"_My_ hounds wouldn't hunt rabbits if they were throwing after them,"

said Michael ferociously.

"Oh, I suppose it's admiring the view they are!" riposted Mr. Flynn; "I tell ye now, Major, there's a man on the strand below has a flat-bottomed boat, and here's Eugene just come up, I'll send him over with the horn as soon as there's water enough, and he'll flog them out of it."

The tide crept slowly in over the mud, and a young moon was sending a slender streak of light along it through the dusk before Eugene had accomplished his mission.

The boat returned at last across the channel with a precarious cargo of three hounds, while the rest splashed and swam after her.

"I have them all, only one," shouted Eugene as he jumped ash.o.r.e, and came scrambling up the steep slants and shaley ledges of the cliff.

"I hope it isn't Terrible ye left after ye?" roared Mr. Flynn.

"Faith, I don't know which is it it is. I seen him down from me floating in the tide. It must be he was clifted. I think 'tis one of Major Yeates's. We have our own whatever."

A cold feeling ran down my back. Michael and Hickey silently conned over the pack in the growing darkness, striking matches and shielding them in their hands as they told off one hound after another, hemmed in by an eager circle of countrymen.

"It's Playboy's gone," said Michael, with awful brevity. "I suppose we may go home now, sir?"

"Ah! hold on, hold on," put in Mr. Flynn, "are ye sure now, Eugene, it wasn't a sheep ye saw? I wouldn't wish it for five pounds that the Major lost a hound by us."

"Did ye ever see a sheep with yalla spots on her?" retorted Eugene.

A shout of laughter instantly broke from the circle of sympathisers. I mounted Lady Jane in gloomy silence; there was nothing for it but to face the long homeward road, minus Flurry Knox's best hound, and with the knowledge that while I lived this day's work would not be forgotten to me by him, by Dr. Hickey, and by Michael.

It was Hickey who reminded me that I was also minus two fore-shoes, and that it was an eighteen mile ride. On my responding irritably that I was aware of both facts, and would get the mare shod at the forge by the station, Mr. Flynn, whose voluble and unceasing condolences had not been the least of my crosses, informed me that the smith had gone away to his father-in-law's wake, and that there wasn't another forge between that and Skebawn.

The steps by which the final disposition of events was arrived at need not here be recounted. It need only be said that every star went out of its course to fight against me; even the special luminary that presided over the Curranhilty and Skebawn branch railway was hostile; I was told that the last train did not run except on Sat.u.r.days.

Therefore it was that, in a blend of matchlight and moonlight, a telegram was written to Philippa, and, at the hour at which Dr. Hickey, the hounds, and Michael were nearing their journey's end, I was seated at the Knockeenbwee dinner-table, tired, thoroughly annoyed, devoured with sleep, and laboriously discoursing of London and Paris with the younger Miss Flynn.

A meal that had opened at six with strong tea, cold mutton, and bottled porter, was still, at eight o'clock, in slow but unceasing progress, suggesting successive inspirations on the part of the cook. At about seven we had had mutton chops and potatoes, and now, after an abysmal interval of conversation, we were faced by a roast goose and a rice pudding with currants in it. Through all these things had gone the heavy sounds and crashes that betokened the conversion of the drawing-room into a sleeping-place for me. There was, it appeared, no spare room in the house; I felt positively abject at the thought of the trouble I was inflicting. My soul abhorred the roast goose, and was yet conscious that the only possible acknowledgment of the hospitality that was showered upon me, was to eat my way unflinchingly through all that was put upon my plate.

It must have been nine o'clock before we turned our backs upon the pleasures of the table, and settled down to hot whisky-punch over a fierce turf fire. Then ensued upon my part one of the most prolonged death-grapples with sleep that it has been my lot to endure. The conversation of Mr. Flynn and his daughters pa.s.sed into my brain like a narcotic; after circling heavily round various fashionable topics, it settled at length upon croquet, and it was about here that I began to slip from my moorings and drift softly towards unconsciousness. I pulled myself up on the delicious verge of a dream to agree with the statement that "croquet was a fright! You'd boil a leg of mutton while you'd be waiting for your turn!"

Following on this came a period of oblivion, and then an agonised recovery. Where were we? Thank heaven, we were still at the croquet party, and Miss Lynie's narrative was continuing.

"That was the last place I saw Mary. Oh, she was mad! She was mad with me! 'I was born a lady,' says she, 'and I'll die a lady!' I never saw her after that day."

