“No, I am not,” said Sir Thomas, “and, what’s more, I’m coming in early.  I’m a fool to go hunting at all at this time o’ year, with half the potatoes not out of the ground.”  He rose, and using the toe of his boot as the coulter of a plough, made a way for himself among the dogs to the centre of the hearthrug.  “Be hanged to these dogs!  I declare I don’t know am I more plagued with dogs or daughters!  Lucy!”

Lady Purcell dutifully disinterred her attention from a catalogue of Dutch bulbs.

“When I get in to-morrow I’ll go call on that Local Government Board Inspector who’s staying in Drinagh.  They tell me he’s a very nice fellow and he’s rolling in money.  I daresay I’ll ask him to dinner.  He was in the army one time, I believe.  They often give these jobs to soldiers.  If any of you girls come across him,” he continued, bending his fierce eyebrows upon his family, “I’ll trouble you to be civil to him and show him none of your infernal airs because he happens to be an Englishman!  I hear he’s bicycling all over the country and he might come out to see the hounds.”

Rosamund, the eldest, delivered herself of an almost imperceptible wink in the direction of Violet, the third of the party.  Sir Thomas’s diplomacies were thoroughly appreciated by his offspring.  “It’s time some of you were cleared out from under my feet!” he told them.  Nevertheless when, some four or five years before, a subaltern of Engineers engaged on the Government survey of Ireland had laid his career, plus fifty pounds per annum and some impalpable expectations, at the feet of Muriel, the clearance effected by Sir Thomas had been that of Lieutenant Aubrey Hamilton.  “Is it marry one of my daughters to that penniless pup!” he had said to Lady Purcell, whose sympathies had, as usual, been on the side of the detrimental.  “Upon my honour, Lucy, you’re a bigger fool than I thought you—­and that’s saying a good deal!”

It was near the beginning of September, and but a sleepy half dozen or so of riders had turned out to meet the hounds the following morning, at Liss Cranny Wood.  There had been rain during the night and, though it had ceased, a wild wet wind was blowing hard from the north-west.  The yellowing beech trees twisted and swung their grey arms in the gale.  Hats flew down the wind like driven grouse; Sir Thomas’s voice, in the middle of the covert, came to the riders assembled at the cross roads on the outskirts of the wood in gusts, fitful indeed, but not so fitful that Nora, on the distrained foxy mare, was not able to gauge to a nicety the state of his temper.  From the fact of her unostentatious position in the rear it might safely be concluded that it, like the wind, was still rising.  The riders huddled together in the lee of the trees, their various elements fused in the crucible of Sir Thomas’s wrath into a compact and anxious mass.  There had been an unusually large entry of puppies that season, and Sir Thomas’s