never been extinguished and that October morning ride revealed to me the unsuspecting intoxication of fox-hunting. Behind me I heard the scrabbling of the cockatoo's little hooves among the loose stones and Lady Knox, galloping on my left jerked a maternal chin over her shoulder to mark her daughter's progress. For my part, had there been an entire circus behind me I was far too much occupied with ramming on my hat and trying to hold sorcerer to have looked round. And all my spare faculties were devoted to steering for Flurry who had taken a right-handed turn and was at that moment surmounting a bang of uncertain and briary aspect. I surmounted it also with the swiftness and simplicity for which the Quaker's methods of bank-jumping had not prepared me. On two or three fields, traversed at the same steeple-chase pace brought us to a road and to an abrupt check. There suddenly were the hounds, scrambling in baffled silence down into the road from the opposite bank to look for the line they had overrun. And there, amazingly, was Philippa, engaged in excited converse with several men with spades over their shoulders. "'Did you see the fox-boys?' shouted Flurry addressing the group. "'We did,' cried my wife and her friends in chorus. He ran at the road. "'We'd be badly off without Mrs. Yates,' said Flurry, as he whirled his mare round and clattered up the road with a hustle of hounds after him. It occurred to me, as forcibly as any mere earthly thing, that can occur to those who are rapt and the sublimities of a run, that for a young woman who had never before seen a fox out of a cage at the zoo, Philippa was taking to hunting very kindly. Her cheeks were the most brilliant pink. Her blue eyes shone. "'Oh, Sinclair,' she exclaimed. "'They say he's going for Orseless, and there's a road I can ride all the way. "'You can, Miss, sure we'll show you,' chorused her cortege. Her foot was on the pedal, ready to mount. Decidedly my wife was in no need of assistance from me. Up the road a hound gave a yelp of discovery and flung himself over a stile into the fields. The rest of the pack went squealing and jostling after him. A knife followed flurry over one of those infinitely varied erections, pleasantly termed gaps in Ireland. On this occasion the gap was made of three razor-edged slabs of slate leaning against an iron bar, and sorcerer conveyed to me his thorough knowledge of the matter by a lift of his hindquarters that made me feel as if I was being skillfully kicked downstairs. To what extent I looked it, I cannot say, nor providentially can Philip her as she had already started. I only know that undeserved good luck restored me to my stirrup before sorcerer got away with me in the next field. What followed was, I am told, a very fast fifteen minutes. For me time was not. The empty fields rushed past uncounted. Offences came and went in a flash, while the wind sang in my ears, and the dazzle of the early sun was in my eyes. I saw the hounds occasionally, sometimes pouring over a green bank as the charging breaker lifts and flings itself, sometimes driving across a field as the white tongues of foam slice racing over the sand, and always ahead of me was Flurry Knox, going as a man goes who knows his country, who knows his horse, and whose heart is holy and absolutely in the right place. Do what I would. Sorcerer's implacable stride carried me closer and closer to the brown mare, till as I thundered down the slope of a long fielder, I was not twenty yards behind Flurry. Sorcerer had stiffened his neck to iron, and to slow him down was beyond me, but I fought his head away to the right and found myself coming hard and steadier to stone-faced bank with broken ground in front of it. Flurry bore away to the left, shouting something that I did not understand. That Sorcerer shortened his stride at the right moment was entirely due to his own judgment. Standing well away from the jump, he rose like a stag out of the tussocky ground, and as he swung my twelve stone six into the air the obstacle revealed itself to him and me as consisting not of one bank, but of two, and between the two lay a deep grassy lane half choked with furs. I have often been asked to state the width of the Bahrain and can only reply that in my opinion it was at least eighteen feet. Flurry Knox and Dr. Hickey, who did not jump it, say that it's not more than five. What Sorcerer did with it, I cannot say. The sensation was of a towering flight with a kick-back in it, a big-ish drop, and a landing on sea-springs, still on the downhill grade. That was how one of the best horses in Ireland took one of Ireland's most ignorant riders over a very nasty place. The somber line of firwood lay ahead, rimmed with a grey wall, and in another couple of minutes we had pulled up on the Ursulus Road and were watching the hounds struggling over the wall into Ursulus' demean. No hurry now, said Flurry, turning in his saddle to watch the cockatoo jump into the road. He is to ground in the big earth inside. Well, Major, it's well for you that that's a big jumped horse. I thought you were a dead man a while ago when you faced him at the Bahrain. I was disclaiming intention in the matter when Lady Knox and the others joined us. I thought you told me your wife was no sportsman, she said to me, critically scanning