Produced by Al Haines [Illustration: Cover] [Frontispiece: "If ever you see hounds pointing this way, don't spare spurs to get to the cliff before them!" [Page 4.]] In Mr. Knox's Country By E. [OE]. Somerville and Martin Ross Authors of "Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.," "Further Experiences of an Irish R.M.," "Some Irish Yesterdays," "All on the Irish Shore," "Dan Russel the Fox," "The Real Charlotte," etc. etc. etc. With 8 Illustrations by E. [OE]. Somerville Longmans, Green and Co. 39 Paternoster Row, London Fourth Avenue & 30th Street, New York Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras 1915 All rights reserved CONTENTS I. THE AUSSOLAS MARTIN CAT II. THE FINGER OF MRS. KNOX III. THE FRIEND OF HER YOUTH IV. HARRINGTON'S V. THE MAROAN PONY VI. MAJOR APOLLO RIGGS VII. WHEN I FIRST MET DR. HICKEY VIII. THE BOSOM OF THE McRORYS IX. PUT DOWN ONE AND CARRY TWO X. THE COMTE DE PRALINES XI. THE SHOOTING OF SHINROE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "If ever you see hounds pointing this way, don't spare spurs to get to the cliff before them!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ Kitty the Shakes "I heard scald-crow laughter behind me in the shawls" "Lyney's a tough dog!" "Walkin' Aisy" James Miss Cooney O'Rattigan Miss Larkie McRory IN MR. KNOX'S COUNTRY I THE AUSSOLAS MARTIN CAT Flurry Knox and I had driven some fourteen miles to a tryst with one David Courtney, of Fanaghy. But, at the appointed cross-roads, David Courtney was not. It was a gleaming morning in mid-May, when everything was young and tense and thin and fit to run for its life, like a Derby horse. Above us was such of the spacious bare country as we had not already climbed, with nothing on it taller than a thorn-bush from one end of it to the other. The hill-top blazed with yellow furze, and great silver balls of cloud looked over its edge. Nearly as white were the little white-washed houses that were tucked in and out of the grey rocks on the hill-side. "It's up there somewhere he lives," said Flurry, turning his cart across the road; "which'll you do, hold the horse or go look for him?" I said I would go to look for him. I mounted the hill by a wandering bohireen resembling nothing so much as a series of bony elbows; a white-washed cottage presently confronted me, clinging, like a sea-anemone, to a rock. I knocked at the closed door, I tapped at a window held up by a great, speckled foreign shell, but without success. Climbing another elbow, I repeated the process at two successive houses, but without avail. All was as deserted as Pompeii, and, as at Pompeii, the live rock in the road was worn smooth by feet and scarred with wheel tracks.