IX
THE POLICY OF THE CLOSED DOOR
The disasters and humiliations that befell me at Drumcurran Fair mayyet be remembered. They certainly have not been forgotten in theregions about Skebawn, where the tale of how Bernard Shute and I stoleeach other's horses has passed into history. The grand-daughter of theMountain Hare, bought by Mr. Shute with such light-hearted enthusiasm,was restored to that position between the shafts of a cart that she wasso well fitted to grace; Moonlighter, his other purchase, spent the twomonths following on the fair in "favouring" a leg with a strainedsinew, and in receiving visits from the local vet., who, howeveruncertain in his diagnosis of Moonlighter's leg, had accuratelyestimated the length of Bernard's foot.
Miss Bennett's mare Cruiskeen, alone of the trio, was immediately andthoroughly successful. She went in harness like a hero, she carriedPhilippa like an elder sister, she was never sick or sorry; as PeterCadogan summed her up, "That one 'd live where another 'd die." In hersafe keeping Philippa made her debut with hounds at an uneventfulmorning's cubbing, with no particular result, except that Philippareturned home so stiff that she had to go to bed for a day, and arosemore determined than ever to be a fox-hunter.
The opening meet of Mr. Knox's foxhounds was on November 1, and on thatmorning Philippa on Cruiskeen, accompanied by me on the Quaker, set outfor Ardmeen Cross, the time-honoured fixture for All Saints' Day. Theweather was grey and quiet, and full of all the moist sweetness of anIrish autumn. There had been a great deal of rain during the pastmonth; it had turned the bracken to a purple brown, and had filled thehollows with shining splashes of water. The dead leaves were slipperyunder foot, and the branches above were thinly decked with yellow,where the pallid survivors of summer still clung to their posts. AsPhilippa and I sedately approached the meet the red coats of FlurryKnox and his whip, Dr. Jerome Hickey, were to be seen on the road atthe top of the hill; Cruiskeen put her head in the air, and stared atthem with eyes that understood all they portended.
"Sinclair," said my wife hurriedly, as a straggling hound, flogged inby Dr. Hickey, uttered a grievous and melodious howl, "remember, ifthey find, it's no use to talk to me, for I shan't be able to speak."
I was sufficiently acquainted with Philippa in moments of enthusiasm toexhibit silently the corner of a clean pocket-handkerchief; I have seenher cry when a police constable won a bicycle race in Skebawn; she haswept at hearing Sir Valentine Knox's health drunk with musical honoursat a tenants' dinner. It is an amiable custom, but, as she herselfadmits, it is unbecoming.
An imposing throng, in point of numbers, was gathered at thecross-roads, the riders being almost swamped in the crowd of traps,outside cars, bicyclists, and people on foot. The field was aneminently representative one. The Clan Knox was, as usual, there inforce, its more aristocratic members dingily respectable in black coatsand tall hats that went impartially to weddings, funerals, and hunts,and, like a horse that is past mark of mouth, were no longer to beidentified with any special epoch; there was a humbler squireen elementin tweeds and flat-brimmed pot-hats, and a good muster of farmers, menof the spare, black-muzzled, West of Ireland type, on horses thatranged from the cart mare, clipped trace high, to shaggy and leggythree-year-olds, none of them hunters, but all of them able to hunt.Philippa and I worked our way to the heart of things, where was Flurry,seated on his brown mare, in what appeared to be a somewhat moodysilence. As we exchanged greetings I was aware that his eye wasresting with extreme disfavour upon two approaching figures. I put upmy eye-glass, and perceived that one of them was Miss Sally Knox, on atall grey horse; the other was Mr. Bernard Shute, in all the flawlessbeauty of his first pink coat, mounted on Stockbroker, a well-known,hard-mouthed, big-jumping bay, recently purchased from Dr. Hickey.