sorcerer's legs for cuts the while. But when I saw her a minute ago she had abandoned her bicycle and was running across country like, Look at her now, interrupted Miss Sally. Oh! Oh! In the interval between these exclamations my incredulous eyes beheld my wife in mid-air, hand in hand with a couple of stalwart country boys with whom she was leaping in unison from the top of her bank onto the road. Everyone, even the satinine Dr. Hickey, began to laugh. I rode back to Philippa, who was exchanging compliments and congratulations with her escort. Oh! Sinclair, she cried, wasn't it splendid? I saw you jumping and everything. Where are they going now? My dear girl, I said, with marital disapproval. You're killing yourself. Where's your bicycle? Oh! it's punctured in a sort of lane back there. It's all right, and then they, she breathlessly waved her hand at her attendants. They showed me the way. Because you'll prove very good, Miss, said a grinning cavalier. Faith she did, said another, polishing his shining brow with his white flannel coat sleeve. She leapt like a hearse. And may I ask how you propose to go home, said I? I don't know, and I don't care. I'm not going home. She cast an entirely disobedient eye at me. And your eyeglass is hanging down your back, and your tie is bulging out over your waistcoat. The little group of riders had begun to move away. We're going into Arseless, called out flowy. Come on, and make my grandmother give you some breakfast, Mrs. Yates. She always has it at eight o'clock. The front gates were close at hand, and we turned in under the tall beach-strees, with the unswept leaves rustling round the horse's feet, and the lovely blue of the October morning sky filling the spaces between smooth grey branches and golden leaves. The woods rang with the voices of the hounds, enjoying an untrammeled rabbit-hunt, while the master and the whip, both on foot, strolled along unconcernedly, with their bridles over their arms, making themselves agreeable to my wife. An occasional touch of flurry-torn, or a crack of Dr. Hickey's whip, just indicating to the pack that the authorities still took a friendly interest in their doings. Down a grassy glade in the wood, a party of old Mrs. Knox's young horses suddenly swept into view, headed by an old mare, who, with her tail over her back, stampeded ponderously past our cavalcade, shaking and swinging her handsome old head, while her youthful friends bucked and kicked and snapped at each other round her with the ferocious humour of their kind. Here, Jerome, take the horn," said flurry to Dr. Hickey. I'm going to see Mrs. Yates up to the house. Away these tom-fools won't gallop on top of her. From this point it seemed to me that Philip's adventurers are more worthy of record than mine, and as she has favoured me with a full account of them, I venture to think my version may be relied on. Mrs. Knox was already at breakfast when Philip was led, quaking, into her formidable presence. My wife's acquaintance with Mrs. Knox was, so far, limited to a state visit on either side, and she found but little comfort in flurry's assurances that his grandmother wouldn't mind if he brought all the hounds into breakfast, coupled with the statement that she would put her eyes on sticks for the major. Whatever the truth of this may have been, Mrs. Knox received her guest with an equanimity quite unshaken by the fact that her boots were in the fender instead of on her feet, and that a couple of shawls of varying dimensions and degrees of age did not conceal the inner presence of a magenta flannel dressing-jacket. She installed Philip her at the table, implied her with food, oblivious to whether the needful implements with which to eat it were forthcoming or no. She told Flurry where a vixen had reared her family, and she watched him ride away with some biting comments on his mare's hawks, screamed after him from the window. The dining-room at Osseless Castle is one of the many rooms in Ireland in which Cromwell is said to have stabled his horse, and probably no one would have objected less than Mrs. Knox had she been consulted in the matter. Philip had questions if the room had ever been tidied up since, and she endorses Flurry's observation that there wasn't a day in the year you wouldn't get a feeding for a hen and check-ins on the floor. Opposite to Philip, on a Louis Carr's chair, sat Mrs. Knox's woolly dog, his suspicious little eyes peering at her out of their setting of pink lids and dirty white wool. A couple of young horses outside the windows tore at the matted creepers on the walls, or thrust faces that were half shy, half impure and into the room. Portley pigeons waddled to and fro on the broad window sill, sometimes flying in to perch on picture frames, while they kept up incessantly a horse and pompous cooing. Animals and children are, as a rule, a like-destructive conversation, but Mrs. Knox, when she chose, bien entendu, could have made herself agreeable in a nore's arc, and Philip has a gift of sympathetic attention that personal experience has taught me to regard with distrust, as well as respect, while it has often made me realise the worldly wisdom of Kingsley's injunction. Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever. Family prayers, declined by Mrs. Knox with alarming austerity, followed close on breakfast. Philip and a vinegar-faced henchwoman forming the family. The prayers were long, and through the open window as they progressed came distantly a hoop or two. The declamatory tones staggered a bit, and then continued at a distinctly higher rate of speed. Mam, mam! whispered a small voice at the window. Mrs. Knox made a repressive gesture, and held on her way. A sudden outcry of hounds followed, and the owner of the whisper, a small boy with a face freckled like a turkey's egg, darted from the window, and dragged a donkey in the bath-chair into view. Philip admits to having lost the thread of the discourse, but she thinks that the Armen that immediately entued can hardly have come in its usual place. Mrs. Knox shut the book abruptly, scrambled up from her knees, and said, They've found! In a surprisingly short space of time she had added to her attire her boots, a fair cape, and a garden hat, and was in the bath-chair the small boy stimulating the donkey with the success peculiar to his class while Philip hung on behind. The woods of Orseless are hilly and extensive, and on that particular morning it seemed that they held as many foxes as hounds. In vain was the horn blown and the whips cracked, small rejoicing parties of hounds, each with the fox of its own, scarred to and fro. Every labourer in the vicinity had left his work and was sedulously heading every fox with yells that would have befitted a tiger-hunt and sticks and stones when the occasion served. Will I pull out as far as the big rosy dandrum, ma'am! inquired the small boy. I seen three of the dogs go in it and they're yowling. You will, said Mrs. Knox, thumping the donkey on the back with her umbrella. Here, Jeremiah Regan, come down out of that with the pitchfork. Do you want to kill the fox, you fool? I do not, Your Honor, ma'am, responded Jeremiah Regan, a tall young countryman, emerging from a bramble-break. Did you see him, said Mrs. Knox, eagerly? I seen himself in his ten-pops drinking below at the lake-air yesterday, Your Honor, ma'am, and here as big as a chestnut-horse said Jeremiah. For yesterday, snorted Mrs. Knox, go on to the rotted dendrons, Johnny. The party, reinforced by Jeremiah and the pitchfork, progressed at a high rate of speed along the shrubbery path, encountering en route Lady Knox, stooping on her horse's neck under the sweeping branches of the laurels. Your horse is too high for my cupboards, Lady Knox, said the lady of the manor, with a malicious eye at Lady Knox's flushed face and dinged hat. I'm afraid you would be left behind like Absalom when the hounds go away. As they never do anything here but hunt rabbits, retorted her ladyship, I don't think that's likely. Mrs. Knox gave her donkey another whack and passed on. Rabbits, my dear, she said scornfully to Philippa, that's all she knows about it. I declare it disgusts me to see a woman of that age making such a judy of herself. Rabbits, indeed. Down in the thicket of rotted dendron, everything was very quiet for a time. Philippa strained her eyes in vain to see any of the riders. The horn-blowing and the whip-cracking passed on almost out of hearing. Once or twice a hound worked through the rotted dendrons, glanced at the party, and hurried on, immersed in business. All at once Johnny, the donkey-boy, whispered excitedly, Look at he! Look at he! and pointed to a boulder of grey rock that stood out among the dark evergreens. A big yellow cub was crouching on it. He instantly slipped into the shelter of the bushes and the irrepressible Jerry Meyer, uttering a rending shriek, plunged into the thicket after him. Two or three hounds came rushing at the sound, and after this, Philippa says, she finds some difficulty in recording the proper order of events. Chiefly, she confesses, because of the wholly ridiculous tears of excitement that blurred her eyes. We ran, she said, we simply tore and the donkey galloped, and as for that old Mrs. Knox, she was giving cracked screams to the hounds all the time, and they were screaming too, and then somehow we were all out on the road. What seems to have occurred was that three couple of hounds, Jerry Meyer Regan and Mrs. Knox's equipage, amongst them somehow hustled the cub out of Ursulus' demean, and up onto the hill on the farther side of the road. Jerry Meyer was sent back by his mistress to Fetch Flurry, and the rest of the party pursued a thrilling course along the road, parallel with that of the hounds, who were hunting slowly through the gorse on the hillside. Upon my honour and word, Mrs. Yates, my dear, we have to hunt to ourselves, said Mrs. Knox to the panting Philippa, as they pounded along the road. Johnny, do you see the fox? I do, ma'am," shrieked Johnny, who possessed the usual field-glass vision bestowed upon his kind. Look at him, overright us on the hill above. Hey, the spotty dog have him—no, he's gone from him. We're now to that." This to the donkey, with blows that sounded like the beating of carpets, and produced rather more dust. They had left Ursulus some half a mile behind, when, from a strip of wood on their right, the fox suddenly slipped over the bank onto the road just ahead of them, ran up it for a few yards, and whisked in at a small entrance gate, with the three couple of hounds yelling on a red-hot scent, not