"Carrigaholt as usual!" said Major Dick, over his shoulder, to the Hon. Sec., young Kirby of Castle Ire. "If you get a chance, try and head him off the western rocks--and Bill! Tell those infernal children of mine they're to keep with Charles and look out for bogs!" His conscience as a parent thus appeased, the Master applied himself to the no small task of keeping his hounds in sight, and of evading the equal difficulties presented by rocks and bog holes. The offspring in question were now, with Larry, in comparative and undesired safety beneath the fluttering wing of Charles, and Bill Kirby, having faithfully delivered his message, found himself immediately adopted as an alternative protector, and repented him of his fidelity. The hounds stormed on through the hills, running hard across the frequent boggy tracts, more slowly, and with searchings, over the intervening humps of rock and furze. The fox was making a well-known point, and running a well-known line, but the fences in their infinite variety, defied the staling force of custom, and the difficulties of the going were intensified by the pace. The hounds gained at length the ridge of the high country, and as they flitted along the skyline, the riders, labouring among the rocks, skirting the bogs, pounding at the best pace they could raise over the intervals of heather and grass, felt that their hold on the hunt had become distinctly insecure. "'Christian dost thou see them?'" quoted Larry, kicking his heels into the bay cob's well-covered ribs without effect, "for I don't!" "They'll check at Carrigaholt," called back Bill Kirby; "that'll be our chance--" They were far up on the slope of the hills now; the country swung in long, dipping lines, down to the Vale of the Broadwater, and spread, in great and generous curves, away to the far range of the Mweelin Mountains, that brooded, in colour a deep and sullen sapphire, on the horizon. The town of Cluhir, a little puff of smoke, cut in two by the wide river, lay below. The spires of the two churches rose above the smoke, one on either side of the bridge that spanned the river. The sound of bells, faintly rising from one of them, summoned the faithful to the mid-day Mass in honour of St. Stephen. Larry, pushing Tommy along at a dogged canter, lifted his bowler hat as he heard the bells, and Christian and Judith looked at each other. The tradition of the Protestant, "No demonstrations!" with its singular suspicion and distrust of manifestations of reverence or poetry, had been early implanted in them, and Judith murmured to Christian: "How on earth does he remember?"