During the languors of a damp autumn the neighbourhood had been muchnourished and sustained by the privilege of observing and diagnosingthe progress of Mr. Shute's flirtation with Miss Sally Knox. What madeit all the more enjoyable for the lookers-on--or most of them--was,that although Bernard's courtship was of the nature of a proclamationfrom the housetops, Miss Knox's attitude left everything to theimagination. To Flurry Knox the romantic but despicable position ofslighted rival was comfortably allotted; his sole sympathisers werePhilippa and old Mrs. Knox of Aussolas, but no one knew if he neededsympathisers. Flurry was a man of mystery.
Mr. Shute and Miss Knox approached us rapidly, the latter's mountpulling hard.
"Flurry," I said, "isn't that grey the horse Shute bought from you lastJuly at the fair?"
Flurry did not answer me. His face was as black as thunder. He turnedhis horse round, cursing two country boys who got in his way, with lowand concentrated venom, and began to move forward, followed by thehounds. If his wish was to avoid speaking to Miss Sally it was not tobe gratified.
"Good-morning, Flurry," she began, sitting close down to Moonlighter'sramping jog as she rode up beside her cousin. "What a hurry you're in!We passed no end of people on the road who won't be here for anotherten minutes."
"No more will I," was Mr. Knox's cryptic reply, as he spurred the brownmare into a trot.
Moonlighter made a vigorous but frustrated effort to buck, andindemnified himself by a successful kick at a hound.
"Bother you, Flurry! Can't you walk for a minute?" exclaimed MissSally, who looked about as large, in relation to her horse, as theconventional tomtit on a round of beef. "You might have more sensethan to crack your whip under this horse's nose! I don't believe youknow what horse it is even!"
I was not near enough to catch Flurry's reply.
"Well, if you didn't want him to be lent to me you shouldn't have soldhim to Mr. Shute!" retorted Miss Knox, in her clear, provoking littlevoice.
"I suppose he's afraid to ride him himself," said Flurry, turning hishorse in at a gate. "Get ahead there, Jerome, can't you? It's betterto put them in at this end than to have every one riding on top ofthem!"
Miss Sally's cheeks were still very pink when I came up and began totalk to her, and her grey-green eyes had a look in them like those ofan angry kitten.
The riders moved slowly down a rough pasture-field, and took up theirposition along the brow of Ardmeen covert, into which the hounds hadalready hurled themselves with their customary contempt for theconvenances. Flurry's hounds, true to their nationality, were in thehabit of doing the right thing in the wrong way.
Untouched by autumn, the furze bushes of Ardmeen covert were darklygreen, save for a golden fleck of blossom here and there, and theglistening grey cobwebs that stretched from spike to spike. The lookof the ordinary gorse covert is familiar to most people as a tidyenclosure of an acre or so, filled with low plants of well-educatedgorse; not so many will be found who have experience of it as a rocky,sedgy wilderness, half a mile square, garrisoned with brigades of furzebushes, some of them higher than a horse's head, lean, strong, andcunning, like the foxes that breed in them, impenetrable, with theirbristling spikes, as a hedge of bayonets. By dint of infinite leisureand obstinate greed, the cattle had made paths for themselves throughthe bushes to the patches of grass that they hemmed in; theirhoofprints were guides to the explorer, down muddy staircases of rock,and across black intervals of unplumbed bog. The whole covert slantedgradually down to a small river that raced round three sides of it, andbeyond the stream, in agreeable contrast, lay a clean and wholesomecountry of grass fields and banks.
The hounds drew slowly along and down the hill towards the river, andthe riders hung about outside the covert, and tried--I can answer forat least one of them--to decide which was the least odious of the waysthrough it, in the event of the fox breaking at the far side. MissSally took up a position not very far from me, and it was easy to seethat she had her hands full with her borrowed mount, on whose temperthe delay and suspense were visibly telling. His iron-grey neck waswhite from the chafing of the reins; had the ground under his feet beenred-hot he could hardly have sidled and hopped more uncontrollably;nothing but the most impassione
d conjugation of the verb to condemncould have supplied any human equivalent for the manner in which hetore holes in the sedgy grass with a furious forefoot. Those who wereeven superficial judges of character gave his heels a liberal allowanceof sea-room, and Mr. Shute, who could not be numbered among such, andhad, as usual, taken up a position as near Miss Sally as possible, wasrewarded by a double knock on his horse's ribs that was a cause ofheartless mirth to the lady of his affections.