Miss Lynie, with an elegantly curved little finger, finished her wine-gla.s.s of toddy and awaited my comment.

I was, for the instant, capable only of blinking like an owl, but was saved from disaster by Mr. Flynn.

"Indeed ye had no loss," he remarked. "She's like a cow that gives a good pail o' milk and spoils all by putting her leg in it!"

I said, "Quite so--exactly," while the fire, old Flynn, and the picture of a Pope over the chimney-piece, swam back into their places with a jerk.

The tale, or whatever it was, wound on. Nodding heavily, I heard how "Mary," at some period of her remarkable career, had been found "bawling in the kitchen" because Miss Flynn had refused to kiss her on both cheeks when she was going to bed, and of how, on that repulse, Mary had said that Miss Flynn was "squat." I am thankful to say that I retained sufficient control of my faculties to laugh ironically.

I think the story must then have merged into a description of some sort of entertainment, as I distinctly remember Miss Lynie saying that they "played 'Lodging-houses'--it was young Scully from Ennis made us do it--a very vulgar game _I_ call it."

"I don't like that pullin' an' draggin'," said Mr. Flynn.

I did not feel called upon to intrude my opinion upon the remarkable pastime in question, and the veils of sleep once more swathed me irresistibly in their folds. It seemed very long afterwards that the clang of a fire-iron pulled me up with what I fear must have been an audible snort. Old Flynn was standing up in front of the fire; he had obviously reached the climax of a narrative, he awaited my comment.

"That--that must have been very nice," I said desperately.

"Nice!" echoed Mr. Flynn, and his astounded face shocked me into consciousness; "sure she might have burned the house down!"

What the catastrophe may have been I shall never know, nor do I remember how I shuffled out of the difficulty; I only know that at this point I abandoned the unequal struggle, and asked if I might go to bed.

The obligations of a troublesome and self-inflicted guest seal my lips as to the expedients by which the drawing-room had been converted into a sleeping-place for me. But though grat.i.tude may enforce silence, it could not enforce sleep. The paralysing drowsiness of the parlour deserted me at the hour of need. The noises in the kitchen ceased, old Flynn pounded up to bed, the voices of the young ladies overhead died away, and the house sank into stillness, but I grew more wakeful every moment. I heard the creeping and scurrying of rats in the walls, I counted every tick, and cursed every quarter told off by a pragmatical cuckoo clock in the hall. By the time it had struck twelve I was on the verge of attacking it with the poker.

I suppose I may have dozed a little, but I was certainly aware that a long track of time had elapsed since it had struck two, when a faint but regular creaking of the staircase impressed itself upon my ear. It was followed by a stealing foot in the hall; a hand felt over the door, and knocked very softly. I sat up in my diminutive stretcher-bed and asked who was there. The handle was turned, and a voice at the crack of the door said "It's me!"

Even in the two monosyllables I recognised the accents of the son of the house.

"I want to tell you something," pursued the voice.

I instantly surmised all possibilities of disaster; Slipper drunk and overlaid by Lady Jane, Philippa's pony dead from over-exertion, or even a further instalment of the evening meal, only now arrived at completion.

"What's the matter? Is anything wrong?" I demanded, raising myself in the trough of the bed.

"There is not; but I want to speak to you."

I had by this time found the matches, and my candle revealed Eddy Flynn, fully dressed save for his boots, standing in the doorway. He crept up to my bedside with elaborate stealth.

"Well, what is it?" I asked, attuning my voice to a conspirator's whisper.

"Playboy's above stairs!"

"Playboy!" I repeated incredulously, "what do you mean?"

"Eugene cot him. He's above in Eugene's room now," said the boy, his face becoming suddenly scarlet.

"Do you mean that he wasn't killed?" I demanded, instantly allocating in my own mind half a sovereign to Eugene.

"He wasn't in the island at all," faltered Master Eddy, "Eugene cot him below on the cliffs when the hounds went down in it at the first go off, and he hid him back in the house here."

The allotment of the half-sovereign was abruptly cancelled.

I swallowed my emotions with some difficulty.

"Well," I said, after an awkward pause, "I'm very much obliged to you for telling me. I'll see your father about it in the morning."

Master Eddy did not accept this as a dismissal. He remained motionless, except for his eyes that sought refuge anywhere but on my face.

There was a silence for some moments; he was almost inaudible as he said:

"It would be better for ye to take him now, and to give him to Slipper.

I'd be killed if they knew I let on he was here." Then, as an afterthought, "Eugene's gone to the wake."