"Porter, porter! does this train stop at Tullagh?"

"You're in the wrong thrain, mum; this thrain stops nowhere; this is the ixpress all the way to Cloyne. Out you get, for we want to be goin' on. Right, Larry!"

Miss Grimshaw, dusty and tired, seated in the corner of a first-class carriage, heard the foregoing dialogue, and smiled.

It came to her with a puff of gorse-scented air through the open window of the railway carriage.

"Now," said Miss Grimshaw to herself, "I really believe I am in Ireland."

Up to this, at Kingstown, in her passage through Dublin, and during the long, dusty, dull journey that followed, she had come across nothing especially national. It is not in the grooves of travel that you come across the spirit of Ireland.

Davy Stevens, selling his newspapers on the Carlisle pier at Kingstown, had struck her fancy, but nothing followed him up. The jarvey who drove her from station to station in Dublin was surly and so speechless that he might have been English. The streets were like English streets, the people like English people, the rain like English rain, only worse.

But it was not raining here. Here in the west, the train seemed drawing out of civilisation, into a new world—vast hills and purple moors, great spaces of golden afternoon, unspoiled by city or town, far mountain tops breaking to view and veiled in the loveliness of distance.

"And people go to Switzerland with this at their elbow," said Miss Grimshaw, leaning her chin upon her palm and gazing upon the view.

She was alone in the carriage, and so could place her feet on the opposite cushions. Very pretty little feet they were, too.

V. Grimshaw was dressed with plainness and distinction in a Norfolk jacket and skirt of Harris tweed, a brown Homburg hat, and youth. She did not look more than eighteen, though she was, in fact, twenty-two. Her face, lit by the warm afternoon light, was both practical and pretty; her hair was dark and seemed abundant. Beside her on the cushions of the carriage lay several newspapers—the AthenÆum among others—and a book, "Tartarin of Tarascon," in the original French.

This was the personage who had replied to Mr. French's advertisement. There was no deception. She had stated her age plainly as twenty-two in her first letter to him; the mistake was on his part. In reading the hundred-and-fifty or so replies to his advertisement he had got mixed somehow, and had got some other lady's age in his head attached to the name of Grimshaw.

As for the spectacles, he had drawn in his imagination the portrait of a governess of forty-four named Grimshaw, and the portrait wore spectacles.

Miss Grimshaw didn't. Those clear, grey eyes would not require the aid of glasses for many a year to come.

American by birth, born in the State of Massachusetts, twenty-two years ago, Miss Grimshaw's people had "gone bust" in the railway collapse that followed the shooting of Garfield. Miss Grimshaw's father, a speculator by nature and profession, had been one of the chief "bulls" in Wall Street.

He had piled together a colossal fortune during the steady inflation of railway stock that preceded the death of Garfield. The pistol of Guiteau was the signal for the bottom to fall out of everything, and on that terrible Saturday afternoon when Wabash stock fell sixteen points without recovery, Curtis Grimshaw shot himself in his office, and V. Grimshaw, a tiny tot, was left in the world without father or mother, sister or brother, or any relations save an uncle in the dry-goods trade.

He had taken care of her and educated her at the best school he could find. Four years ago he had died, and V. Grimshaw at eighteen found herself again on the world, this time most forlorn. The happy condition remained, however, that Simon Gretry, the dry-goods uncle, had settled a thousand (dollars) a year on his niece, this small income being derived from real estate in New York city.

Miss Grimshaw emigrated to Europe, not to find a husband, but to study art in Paris. Six months' study told her, however, that art was not her walk in life, and being eminently practical, she cast aside her palette and took up with writing and literary work generally, working for Hardmuth's Press Syndicate and tiring of the work in a year.

Just after she had dropped Hardmuth's, Miss Grimshaw came upon Mr. French's advertisement in a lady's paper. Its ingenuousness entirely fascinated her.

"He's not literary, anyhow," she said. "It's the clearest bit of writing I've come across for many a day. Might try it. I've long been wanting to go to Ireland, and if I don't like it—why, I'm not tied to them."

Mr. French's reply to her application decided her, and so she came.