Not a hound had as yet spoken, but they were forcing their way throughthe gorse forest and shoving each other jealously aside with growingexcitement, and Flurry could be seen at intervals, moving forward inthe direction they were indicating. It was at this juncture that theubiquitous Slipper presented himself at my horse's shoulder.
"'Tis for the river he's making, Major," he said, with an upward rollof his squinting eyes, that nearly made me sea-sick. "He's a CastleKnox fox that came in this morning, and ye should get ahead down to theford!"
A tip from Slipper was not to be neglected, and Philippa and I began acautious progress through the gorse, followed by Miss Knox as quietlyas Moonlighter's nerves would permit.
"Wishful has it!" she exclaimed, as a hound came out into view, uttereda sharp yelp, and drove forward.
"Hark! hark!" roared Flurry with at least three r's reverberating ineach "hark"; at the same instant came a holloa from the farther side ofthe river, and Dr. Hickey's renowned and blood-curdling screech wasuplifted at the bottom of the covert. Then babel broke forth, as thehounds, converging from every quarter, flung themselves shrieking onthe line. Moonlighter went straight up on his hind-legs, and droppedagain with a bound that sent him crushing past Philippa and Cruiskeen;he did it a second time, and was almost on to the tail of the Quaker,whose bulky person was not to be hurried in any emergency.
"Get on if you can, Major Yeates!" called out Sally, steadying the greyas well as she could in the narrow pathway between the great gorsebushes.
Other horses were thundering behind us, men were shouting to each otherin similar passages right and left of us, the cry of the hounds filledthe air with a kind of delirium. A low wall with a stick laid along itbarred the passage in front of me, and the Quaker firmly andimmediately decided not to have it until some one else had dislodgedthe pole.
"Go ahead!" I shouted, squeezing to one side with heroic disregard ofthe furze bushes and my new tops.
The words were hardly out of my mouth when Moonlighter, mad withthwarted excitement, shot by me, hurtled over the obstacle withextravagant fury, landed twelve feet beyond it on clattering slipperyrock, saved himself from falling with an eel-like forward buck on tosedgy ground, and bolted at full speed down the muddy cattle track.There are corners--rocky, most of them--in that cattle track, thatSally has told me she will remember to her dying day; boggy holes ofany depth, ranging between two feet and half-way to Australia, that shesays she does not fail to mention in the General Thanksgiving; but atthe time they occupied mere fractions of the strenuous seconds in whichit was hopeless for her to do anything but try to steer, trust to luck,sit hard down into the saddle and try to stay there. (For my part, Iwould as soon try to adhere to the horns of a charging bull as to thecrutches of a side-saddle, but happily the necessity is not likely toarise.) I saw Flurry Knox a little ahead of her on the same track,jamming his mare into the furze bushes to get out of her way; heshouted something after her about the ford, and started to gallop forit himself by a breakneck short cut.
The hounds were already across the river, and it was obvious that, fordor no ford, Moonlighter's intentions might be simply expressed in theformula "Be with them I will." It was all down-hill to the river, andamong the furze bushes and rocks there was neither time nor place toturn him. He rushed at it with a shattering slip upon a streak ofrock, with a heavy plunge in the deep ground by the brink; it was asbad a take-off for twenty feet of water as could well be found. Thegrey horse rose out of the boggy stuff with all the impetus that paceand temper could give, but it was not enough. For one instant thetwisting, sliding current was under Sally, the next a veil of watersprang up all round her, and Moonlighter was rolling and lurching inthe desperate effort to find foothold in the rocky bed of the stream.
