Therefore did Major Talbot-Lowry, M.F.H., and the Broadwater Vale Hounds, make a creditable show, brown breeches and last season's pink coats notwithstanding, at the meet at Coppinger's Court, on December 26th of the year 1897. The weather was grey and silver, with a light southeast wind and a rising glass. Sunshine was filtering down, as it were through muslin curtains that might at any moment be withdrawn; some crocuses and snowdrops had appeared in the grass round the wide gravel sweep in front of the house; there was a perplexed primrose or two, deceived by the sun as to the date; the scent of the violets in the bed under the drawing-room windows, came in delicate whiffs round the corner of the house. It would have been impossible to believe that but twenty-four hours ago, Christmas hymns had been shouted, and Christmas presents presented, had not a group of "Wran-boys" offered irrefutable testimony that this was indeed the Feast of Stephen. These, a ragged and tawdry little cluster of mummers, shabby survivors of mediæval mysteries, were gathered round their ensign holly-bush in front of the hall-door steps. From the holly-bush swung the corpse of the wren, and from the throats of the Wran-Boys came the song that recounts the wicked wren's pursuit and slaughter: "The Wran, the Wran, the King of all birds, On Stephenses' Day was cot in the furze, And though he is little, his family is great, Rise up, good gentlemen, and give us a thrate--Huzzay!" Wherever in South Munster two or three boys were gathered together, that song was being sung, and Major Talbot-Lowry and his staff had already met so many of such companies on their way to the Meet, that their horses' indignation at finding a further collection of nightmares at Coppinger's Court was excusable. On the high flight of hall-door steps, stood Larry and Miss Coppinger, the former pale with excitement, the latter doggedly resigned to the convention that compelled her to offer intoxicating drinks to people who, as she said, had but just swallowed their breakfasts. Larry had learned many things since that day of abysmal ignorance when he had spoken of Amazon as a "nice dog." Among his many enthusiasms he now included a passion for the chase, and all that appertains to its elaborate cult, that complied with Christian's, and even Cottingham's, sense of what was becoming, and, having dedicated a shelf in the library to books on hunting, he had read them all, with the same ardour that, four years earlier, he had brought to bear on The Spirit of the Nation and Irish history.