The train was now passing through a glen where the bracken leaped six feet high—a glen dim and dream-like, a vast glen, echo-haunted, and peopled with waterfalls, pines, and ferns that grow nowhere else as they grow here.

It is the glen of a thousand echoes. Call here, and Echo replies, and replies, and replies; and you hear your commonplace voice—the voice that you ordered a beefsteak with yesterday—chasing itself past fern and pine and fading away in Fairyland.

A tunnel took the train, and then out of the roaring darkness it swept into sunlight again, and great plains of bracken and heather.

Miss Grimshaw undid the strap of her rug and packed her newspapers and book inside. The train was slowing. By the time she had got all her things together it was drawing up at a long platform, whose notice-board read:—

CLOYNE

The girl opened the door of the carriage and stepped on to the platform and into a world of sunlight, silence, and breeze.

The air was like wine.

There were few people on the platform; a woman in a red cloak, a priest who had stepped out of the train, a couple of farmers, and several porters busily engaged in taking some baskets of live fowl (to judge by the sound) out of the guard's van, and a seedy-looking individual in a tall hat and frock-coat, who looked strangely out of keeping with his surroundings.

"Is there not a porter to take luggage out of the train?" asked Miss Grimshaw of a long, squint-eyed, foxy-looking man, half-groom, half-gamekeeper, who was walking along the train length peeping into each carriage as if in search of something.

"Porthers, miss," replied the foxy person. "Thim things that's gettin' the chickens out of the van calls themselves porthers, I b'lave."

Without another word he stepped into the carriage and whipped the travelling-bag, the bundle of rugs, and other small articles on to the platform.

"You didn't happen to see an ouldish lady in the thrain anywhere between here and Dublin, miss?" said Moriarty—for Moriarty it was—as he deposited the last of the bundles.

"No," said Miss Grimshaw, "I didn't."

"Begorra, then," said Moriarty, "she's either missed the train or tumbled out of it. Billy!"—to a porter who was coming leisurely up—"when you've done thinkin' over that prize you tuk in the beauty show, maybe you'll attind to the company's business and lift the young lady's luggage."

"I expected a trap to meet me from Mr. French, of Drumgool," said Miss Grimshaw as Billy took the luggage.

"Mr. Frinch, did you say, miss?" said Moriarty.

"Yes. Mr. French, of Drumgool House; he expected me by this train."

Moriarty broke into a grin that broadened and spread over his ugly face like the ripple on a pond.

"Faith, thin," said he, "it's Mr. Frinch will have a most agrayable surprise. 'Moriarty,' says he to me, 'take the car and meet the lady that's comin' by the ha'f-pas' five thrain. You can't mistake her,' he says, 'for she's an ouldish lady in spicticles.'"

Miss Grimshaw laughed. "Well," she said, "it was Mr. French's mistake. Let us find the car. I suppose you are going to drive me?"

"It's fifteen miles to Drumgool, miss," said Moriarty. "Mr. Frinch tould me to say you were to be sure and have some tay at the hotel here afther your journey; it's only across the road."

"Thanks," said Miss Grimshaw.

She followed Moriarty and the porter to the station gate. An outside car, varnished, silver-plated as to fittings, and very up to date stood near the wicket. A big roan mare with a temper was in the shafts, and a barefooted gossoon was holding on to the bridle.

The station inn across the road flung its creaking sign to the wind from the moors, seeming to beckon, and Miss Grimshaw came.

The front door was open, and a dirty child was playing in the passage. Miss Grimshaw passed the child, knocked at a door on the left of the passage, and, receiving no answer, opened it, to find a bar-room, smelling vilely of bad tobacco and spirits. She closed the door and opened one on the right of the passage, to find a stuffy sitting room with a stuffed dog under a glass case for its presiding genius.

Two clocks stood on the mantelpiece, one pointing to three, the other to twelve, neither of them going; a sofa covered with American cloth, chairs to match, a picture of the Day of Judgment, some dusty seashells, and a drugget carpet completed the furniture of the place. Miss Grimshaw was looking around her for a bell when the following dialogue between Moriarty and some female unknown struck her ears.