I was following at the best pace I could kick out of the Quaker, andsaw the water swirl into her lap as her horse rolled to the near-side.She caught the mane to save herself, but he struggled on to his legsagain, and came floundering broadside on to the farther bank. In threeseconds she had got out of the saddle and flung herself at the bank,grasping the rushes, and trying, in spite of the sodden weight of herhabit, to drag herself out of the water.
At the same instant I saw Flurry and the brown mare dashing through theford, twenty yards higher up. He was off his horse and beside her withthat uncanny quickness that Flurry reserved for moments of emergency,and, catching her by the arms, swung her on to the bank as easily as ifshe had been the kennel terrier.
"Catch the horse!" she called out, scrambling to her feet.
"Damn the horse!" returned Flurry, in the rage that is so often thereaction from a bad scare.
I turned along the bank and made for the ford; by this time it was fullof hustling, splashing riders, through whom Bernard Shute, furiouslypicking up a bad start, drove a devastating way. He tried to turn hishorse down the bank towards Miss Knox, but the hounds were runninghard, and, to my intense amusement, Stockbroker refused to abandon thechase, and swept his rider away in the wake of his stable companion,Dr. Hickey's young chestnut. By this time two country boys had, as isusual in such cases, risen from the earth, and fished Moonlighter outof the stream. Miss Sally wound up an acrimonious argument with hercousin by observing that she didn't care what he said, and placing herwater-logged boot in his obviously unwilling hand, in a second wasagain in the saddle, gathering up the wet reins with the trembling,clumsy fingers of a person who is thoroughly chilled and in a violenthurry. She set Moonlighter going, and was away in a moment, gallopinghim at the first fence at a pace that suited his steeple-chasing ideas.
"Mr. Knox!" panted Philippa, who had by this time joined us, "make hergo home!"
"She can go where she likes as far as I'm concerned," responded Mr.Knox, pitching himself on his mare's back and digging in the spurs.
Moonlighter had already glided over the bank in front of us, with aperfunctory flick at it with his heels; Flurry's mare and Cruiskeenjumped it side by side with equal precision. It was a bank of somefive feet high; the Quaker charged it enthusiastically, refused itabruptly, and, according to his infuriating custom at such moments,proceeded to tear hurried mouthfuls of grass.
"Will I give him a couple o' belts, your Honour?" shouted one of therunning accompaniment of country boys.
"You will!" said I, with some further remarks to the Quaker that I neednot commit to paper.
Swish! Whack! The sound was music in my ears, as the good,remorseless ash sapling bent round the Quaker's dappled hind-quarters.At the third stripe he launched both his heels in the operator's face;at the fourth he reared undecidedly; at the fifth he bundled over thebank in a manner purged of hesitation.
"Ha!" yelled my assistants, "that'll put the fear o' God in him!" asthe Quaker fled headlong after the hunt. "He'll be the betther o' thatwhile he lives!"
Without going quite as far as this, I must admit that for the nexthalf-hour he was astonishingly the better of it.
The Castle Knox fox was making a very pretty line of it over the sevenmiles that separated him from his home. He headed through a grassycountry of Ireland's mild and brilliant green, fenced with sound andbuxom banks, enlivened by stone walls, uncompromised by the presence ofgates, and yet comfortably laced with lanes for the furtherance ofthose who had laid to heart Wolsey's valuable advice: "Fling awayambition: by that sin fell the angels." The flotsam and jetsam of thehunt pervaded the landscape: standing on one long bank, threedismounted farmers flogged away at the refusing steeds below them, likeanglers trying to rise a sulky fish; half-a-dozen hats, bo
bbing in astring, showed where the road riders followed the delusive windings ofa bohereen. It was obvious that in the matter of ambition they wouldnot have caused Cardinal Wolsey a moment's uneasiness; whether angelsor otherwise, they were not going to run any risk of falling.
