The Castle Knock beagles were a mixed pack of tall hare-hounds and tiny rabbit-beagles. Nearly every cottager boarded a dog; Mr French (a cousin of Mr O’Farrell, the Master of the Hounds) supplied most of the money requisite, and Shan Finucane was the huntsman.

Shan had been after hares for thirty years or so. He was a cadaverous-looking person with solid leather lungs, a face the colour of mahogany (almost), an eye like a gimlet, and an old green coat with three brass buttons on it. A battered old hunting horn, and a whip with a leaden ball on the top of it completed Shan’s rig-out.

Shan was great in the field, absolute master of all he surveyed; to see him, with the cry of the dogs answering his cry of “Forrard, forrard,” to see him with the tails of his old tattered coat flying in the air as he took bank and bramble hedge, mud-spattered, hallooing, exultant and glorious, was to see a sight you were not likely to forget in a hurry.

Though the beagles were good sport, and their runs sometimes attended by the “quality,” a section of the sporting community of Castle Knock turned up its nose at them.

Billy the Buck, for instance, would, so he declared, have sooner been found dead in a ditch than “runnin’ afther them baygles.” The little short runs that a hare afforded were no use to Billy: great stretches of country were the desire of his soul; besides, he was at mortal enmity with Shan.

Mr Mahony, the sweep, was also an anti-beagleite. His donkey-cart was never seen at a meet of “thim tarriers,” as he called them. The fact of the matter being that Mr Mahony hated to be outshone. He was the sporting oracle of the village. Two years ago he had backed “Ballybrack” at the Tullagh races. No one else had spotted the horse as a winner; it had started at thirty to one, and Mr Mahony had scooped thirty pounds, and been wheeled home under a pig-net in a wheel-barrow. Though he had backed several losers since then, his word was still law on all matters concerning sport, and the airs put on by Shan when he was hunting with his “tarriers” vexed the soul of Mr Mahony.

At nine o’clock of this bright, grey winter’s morning, coming along the broad high-road from Kilgobbin through air delicious with the scent of turf smoke from the cottages and the smell of the good brown earth, you might have seen Shan Finucane in all his glory, half a dozen couples of dogs at his heels, and his old whip under his arm.

When he reached the entrance to the village of Castle Knock he blew a note on his horn.

The effect was magical. Heads popped out of doors, children ran into the street, pigs stopped grubbing in the road and cocked their eyes over their shoulders in the direction of the sound; the Castle Knock inn vomited its customers from the bar parlour into the roadway, and from a cottage door here and there shot a dog, a beagle-boarder who joined the pack that was half following, half surrounding the huntsman.

From backyards you could hear shouts of “Who’s blowin’ the horn?” and answering shouts, “It’s Shan and the dogs.” Down the street, all besprinkled with people, every one gave the huntsman good-day, jocularly or otherwise.

“Good-mornin’ to you, Shan,” “Top of the mornin’ to you, Shan,” “Yiv lost a button from your coat, Shan,” “Shan, you’re bustin’ at the elbows,”—through all of which marched the huntsman supremely indifferent, till he reached the inn front, where he drew up, nodded to the landlord, and surveyed his dogs.

It was now after nine, the meet took place at ten, at the gates of Glen Druid House; that is to say the nominal meet—this was the real one.

“Where are you goin’ to try first, Shan?” asked a burly farmer.

Shan, without replying, shoved his old cap back from his forehead and re-surveyed his dogs.

“There’s wan short,” said he, “ould Rafter, that boards at Finnegan’s. Run, Bob Murphy, and don’t stop to pick yourself up if y’ tumble down, and give me respects to the Widdy Finnegan. Ax her to loose the dog; she has him shut in the ould pig-sty, most like. She hasn’t tumbled to the chune of the horn, for she’s as deaf as a coffin, and half moidhered in her mind. What was you axing me, Mr O’Rourke?”

The farmer repeated his question.

“Tare an’ ages!” cried Shan, letting fly his whip at a harrier that had got a rabbit-beagle down on its back and was making for a hold in its throat, “them two dogs is the Siamese twins for fighting. Loose her, you baste, or I’ll cut the coat off your back! What is this you were sayin’, Mr O’Rourke?”

The farmer, who had “tumbled” to the reason of Shan’s deafness, produced a flask from his pocket.

Shan applied it to his lips, half emptied it, replaced the cork, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and was about to give the required information, when, bursting through the crowd, came Patsy.

“Shan,” cried Patsy, “I’ve run hot-fut from the Big House to tell yiz the quality are comin’ to the meet, and you’re to wait for thim if so be they’re late.”

“Listen to that now!” murmured the surrounding throng.