"Mrs. Sheelan," came Moriarty's voice, evidently from the backyard.

"What do you want?" came the reply, evidently from an upper room.

"What are you doin'?"

"I'm clanin' meself."

"Well, hurry up clanin' yourself and put the kittle on the fire, for there's a young lady wants some tay."

"Oh, glory be to God! Moriarty!"

"Well?"

"Shout for Biddy; she's beyant there in the cowhouse. Tell her the kittle's on, and to stir the fire and make the tay. I'll be wid you in wan minit."

Miss Grimshaw took her seat and waited, listening to the stumping noise upstairs that told of speed, and wondering what Mrs. Sheelan would be like when she was cleaned.

Almost immediately Biddy, fresh from the cowhouse, a girl with apple-red cheeks, entered the room, whisked the stuffed dog on to a side table, dumped down a dirty table-cloth which she had brought in rolled up under her arm, dragged out the drawer of a cupboard, and from the drawer knives, forks, spoons, a salt-cellar, and a pepper caster of pewter.

"You needn't lay all those things for me," said the traveller. "I only want tea."

"Oh, it's no thrubble, miss," replied Biddy with an expansive smile. She finished laying the cloth, and then hung at the door.

"Well?" asked Miss Grimshaw.

"I thought, miss," said Biddy in a difficult voice, "you might be wantin' to—change your hat afther the journey."

As Miss Grimshaw was sitting at her tea some ten minutes later a knock came to the door. It was Moriarty who entered on the knock and stood hat in hand.

"I'm sendin' your thrunk by Doyle, the carrier, miss," said Moriarty, "and I'm takin' your small thraps on the car."

"Thank you."

"If you plaze, miss," said Moriarty, "did you see a man step out of the thrain wid a long black coat on him and a face like an undertaker's?"

"I did," said Miss Grimshaw, "if you mean a man in a tall hat."

"That's him," said Moriarty. "Bad luck to him! I knew what he was afther when I set me eyes on him, and when I was puttin' your bag on the car he ups and axes me if I knew of a Mr. Frinch living here away. 'Which Mr. Frinch?' says I. 'Mr. Michael Frinch,' says he. 'Do I know where he lives?' says I. 'Sure, what do you take me for—me, that's Mr. Frinch's own man?' 'How far is it away?' says he. 'How far is what?' says I. 'Mr. Frinch's house,' says he. 'A matter of fifteen miles,' says I. 'Bad luck to it!' says he, 'I'll have to walk it.' 'Up you get on the car,' says I, 'and sure I'll drive you,' and up he gets, and there he's sitting now, waitin' to be druv. Bad cess to him!"

"But who is he?" asked the girl, not quite comprehending the gist of this flood of information.

Moriarty lowered his voice half a tone. "He's a bailiff, miss, come down to arrist the horses."

"Arrest the horses!"

"It's this way, miss. Mr. Frinch had some dalin's wid a Jew money-lender in Dublin be the name of Harrison, and only this mornin' he said to me, 'Moriarty,' he says, 'keep your eye out at the station, for it's I that am afraid this black baste of a Harrison would play us some trick, for them money-lenders has ears that would reach from here to Clontarf,' says he, 'and it's quite on the cards he's heard from his agent I've sold Nip and Tuck, and if he has,' he says, 'it's sure as a gun he'll have a bailiff in before I can get them off the primises.'"

"Are Nip and Tuck horses?" asked Miss Grimshaw, who was beginning to find a subtle interest in Moriarty's conversation.

"Yes, miss, as clane a pair of hunters as you'd find in Galway."

"Yes, go on."

"Well, miss, the horses were due to be taken off be the nine train to-night. Major Sherbourne has bought thim and paid for thim, and now if this chap nails thim, Mr. Frinch will have to refund the money, and, sure, wouldn't that be a black shame?"

"And this man has come down to arrest the horses?" said Miss Grimshaw.

"Yes, miss, and that's why I've come to ax you to let him drive with us. For I'm going to play him a trick, miss, with your leave and licence, and that's why I've got him on the car."