Flurry's red coat was like a beacon two fields ahead of me, withPhilippa following in his tracks; it was the first run worthy of thename that Philippa had ridden, and I blessed Miss Bobby Bennett as Isaw Cruiskeen's undefeated fencing. An encouraging twang of theDoctor's horn notified that the hounds were giving us a chance; eventhe Quaker pricked his blunt ears and swerved in his stride to thesound. A stone wall, a rough patch of heather, a boggy field, dinteddeep and black with hoof marks, and the stern chase was at an end. Thehounds had checked on the outskirts of a small wood, and the field,thinned down to a panting dozen or so, viewed us with the disfavourshown by the first flight towards those who unexpectedly add to theirselect number. In the depths of the wood Dr. Hickey might be hearduttering those singular little yelps of encouragement that to theirreverent suggest a milkman in his dotage. Bernard Shute, who neitherknew nor cared what the hounds were doing, was expatiating at greatlength to an uninterested squireen upon the virtues and perfections ofhis new mount.
"I did all I knew to come and help you at the river," he said, ridingup to the splashed and still dripping Sally, "but Stockbroker wouldn'thear of it. I pulled his ugly head round till his nose was on my boot,but he galloped away just the same!"
"He was quite right," said Miss Sally; "I didn't want you in the least."
As Miss Sally's red gold coil of hair was turned towards me during thisspeech, I could only infer the glance with which it was delivered, fromthe fact that Mr. Shute responded to it with one of those firm gazes ofadoration in which the neighbourhood took such an interest, andcrumbled away into incoherency.
A shout from the top of a hill interrupted the amenities of the check;Flurry was out of the wood in half-a-dozen seconds, blowing shatteringblasts upon his horn, and the hounds rushed to him, knowing the "goneaway" note that was never blown in vain. The brown mare came outthrough the trees and the undergrowth like a woodcock down the wind,and jumped across a stream on to a more than questionable bank; thehounds splashed and struggled after him, and, as they landed, the firstecstatic whimpers broke forth. In a moment it was full cry,discordant, beautiful, and soul-stirring, as the pack spread and sped,and settled to the line. I saw the absurd dazzle of tears inPhilippa's eyes, and found time for the insulting proffer of the cleanpocket-handkerchief, as we all galloped hard to get away on good termswith the hounds.
It was one of those elect moments in fox-hunting when the fittest alonehave survived; even the Quaker's sluggish blood was stirred by goodcompany, and possibly by the remembrance of the singing ash-plant, andhe lumbered up tall stone-faced banks and down heavy drops, and acrosswide ditches, in astounding adherence to the line cut out by Flurry.Cruiskeen went like a book--a story for girls, very pleasant and safe,but rather slow. Moonlighter was pulling Miss Sally on to the sternsof the hounds, flying his banks, rocketing like a pheasant overthree-foot walls--committing, in fact, all the crimes induced by youthand over-feeding; he would have done very comfortably with another sixor seven stone on his back.
Why Bernard Shute did not come off at every fence and generally die athousand deaths I cannot explain. Occasionally I rather wished hewould, as, from my secure position in the rear, I saw him charging hisfences at whatever pace and place seemed good to the thoroughlydemoralised Stockbroker, and in so doing cannon heavily against Dr.Hickey on landing over a rotten ditch, jump a wall with his spurrowelling Charlie Knox's boot, and cut in at top speed in front ofFlurry, who was scientifically cramming his mare up a very awkwardscramble. In so far as I could think of anything beyond Philippa andmyself and the next fence, I thought there would be trouble for Mr.Shute in consequence of this last feat. It was a half-hour long to beremembered, in spite of the Quaker's ponderous and unalterable gallop,in spite of the thump with which he came down off his banks, in spiteof the confiding manner in which he hung upon my hand.
