We had nearly finished when, from the road outside, there came a prolonged ear-piercing wail, that made the window-panes tremble.  I have never heard any earthly sound at once so expressive of utter despair, and appealing to heaven or hell for vengeance.

We all started, and set down our glasses; but Mohun finished his slowly, savoring like a connoisseur the rich Burgundy.

“It is the wild Irish women keening over their dead,” he remarked, with perfect unconcern.  “They’ll have more to howl for before I have done with them.  I shall go round with the police to-morrow and pick up the stragglers.  Your men are too good for such work, Harding.  There are several too hard hit to go far, and my hand-writing is pretty legible.”

The stout soldier to whom he spoke bent his head in assent, but with rather a queer expression on his honest face.

“Gad!” he said, “you do your work cleanly, Mohun.”

“It is the best way, and the shortest in the end,” was the reply; and so the matter dropped.

The Dragoons left us before daybreak; their protection was not needed; we were as safe as in the Tower of London.  The next morning, while I was sleeping heavily, Ralph was in the saddle scouring the country, with what success the next Assizes could tell.

I go there again this winter for the cock-shooting, but I don’t much think Kate will accompany me.

Now who says “a rubber?” Don’t all speak at once.

CHAPTER XVIII.

     “He has mounted her on a milk-white steed,
       Himself on a dappled gray;
     And a bugelet-horn hung down by his side
       As lightly they rode away.”

It is hard to describe the terrible prestige which, after the event I have been speaking of, attached itself to Ralph Mohun.  As for attempting a second attack on the fatal house, the peasantry would as soon have thought of storming the bottomless pit.  They did not even try a shot at him from behind a wall; considering him perfectly invulnerable, they deemed it a pity to waste good powder and lead that might be usefully employed on an agent or process server.  As his gaunt, erect figure went by, the men shrunk out of his path, and the women called their children in hastily, and shut their cabin doors; the very beggars, who are tolerably unscrupulous, gave his gate a wide berth, crossing themselves, with a muttered prayer, “God stand betwixt us and harm.”  If Ralph perceived this, I think he rather liked it; at all events, he made no attempt, either by softening his manner or by any act of benevolence, to win the popular favor.

Before going to the Lodge I had heard from Livingstone.  He said that his cousin’s affair with Charley was progressing satisfactorily (I knew what that meant), and that he was going himself to sell out.  I was not surprised at this; for some time past even the light restraint of service in the Household Brigade had begun to bore him.  But the intelligence conveyed in a brief note from him during my stay with Mohun startled me very much.  It announced, without any preface or explanation, that he was engaged to Constance Brandon.