Miss Grimshaw laughed.

"I'm no friend of money-lenders," said she.

"Sure, I could tell that be your face, miss."

"But I do not wish to see the man injured or hurt."

"Hurt, miss!" cried Moriarty in a virtuous voice. "Sure, where would be the good of hurtin' him, unless he was kilt outright? You lave it to me, miss, and I'll trate him as tender as an infant. I've tould him I'll drive him to Mr. Frinch's house, and I will; but he won't get Nip nor Tuck."

"Very well," said Miss Grimshaw. "As long as you don't hurt him I don't care."

Moriarty withdrew, and Mrs. Sheelan appeared. The cleaning process was evident in the polish of her face. She would take nothing for the tea; it was to go down to Mr. French's account, by his own express orders.

Having bestowed a shilling upon Biddy, the traveller left the inn.

The seedy personage in the tall hat was comfortably seated on the outside car reading a day-before-yesterday's Freeman's Journal, and a new gossoon was holding the mare's head vice the old gossoon, who had been sent on horseback hot foot to Drumgool to give warning to Mr. French.

Miss Grimshaw got on the side of the car opposite to the bailiff, Moriarty seized the reins, the gossoon sprang away, and the mare rose on end.

"Fresh?" said the man in the tall hat.

"Faith, she'll be stale enough when I've finished with her," said Moriarty. "Now then, now then, what are yiz afther? Did you never see a barra of luggage before? Is it a mothor-car you're takin' yourself to be, or what ails you, at all, at all? Jay up, y' divil!"

The Dancing Mistress—such was her ominous name—having performed the cake walk to her own satisfaction, turned her attention to a mixture of the "Washington Post" and the two-step.

"Hit her with the whip," said Miss Grimshaw.

"Hit her with the whip!" replied Moriarty. "Sure, it's kicked to matches we'd be if she heard me draa it from the socket. Now then, now then, now then!"

"That's better," said Miss Grimshaw.

"Yes, miss," replied Moriarty. "Once she's started nothin' will stay her, but it's the startin' is the divil."

It was getting towards sunset now, and in the east the ghost of a great moon was rising pale as a cloud in the amethyst sky.

The moors swept away for ever on either side of the road, moor and black bog desolate and silent but for the wind and the cry of the plover. Vast mountains and kingly crags thronged the east, purple in the level light of evening and peaceful with the peace of a million years; away to the west, beyond the smoke wreaths from the chimneys of Cloyne, the invisible sea was thundering against rock and cliff, and the gulls and terns, the guillemots and cormorants, were wheeling and crying, answering with their voices the deep boom of the sea caves.

Miss Grimshaw tried to imagine what life would be like here, fifteen miles from a railway station. Despite the beauty of the scenery there was over all, or rather in it all, a touch of darkness, desolation, and poverty, a sombre note rising from the black bog patches, the wretched cabins by the way, the stone walls, the barren hills.

But the freshness of the air, the newness of it all, made up to the girl for the desolation. It was different from Fleet-street, and anything that is different from Fleet-street must have a certain beauty of its own.

She tried to imagine what trick Moriarty was going to play on the gentleman whose tall hat was so extremely out of keeping with the surroundings. That person, who had left the refreshments of the inn untried, had not come unprovided; he produced a flask from his pocket at times, fouling the air with the smell of bad brandy, but not a word did he speak as mile after mile slipped by and the sun sank and vanished and the moon glowed out, making wonderland of the world around them.

"We're more than ten miles on our road now, miss," said Moriarty, speaking across the car to Miss Grimshaw. "Do you see that crucked tree beyant on the right be the bog patch?"

"Yes."

"It was half-way betune that and thim bushes they shot ould Mr. Moriarty two years ago come next June."

"Shot him?"

"Faith, they filled him so full of bullets that the family had to put a sintry over the grave for fear the bhoys would dig him up to shtrip him of his lead."

"But who shot him?"

"That's what the jury said, miss, when they brought it in 'Not guilty' against Billy the Rafter, Long Sheelan, and Mick Mulcahy, and they taken with the guns smokin' in their hands—the blackgyards."