We were nearing Castle Knox, and the riders began to edge away from thehounds towards a gate that broke the long barrier of the demesne wall.Steaming horses and purple-faced riders clattered and crushed in at thegate; there was a moment of pulling up and listening, in whichquivering tails and pumping sides told their own story. Cruiskeen'sbreathing suggested a cross between a grampus and a gramophone;Philippa's hair had come down, and she had a stitch in her side.Moonlighter, fresher than ever, stamped and dragged at his bit; Ithought little Miss Sally looked very white. The bewildering clamourof the hounds was all through the wide laurel plantations. At a wordfrom Flurry, Dr. Hickey shoved his horse ahead and turned down a ride,followed by most of the field.
"Philippa," I said severely, "you've had enough, and you know it."
"Do go up to the house and make them give you something to eat," struckin Miss Sally, twisting Moonlighter round to keep his mind occupied.
"And as for you, Miss Sally," I went on, in the manner of Mr.Fairchild, "the sooner you get off that horse and out of those wetthings the better."
Flurry, who was just in front of us, said nothing, but gave a short andmost disagreeable laugh. Philippa accepted my suggestion with themeekness of exhaustion, but under the circumstances it did not surpriseme that Miss Sally did not follow her example.
Then ensued an hour of woodland hunting at its worst and mostbewildering. I galloped after Flurry and Miss Sally up and down longglittering lanes of laurel, at every other moment burying my face inthe Quaker's coarse white mane to avoid the slash of the branches, andreceiving down the back of my neck showers of drops stored up from therain of the day before; playing an endless game of hide-and-seek withthe hounds, and never getting any nearer to them, as they turned anddoubled through the thickets of evergreens. Even to my limitedunderstanding of the situation it became clear at length that two foxeswere on foot; most of the hounds were hard at work a quarter of a mileaway, but Flurry, with a grim face and a faithful three couple, stuckto the failing line of the hunted fox.
There came a moment when Miss Sally and I--who through manyvicissitudes had clung to each other--found ourselves at a spot wheretwo rides crossed. Flurry was waiting there, and a little way up oneof the rides a couple of hounds were hustling to and fro, with thethwarted whimpers half breaking from them; he held up his hand to stopus, and at that identical moment Bernard Shute, like a bolt from theblue, burst upon our vision. It need scarcely be mentioned that he wasgoing at full gallop--I have rarely seen him ride at any otherpace--and as he bore down upon Flurry and the hounds, ducking anddodging to avoid the branches, he shouted something about a fox havinggone away at the other side of the covert.
"Hold hard!" roared Flurry; "don't you see the hounds, you fool?"
Mr. Shute, to do him justice, held hard with all the strength of hisbody, but it was of no avail. The bay horse had got his head down andhis tail up, there was a piercing yell from a hound as it was riddenover, and Flurry's brown mare will not soon forget the moment whenStockbroker's shoulder took her on the point of the hip and sent herstaggering into the laurel branches. As she swung round, Flurry's whipwent up, and with a swift backhander the cane and the looped thongcaught Bernard across his broad shoulders.
"O Mr. Shute!" shrieked Miss Sally, as I stared dumfoundered; "did thatbranch hurt you?"
"All right! Nothing to signify!" he called out as he bucketed past,tugging at his horse's head. "Thought some one had hit me at first!Come on, we'll catch 'em up this way!"
He swung perilously into the main ride and was gone, totally unaware ofthe position that Miss Sally's quickness had saved.
Flurry rode straight up to his cousin, with a pale, dangerous face.
"I suppose you think I'm to stand being ridden over and having myhounds killed to please you," he said; "but you're mistaken. You werevery smart, and you may think you've saved him his licking, but y
ouneedn't think he won't get it. He'll have it in spite of you, beforehe goes to his bed this night!"
A man who loses his temper badly because he is badly in love isinevitably ridiculous, far though he may be from thinking himself so.He is also a highly unpleasant person to argue with, and Miss Sally andI held our peace respectfully. He turned his horse and rode away.
