Produced by Paul Haxo with special thanks to the New York Public Library, Google, and the HathiTrust Digital Library. IRRESOLUTE CATHERINE IRRESOLUTE CATHERINE BY VIOLET JACOB (MRS. ARTHUR JACOB) AUTHOR OF "THE SHEEPSTEALERS," "AYTHAN WARING," ETC. LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1908 COPYRIGHT, 1908, IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE BETHESDA 9 CHAPTER II A NIGHT OF STARS 37 CHAPTER III TALGWYNNE FAIR 73 CHAPTER IV ACTION 101 CHAPTER V PENCOED 121 CHAPTER VI CATHERINE OPENS THE GATE 151 CHAPTER I BETHESDA CHAPTER I BETHESDA A DULL patter of sheep's hurrying feet came from behind a small knoll that jutted into the track along the mountain. The level plateau was wide and smooth below the towering slopes, and the threads of water crossing it at intervals had laid the underlying rock bare. As the sound neared, a travelling flock came round the knoll, herded thickly together and running before a man on horseback like clouds scudding before a gale. Forty pairs of light-coloured eyes, with their clear black bar of pupil, stared limpidly into space, and the backs of the flock bobbed and heaved as the hundred and sixty little cloven hoofs set their mark on the earthy places over which they passed. Heber Moorhouse, pressing hard on their heels, shouted now and again, swinging the rope's end he carried and leaning far out of his saddle as he drove the stragglers in. The rough-coated, weedy-looking pony under him cantered on, stubborn in face and obedient in limb to the rider's hand and balance. 'Black Heber' could bring in his sheep as easily without his dog as with him. It was nothing in his colouring that had earned him the title by which some spoke of him, for his hair was of the same indefinite shade as that of many of his neighbours, and his eyes were rather light than dark. But they had a fire, on occasion, that suggested dark things even to the ardent and sober Baptist community to which he belonged. Though he was a young man he looked older than his years by reason of his gauntness and his thin beard. He had sole charge of the flock on a fair-sized sheep farm, and was counted by his employer a responsible, if inconveniently independent, fellow. He was a convinced chapel-goer, rather bigoted and with qualities which made certain wildnesses in him doubly marked by contrast. He looked wild enough this afternoon, with his battered, wide-brimmed hat and the arm which swung the rope-end showing sharply against the sky. He was a figure which by no stretch of imagination could be supposed to belong to the valley lying below his feet, rich, chequered, and green; its soft luxuriance pertained to another world from that which had given birth to this crude son of action.