"Good heavens! but why did they shoot him?"

"Well, he'd got himself disliked, miss. For more than five years the bhoys had been warning him; sure they sent him enough pictures of coffins and skulls to paper a wall with, and he, he'd light his pipe with them. Little he cared for skulls or crossbones. 'To blazes with them!' he'd say. 'All right,' says the bhoys, 'we'll give you one warnin' more.' 'Warn away,' says he, and they warned. Two nights after they laid him out. Do you see away beyant those trees, miss, thim towers—there, you see them poppin' up?"

"Yes."

"That's Mr. Frinch's house."

"Why, it's a castle."

"Yes, miss, I b'lave they called it that in the old days."

At a gateway, where the gate was flung wide open, Moriarty drew up.

"Now," said he to the person in the tall hat, "that's your way to the back primises; down with you and in with you, and sarve your writ, for it's a writ you've come to sarve, and you needn't be hidin' it in your pocket, for it's stickin' out of your face. Round with you to the back primises and give me compliments to the cook, and say I'll be in for me supper when I've left this lady at the hall dure."

The man in possession, standing now in the road under the moonlight, examined the car and the horse that had brought him.

"The horse and car are Mr. French's?" he asked.

"They are."

"Well, when you've put 'em in the stables," said he, "mind and don't you move 'em out again. All the movables and live stock are to be left in statu quo till my business is settled."

"Right y' are, sorr," replied Moriarty cheerfully, and the man in the tall hat strode away through the gate and vanished in the direction of the back premises.

Miss Grimshaw felt rather disgusted at this spiritless fiasco. She was quite without knowledge, however, of Moriarty's thorough methods and far-reaching ways.

"I thought you were going to play him a trick," said she.

Moriarty, who had got down for a moment to look at the mare's off-fore shoe, sprang on to the car again, turned the car, touched the mare with the whip, and turned to the astonished Miss Grimshaw.

"This isn't Mr. Frinch's house at all, miss."

"Why, you said it was."

"It's his house, right enough," said Moriarty, "but it hasn't been lived in for a hundred and tin years; it's got nuthin' inside it but thistles and bats. He axed me for Mr. Frinch's house; well, I've driv him to Mr. Frinch's house, him and his ow-de-cologne bottle, but Mr. Frinch doesn't live here; he lives at Drumgool."

"How far is Drumgool from here?"

"It's fifteen miles from here to Cloyne, miss, and fifteen from Cloyne to Drumgool."

"Oh, good heavens!" said Miss Grimshaw, "thirty miles from here?"

"There or thereabouts, miss; we'll have to get a new horse at Cloyne; the ould mare is nearly done, and she'd be finished entirely, only I gave her a two hours' rest before I take you up at the station."

"Look!" groaned the girl.

Far away behind them on the moonlit road a figure had appeared; it was running and shouting and waving its arms.

"That's him," said Moriarty. "Faith, he looks as if he had seen the Banshee! Look, miss, there's his hat tumbled off."

Running was evidently not the bailiff's forte, but he continued the exercise manfully for a quarter of a mile or so, hat in hand, before giving up. When he disappeared from view Miss Grimshaw felt what we may suppose the more tender-hearted of Alexander Selkirk's marooners felt when Tristan d'Acunha sank from sight beyond the horizon.

"What will he do with himself?" asked she, her own grievance forgotten for a moment, veiled by the woes of the other one.

"Faith, I don't know, miss," replied Moriarty; "he can do what he plazes, for what I care. But there's one thing he won't do, and that's lay finger on the horses; and it's sorry I am, miss, to have dhriven you out of your way. But, sure, wouldn't you have done it yourself if I'd been you and you'd been me, and that black baste of a chap puttin' his ugly foot in the master's business?"

Miss Grimshaw laughed in a rather dreary manner.

"But it isn't his fault."

"Whose fault, miss?"

"That man's; he was only doing his duty."

