It looked like a heap of old clothes at first sight, then he made it out to be the figure of a man on his knees engaged in taking a rabbit from a snare.

He was a forlorn-looking man in tatters, and with long hair that hung over his shoulders, and, bent down there amidst the withered ferns, and under the shadow of the tree branches, he looked not unlike a gnome or the ghost of a robber; but he did not frighten the boy, who recognised the figure at once as that of his uncle, Con Cogan.

Con Cogan had once been the blacksmith at Castle Knock, but he had sold his business and taken to bad ways, and he was now the terror of the country-side. He had no house of his own, but just lived as he could, sleeping in barns and hayricks, sometimes begging his food, sometimes stealing it. He was suspected of being a highway robber, but he had never been caught in the act; and though a good many people knew things about him that would have sent him to prison, they never told: not because they had any special love for him, but because they were afraid. It was said that he had the evil eye, and that if he cast a “black look” on a person it would be all over with them and they would never do another day’s good. Besides this, he always carried a blackthorn stick with knobs on it; there were seven notches on the handle of it, and people said that every notch stood for a man he had killed.

As the boy stood watching his uncle, the latter suddenly rose up with the dead rabbit he had caught in his hand, and seeing his nephew gave him good-morning.

“And where are you off to, Patsy?” said he.

“I’m going on an arrand,” replied Patsy.

“And where’s that?” asked Con, as he stuffed the rabbit into the pocket of his old overcoat, and took up the blackthorn stick he had dropped.

“To Castle Knock,” replied Patsy.

“And what are you going to do with yourself when you get to Castle Knock?” asked Con.

“I’m goin’ to do me arrand.”

“Blisther you and your arrands!” shouted his uncle. “Talk English, will yiz, or I’ll prod the sinse out of you with the end of me blackthorn stick!”

“Ohone!” cried Patsy. “Sure, it’s skinned alive I’ll be if I’m not back by twelve with the ca’tridges for the guns that’s waitin’ at the post-office with the lethers for the Big House.”

“So they’ve made you the postman,” said Con.

“Bob Murphy’s laid up with the rheumatism,” replied Con’s nephew. “Crool bad he is; and me father says to me: ‘Away wid you, Patsy, to Castle Knock for the lethers, and ax thim has the ca’tridges for the guns come from Dublin, and fetch thim if they have. And if you drop wan of them it’s skinned alive you’ll be, or me name’s not Micky Rooney.’”

“Oh, he did, did he?” said Con.

“Them’s were his words,” said Patsy; “so I must be runnin’ on me arrand.”

“Oh, you must be runnin’ on your arrand, must you?” asked Con in a meditative tone.

“I must.”

“And your daddy said he’d skin you alive if you weren’t quick, did he?”

“He did.”

“Well, it’s I that’ll be skinnin’ you dead in two ticks if you don’t hould your whisht and be doin’ my bidding.”

“Ohone!” wailed Patsy.

“Whisht!” shouted Con.

Patsy became dumb. He would have darted off like a rabbit and tried to escape by running, only he was afraid of being brought to earth by Con’s blackthorn stick hurled after him, for Con was a terrible marksman, and he had been known a kill a pheasant thirty paces off with no other weapon than his deftly-flung stick.

“I’m not wishful to get you in trouble, Patsy,” said Con, “it’s not that I’m after; so I’ll just be walkin’ beside you on the way to Castle Knock, and I’ll give you the slip before we catch sight of the village, for there’s a policeman there I’m not wishful to meet, and it’s livin’ in an old tree I am to keep out of his way. What I want to ask you is, when are the quality comin’ to the Big House?”

“They’re comin’ before Chris’mas,” replied Patsy. “Lords and ladies and horses and bishop and all.”

“And who’s staying at the Big House now?”

“Old Lady Seagrave and her gran’childer,” replied Patsy, as he trotted beside his uncle.

“And how many gran’childer has the old lady?” asked Con.

“Three,” replied Patsy. “There’s the little lord; he wears putty leggin’s and a shootin’ coat an’ all, and he only nine; and there’s Miss Doris, wid the long gold hair, and she’s eight; then there’s Selina.”

“What’s that?” asked Con.

“Selina.”

“And what the divil’s Selina?”

“The baby; leastways, they call her the baby. Selina’s her name, and she’s five; she gets in the coal-scuttle when she has the chanst, she’s that small and over-bould. Biddy Mahony is their nurse, and she told me all about them. They eats off china, wid silver forks.”

“Silver forks, did you say?” asked Con.

“Yes, and spoons.”

“Patsy.”

“Yes?”

“It’s thrubled with thinkin’ I am.”

“And what are you thinkin’ about?” asked Patsy anxiously.

“I was thinkin’,” replied Con, “that if you were inside the Big House and I was outside you might maybe hand me out wan or two, or maybe three, of thim silver spoons and forks.”

“But, sure, that would be stealin’,” said Patsy.

“Who said it wouldn’t?” answered Con.

There was no reply to be made to this, so they trudged along in silence.

They had not gone more than two hundred yards when Con left the drive and turned down a path to the right.