“Right y’ are, Patsy,” replied Shan, with a glitter in his eye, for the presence of the “quality” meant tips, and maybe a subscription to the pack. “And how many of them are coming, Patsy.”

“Faith, I dinno,” replied Patsy; “but Mr Fanshawe is comin’, sure, and he never pulls out less than a suverin when he puts his hand in his pocket. And then there’s the Mimber of Parliament, and the ould Gineral, and the young lady wid the blew eyes, and the childer—and it’s back I must be runnin’, or it’s me place I’ll be losin’.”

“Away wid yiz, then!” cried Shan; and Patsy departed, running.

That morning at eight, when Patsy had brought up Mr Fanshawe’s shaving water, the latter had handed to him a note which he had written before going to bed.

“Patsy,” said Mr Fanshawe, “you’re a boy I can trust; there’s a note there on the dressing-table—do you see it?”

“I do, sir.”

“Well, it’s for the young lady—Miss Lestrange. I want you to give it to her; but, look here, Patsy, I don’t want any one to know about it——”

“Sure, I could slip it under her door,” said Patsy; “she slapes in the room next to her ladyship.”

“Yes, that will do. It’s only a note asking her to go to the meet this morning; it’s at ten, you say?”

“Tin o’clock at the big gates,” replied Patsy. “Shan Finucane is the huntsman, and he’ll be in the village collecting the dogs be nine. I’ll just slip down to him and tell him not to start wid the dogs till you’re on the spot; it’s plazed he’ll be to wait, for it’s not often the quality follows the dogs, only Mr Frinch, and the village rubbish, and maybe a farmer or two from Tullagh way. Is there anything else I can be gettin’ you, Mr Fanshawe?”

“No, that’s all,” replied Mr Fanshawe. “Just put the note under the door, as you say, and don’t let any one see you.”

There was nothing treasonable in the note; it ran:—

“Come to the meet of the beagles this morning. Some of the rest of them are sure to go, but we may find an opportunity to have a few words together. Put on a short skirt and a pair of thick boots. Excuse these rather mysterious instructions, but I have a reason for it. Dick.”

When he came downstairs the General was helping himself to chicken and tongue at the sideboard, Mr Boxall was spreading his serviette across his knees, and Violet Lestrange, in the absence of Lady Seagrave and Lady Molyneux, both late risers, was presiding at the teapot behind the huge copper urn, still to be found a relic of the past here and there in Irish country houses.

“Morning!” said Dicky.

He could not see Violet’s boots or skirt, for they were under the table, but she was in tweed, and had an open-airy look.

Patsy, as Mr Fanshawe took his seat, was placing a toast-rack on the other side of the table, and as Mr Fanshawe’s eye caught Patsy’s eye, Patsy winked.

It was a wonderful wink, for there was not a trace of familiarity or disrespect in it. The face was perfectly immovable, the left eye closed for the hundredth part of a second, that was all; but what a lot of meaning that insignificant muscular movement conveyed! It told that the message had been delivered, but it said a lot more. It conveyed the impression that all was well, that Patsy in some miraculous way had discovered that Miss Lestrange had fallen in with Dicky’s suggestion, and that he, Patsy, was on the watch ready to assist matters to the uttermost, and to exercise secrecy and dispatch.

“Who’s coming to the meet?” asked Violet, as she poured out Mr Fanshawe’s tea.

“What meet?” asked Dicky.

“The beagles,” she replied. “Patsy, what time do the beagles meet to-day?”

“Tin o’clock, miss, at the park gates.”

“I’m not,” replied Dicky. “Too stiff; besides, running after beagles is not in my line.”

“Too stiff!” growled the General, who had taken his seat opposite Dicky—“too lazy, you mean—Pass me the mustard—The young men of to-day aren’t the young men of my time. Why, a twenty-mile run over the country when I was your age was only exercise—gentle exercise, sir.”

“I’ll come,” said Mr Boxall, “if I shall not be in the way. There is no necessity to follow the hounds. It is a long while since I have indulged in any description of sport; in fact, I have not seen a fox for years.”

Patsy, who was handing a dish of kippered herrings to Mr Fanshawe, very nearly exploded.

“I believe beagles generally hunt hares,” said Mr Fanshawe. “But, as you all seem so active, I’ll join you. It’s after nine now, Patsy; you’d better be off and tell them to hold on and not start till we come.”

It was ten minutes past ten when the party, Violet and General Grampound walking first, Mr Fanshawe and Mr Boxall following, neared the park gates.

“Listen!” said Violet, as they drew near the end of the drive.

“Why, God bless my soul,” said the General, “it sounds like a faction fight or a fair!”