"Faith, and that's the thruth," said Moriarty, "and more's the pity of it, as Con Meehan said when he was diggin' in his pitata garden and the pleeceman came to arrist him. I'm disremembrin' what it was he'd done—chickens I think it was he'd stole—but the pleeceman says to him, 'Come off wid you to gaol,' says he; 'it's sorry I am to have to take you,' says he, 'but it's me painful duty.' 'The more's the pity it gives you such pain,' says Con, 'and where does it hurt you most, may I ax?' 'In me feelin's,' replies him. 'Faith, I'll aise you,' says Con, and wid that he knocks him sinsless with the flat of the spade."

"That was one way of relieving him of his painful duty."

"Yes, miss," said Moriarty, and they drove on in silence for a while, Miss Grimshaw trying to imagine how the case of Con Meehan bore extenuation to the case of the bailiff and failing.

A long hill brought them to a walk, and Moriarty got down and walked beside the mare to "aise" her.

Half-way up the hill a man tramping on ahead halted, turned, and stood waiting for them to come up. He had a fishing-rod under his arm, and Miss Grimshaw, wondering what new surprise was in store for her, found it in the voice of the stranger, which was cultivated.

"Can you tell me where I am?" asked the stranger.

"Yes, sorr," said Moriarty, halting the mare. "You're eleven miles and a bit from Cloyne, if you're going that way."

"Good heavens!" said the stranger, half beneath his breath; then aloud: "Eleven Irish miles?"

"Yes, sorr; there aren't any English miles in these parts. Were you going to Cloyne, sorr?"

"Yes; I'm staying at the inn there, and I came out to-day to fish a stream over there between those two hills; and the fool of a fellow I took with me got lost—at least, he went off and never came back; and I'll break his neck when I catch him."

"Was it Billy Sheelan, of the inn, be any chance, sorr?"

"Yes, I believe that was his name."

"Then he hasn't got lost, sorr; he's got dhrunk. This is Mr. Frinch's car, and if you'll step on to it I'll drive you back to Cloyne, if the young lady has no objection."

"Not in the least," said Miss Grimshaw.

The stranger raised his cap. He was a good-looking youth, well dressed, and his voice had a lot of character of a sort. It was a good-humoured, easy-going, happy-go-lucky voice, and it matched his face, or as much of his face as could be seen in the moonlight.

"It's awfully good of you," he said. "I'm dead beat, been on my legs since six, had good luck, too, only I lost all my fish tumbling into one of those bog holes. Just escaped with my life and my rod." He mounted on the same side of the car as the girl and continued to address his remarks to her as Moriarty drove on. "I believe I ought to introduce myself. Dashwood is my name. I came over for some fishing, and the more I see of Ireland, the more I like it. Your country——"

Miss Grimshaw laughed.

"It's not my country—I'm American."

"Are you?" said Mr. Dashwood in a relieved voice. "How jolly! I thought you might be Irish. I say," in a confidential tone of voice, "isn't it a beastly hole?"

"Which?"

"Ireland."

"Why, I thought you said you liked it!"

"I thought you were Irish. I do like it in a way. The mountains and the whisky aren't bad, and the people are jolly enough if they'd only wash themselves, but the hotels—oh, my!"

"You're staying at the inn near the railway station at Cloyne?"

"I am," said Mr. Dashwood.

"Then you know Biddy and the stuffed dog?"

"Intimately—have you stayed there?"

"I had tea there this afternoon."

"You live near here?"

"I believe I am going to live for a while near here. I only arrived this afternoon."

"Only this afternoon. Excuse me for being so inquisitive, but when did you arrive at—I mean——"

"Cloyne."

"But you're driving to Cloyne now."

"I know. I've been driving all over the country. We had to leave a gentleman at a castle, and now we are going back to Cloyne. Then I have to go on to a place called Drumgool, which is fifteen miles from Cloyne."

"To-night?" said Mr. Dashwood, looking in astonishment at the wanderer.

"I don't know," said the girl, with a touch of hopelessness in her voice. "I expect they'll have to tie me on to the car, for I feel like dropping off now. No, thanks; I can manage to hold on by myself, I was speaking metaphorically."