thirty yards behind. The bath-chair party whirled in at their heels. Philippa and the donkey considerably blown. Johnny scarlet through his freckles, but as fresh as paint, the old lady blind and deaf to all things saved the chase. The hounds went raging through the shrubs beside the drive, and away down a grassy slope, towards a shallow glen, in the bottom of which ran a little stream, and after them, over the grass, bumped the bath-chair. At the stream they turned sharply, and ran up the glen towards the avenue, which crossed it by means of a rough stone viaduct. "'Pon my consciences into the old culvert!' exclaimed Mrs. Knox. "'There was one of my hounds choked there once, long ago. "'Beat on the donkey, Johnny!' At this juncture, Philippa's narrative again becomes incoherent, not to say breathless. She is, however, positive that it was somewhere about here that the upset of the bath-chair occurred, but she cannot be clear as to whether she picked up the donkey or Mrs. Knox, or whether she herself was picked up by Johnny while Mrs. Knox picked up the donkey. From my knowledge of Mrs. Knox, I should say she picked up herself and no one else. At all events, the next salient point is the palpitating moment when Mrs. Knox, Johnny and Philippa are successively applying an eye to the opening of the culvert by which the stream trickled under the viaduct, while five dripping hounds, bathed and leapt around them, discovered by more senses than that of sight that the fox was in it, and furthermore that one of the hounds was in it, too. "'There's a strong greeting before him at the far end,' said Johnny, his head in at the mouth of the hole, his voice sounding as if he were talking into a jug. "'The two of them's fighting in it. They'll be choked surely.' "'Then don't stand gabbling there, you little fool, but get in and pull the hound out,' explained Mrs. Knox, who was balancing herself on a stone in the stream. "'I'll be in trade, ma'am,' whined Johnny. "'Baldedash,' said the implacable Mrs. Knox, "'in with you.' I understand that Philippa assisted Johnny into the culvert and presumed that it was in so doing that she acquired the two Robinson Crusoe bear footprints, which decorated her jacket when I next met her. "'Have you got hold of him yet, Johnny?' cried Mrs. Knox up the culvert. "'I have, ma'am, by the tail,' responded Johnny's voice, sepulchral in the depths. "'Can you stir him, Johnny?' "'I cannot, ma'am, and the water is rising in it. "'Well, please, God, they'll not open the mill damn,' remarked Mrs. Knox philosophically to Philippa as she caught hold of Johnny's dirty ankles. "'Hold on the tail, Johnny,' she hauled, with as might be expected no appreciable result. "'Run, my dear, and look for somebody, and we'll have that fox yet.' Philippa ran, with as she knew not, pursued by fearful visions of bursting mill dams and maddened foxes at bay. As she sped up the avenue she heard voices, robust male voices in a shrubbery, and made for them. Advancing along an embelloured walk toward her was what she took for one wild instant to be a funeral. A second glance showed her that it was a party of clergymen of all ages, walking by twos and threes in the dappled shade of the overarching trees. Obviously she had intruded her sacrilegious presence into a clerical meeting. She acknowledges that at this awe-inspiring spectacle she faltered. But the thought of Johnny, the hound and the fox, advocating, possibly drowning, together in the culvert, nerved her. She does not remember what she said or how she said it, but I fancy she must have conveyed to them the impression that old Mrs. Knox was being drowned, as she immediately found herself heading a charge of the Irish church towards the scene of the disaster. Fate has not always used me well, but on this occasion it was mercifully decreed that I and the other members of the hunt should be privileged to arrive in time to see my wife and her rescue-party precipitating themselves down the glen. Holy biddy, ejaculated flurry, is she running a paper-chase with all the Parsons? But look, for pity's sake, will you look at my grandmother and my uncle Eustace? Mrs. Knox and her sworn enemy, the old clergyman whom I had met at dinner the night before, were standing, apparently in the stream, tugging at two bare legs that projected from a hole in the viaduct, and arguing at the top of their voices. The bath-chair lay on its side with the donkey grazing beside it. On the bank a stout arch-deacon was tendering advice, and the hounds danced and howled round the entire group. I tell you, Eliza, you had better let the arch-deacon try!" thundered Mr. Hamilton. Did I tell you I will not? versivirated Mrs. Knox, with a tug at the end of the sentence, that elicited a subterranean lament from Johnny. Now, who was right about that second-grating I told you so twenty years ago? Exactly as Philippa and her rescue-party arrived, the efforts of Mrs. Knox and her brother-in-law triumphed. The struggling, sopping form of Johnny was slowly drawn from the hole, drenched, speechless, but clinging to the stern of a hound, who in its turn had its jaws fast in the hind-quarters of a limp yellow cub. Oh, it's dead, well, Philippa! I did think I should have been in time to save it. Well, if that doesn't be dull, said Dr. Hickey. End of chapter 6