Neither I nor my remonstrances overtook him till he was well out into the street.  There, outside the Coolahan door, was the Dean’s inside car, resting on its shafts; while the black horse, like his driver, restored himself elsewhere beneath the Coolahan roof.  Robert paid no heed to its silent warning.

“I must go myself.  If I had forty pencils I couldn’t explain to Julia the flies that I want!”

There comes, with the most biddable of men, a moment when argument fails, the moment of dead pull, when the creature perceives his own strength, and the astute will give in, early and imperceptibly, in order that he may not learn it beyond forgetting.

The only thing left to be done now was to accompany Robert, to avert what might be irretrievable disaster.  It was now half-past one, and the three mutton chops and the stewed gooseberries must have long since yielded their uttermost to our guests.  The latter would therefore have returned to the drawing-room, where it was possible that one or more of them might go to sleep.  Remembering that the chops were loin-chops, we might at all events hope for some slight amount of lethargy.  Again we waded through the nettles, we scaled the garden-wall, and worked our way between it and the laurestinas towards the door opposite the kitchen.  ’There remained between us and the house an open space of about fifteen yards, fully commanded by the drawing-room window, veiling which, however, the lace curtains met in reassuring stillness.  We rushed the interval, and entered the house softly.  Here we were instantly met by Julia, with her mouth full, and a cup of tea in her hand.  She drew us into the kitchen.

“Where are they, Julia?” I whispered.  “Have they had lunch?”

“Is it lunch?” replied Julia, through bread and butter; “there isn’t a bit in the house but they have it ate!  And the eggs I had for the fast-day for myself, didn’t That One”—­I knew this to indicate Miss McEvoy—­“ax an omelette from me when she seen she had no more to get!”

“Are they out of the dining-room?” broke in Robert.

“Faith, they are.  ’Twas no good for them to stay in it!  That One’s lying up on the sofa in the dhrawing-room like any owld dog, and the Dane and Mrs. Doherty’s dhrinking hot water—­they have bad shtomachs, the craytures.”

Robert opened the kitchen door and crept towards the dining-room, wherein, not long before the alarm, had been gathered all the essentials of the expedition.  I followed him.  I have never committed a burglary, but since the moment when I creaked past the drawing-room door, foretasting the instant when it would open, my sympathies are dedicated to burglars.