“‘Christian dost thou see them?’” quoted Larry, kicking his heels into the bay cob’s well-covered ribs without effect, “for I don’t!”

“They’ll check at Carrigaholt,” called back Bill Kirby; “that’ll be our chance—­”

They were far up on the slope of the hills now; the country swung in long, dipping lines, down to the Vale of the Broadwater, and spread, in great and generous curves, away to the far range of the Mweelin Mountains, that brooded, in colour a deep and sullen sapphire, on the horizon.  The town of Cluhir, a little puff of smoke, cut in two by the wide river, lay below.  The spires of the two churches rose above the smoke, one on either side of the bridge that spanned the river.  The sound of bells, faintly rising from one of them, summoned the faithful to the mid-day Mass in honour of St. Stephen.

Larry, pushing Tommy along at a dogged canter, lifted his bowler hat as he heard the bells, and Christian and Judith looked at each other.  The tradition of the Protestant, “No demonstrations!” with its singular suspicion and distrust of manifestations of reverence or poetry, had been early implanted in them, and Judith murmured to Christian:  “How on earth does he remember?”

“I know I couldn’t,” admitted Christian; yet some feeling that, though crushed, had survived the heavy feet of Lady Isabel’s trusted manuals, stirred in her in accord with the faint clash of the chapel bells, making her envy Larry his accredited salutation, making her feel something of the beauty, if not of holiness, of, at least, the recognition that there were holy things in the world.

On the nearer head of Carrigaholt the check, predicted by Bill Kirby, came.  A narrow and level plateau ran between the twin crests; above it on both sides, rose successive shelves of cliff, with swathes of russet bracken muffling their fierce outline.  Flung about on the shelves, looking like tumbled piles of giant books in a neglected library, were immense rectangular rocks; one would say that only the grey and knotted cords of the ivy that had crept over them, held them in their place upon those rugged shelves.  At one end of the level place the ground fell steeply to a wild stream, the Feorish, from whose farther bank another hill, but little less formidable than Carrigaholt, rose like an enemy tower, threatening its defences.  The hounds swarmed like bees among the rocks, jumping or falling from shelf to shelf, burrowing and thrusting through the bracken, their heads appearing suddenly in quite improbable places, with glowing eyes and glistening pink tongues, demanding from their huntsman the information that no one but themselves could give.