Almost instantly the three couple of hounds opened in the underwoodnear us with a deafening crash, and not twenty yards ahead the huntedfox, dark with wet and mud, slunk across the ride. The hounds werealmost on his brush; Moonlighter reared and chafed; the din wasredoubled, passed away to a little distance, and suddenly seemedstationary in the middle of the laurels.
"Could he have got into the old ice-house?" exclaimed Miss Sally, withreviving excitement. She pushed ahead, and turned down the narrowestof all the rides that had that day been my portion. At the end of thegreen tunnel there was a comparatively open space; Flurry's mare wasstanding in it, riderless, and Flurry himself was hammering with astone at the padlock of a door that seemed to lead into the heart of alaurel clump. The hounds were baying furiously somewhere back of theentrance, among the laurel stems.
"He's got in by the old ice drain," said Flurry, addressing himselfsulkily to me, and ignoring Miss Sally. He had not the least idea ofhow absurd was his scowling face, draped by the luxurianthart's-tongues that overhung the doorway.
The padlock yielded, and the opening door revealed a low, dark passage,into which Flurry disappeared, lugging a couple of hounds with him bythe scruff of the neck; the remaining two couple bayed implacably atthe mouth of the drain. The croak of a rusty bolt told of a seconddoor at the inner end of the passage.
"Look out for the steps, Flurry, they're all broken," called out MissSally in tones of honey.
There was no answer. Miss Sally looked at me; her face was serious,but her mischievous eyes made a confederate of me.
"He's in an _awful_ rage!" she said. "I'm afraid there will certainlybe a row."
A row there certainly was, but it was in the cavern of the ice-house,where the fox had evidently been discovered. Miss Sally suddenly flungMoonlighter's reins to me and slipped off his back.
"Hold him!" she said, and dived into the doorway under the overhangingbranches.
Things happened after that with astonishing simultaneousness. Therewas a shrill exclamation from Miss Sally, the inner door was slammedand bolted, and at one and the same moment the fox darted from theentry, and was away into the wood before one could wink.
"What's happened?" I called out, playing the refractory Moonlighterlike a salmon.
Miss Sally appeared at the doorway, looking half scared and halfdelighted.
"I've bolted him in, and I won't let him out till he promises to begood! I was only just in time to slam the door after the fox boltedout!"
"Great Scott!" I said helplessly.
Miss Sally vanished again into the passage, and the imprisoned houndscontinued to express their emotions in the echoing vault of theice-house. Their master remained mute as the dead, and I trembled.
"Flurry!" I heard Miss Sally say. "Flurry, I--I've locked you in!"
This self-evident piece of information met with no response.
"Shall I tell you why?"
A keener note seemed to indicate that a hound had been kicked.
"I don't care whether you answer me or not, I'm going to tell you!"
There was a pause; apparently telling him was not as simple as had beenexpected.
"I won't let you out till you promise me something. Ah, Flurry, don'tbe so cross! What do you say?---- Oh, that's a ridiculous thing tosay. You know quite well it's not on his account!"
There was another considerable pause.
"Flurry!" said Miss Sally again, in tones that would have wiled abadger from his earth. "Dear Flurry--"
At this point I hurriedly flung Moonlighter's bridle over a branch andwithdrew.
My own subsequent adventures are quite immaterial, until the momentwhen I encountered Miss Sally on the steps of the hall door at CastleKnox.
"I'm just going in to take off these wet things," she said airily.
This was no way to treat a confederate.
"Well?" I said, barring her progress.
"Oh--he--he promised. It's all right," she replied, ratherbreathlessly.
There was no one about; I waited resolutely for further information.It did not come.
"Did he try to make his own terms?" said I, looking hard at her.
"Yes, he did." She tried to pass me.
"And what did you do?"
"I refused them!" she said, with the sudden stagger of a sob in hervoice, as she escaped into the house.
Now what on earth was Sally Knox crying about?
Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. Page 9