Mr. Dashwood said nothing for a few minutes. There was a mystery about Miss Grimshaw that he could not unravel, and which she could not explain.

Then he said: "We've both been travelling round the country, seems to me, and we're both pretty tired and we've met like this. Funny, isn't it?"

"Awfully," said Miss Grimshaw, trying to stifle a yawn.

"Do I bore you talking?"

"Not a bit."

"That's all right. I know you must be tired, but then, you see, you can't go to sleep on an outside car, so one may as well talk. How far are we from Cloyne now?"—to Moriarty.

"Nine miles, sorr."

"Good! I say, you said this car belonged to a Mr. French. I met a Mr. French six months ago in London—a Mr. Michael French."

"That's him, sorr."

"Well, that's funny," said Mr. Dashwood. "I met him at my club, and he told me he lived somewhere in Ireland—a big man, very big man—goes in for horses."

"That's him, sorr."

"Awfully rummy coincidence," said Mr. Dashwood, turning to his companion. "I lost two ponies to him over the Gatwick Selling Plate."

"That's him, sorr," said Moriarty with conviction.

"Awfully funny; do you know him?"

"No," replied Miss Grimshaw. "At least only by writing to him. I'm going there for a while to act as governess," she explained.

"And of course I'll call there to-morrow and look him up; well, it's extraordinary, really. Joke if we met someone else going to see him that had been lost and wandering about all day; sort of Canterbury pilgrimage, you know. And we could all sit round the fire at the inn and tell tales."

"I hope not," said Miss Grimshaw devoutly, thinking of the gentleman they had left at the old castle and the tale he'd have to tell.

Moriarty was now talking to the Dancing Mistress, telling her of the feed of corn waiting for her at the inn, and they jogged along rapidly, the sinking moon at their back, till presently a few glow-worm sparks before them indicated the lights of Cloyne.

"How long will you be getting the other horse?" asked Miss Grimshaw of Moriarty as they drew up at the inn, which was still open.

"I don't know, miss. I'll ax," replied Moriarty.

Mr. Dashwood helped his companion down, and she followed him into the passage, and from there to the sitting-room.

A bright turf fire was burning, and the table was still laid, and almost immediately Biddy appeared to say that Mr. French had sent word that the lady was to stay at the inn and make herself comfortable for the night and to come on to Drumgool in the morning, and to say he was sorry that she should have been put to any inconvenience on account of the horses, all of which seemed as wonderful as wireless telegraphy to Miss Grimshaw, inasmuch as she knew nothing of the gossoon Moriarty had despatched to his master earlier in the evening, with a succinct message stating his plan against the bailiff, and the absolute necessity of taking the governess along, lest the said bailiff, seeing the governess and luggage left behind at the inn, might smell a rat.

"And what'll you be plazed to have for supper, miss?" asked Biddy.

"What can you give us?" asked Mr. Dashwood.

"Anything you like, sorr."

"Well, get us a cold roast chicken and some ham. I'm sure you'd like chicken, wouldn't you?" turning to the girl.

"Yes," said she, "as long as they haven't to cook it. I'm famished."

Biddy retired. There was no cold chicken and there was no ham on the premises; but the spirit of hospitality demanded that ten minutes should be spent in pretending to look for them.

They had fried rashers of bacon—there were no eggs—and tea, and when Miss Grimshaw retired for the night to a stuffy bedroom ornamented with a stuffed cat, she could hear the deep tones of Moriarty's voice colloguing with Mrs. Sheelan, telling her most likely of the trick he had played on the bailiff man.

She wondered how far that benighted individual had wandered by this time on his road to Cloyne, and what he would say to Moriarty, and what Moriarty would say to him, when they met.

She could not but perceive that the commercial morality of the house she was going to was of an old-fashioned type, dating from somewhere in the times of the buccaneers, and she felt keenly interested in the probable personality of Mr. French.

Moriarty she liked unreservedly; and in Mr. Dashwood, her fellow-stranger in this unknown land, she felt an interest which he was returning as he lay in bed, pipe in mouth, and his head on a pillow stuffed presumably with brickbats.