Next moment Patsy, Mr Murphy and Con were running through the woods, each in a different direction. Patsy could hear the terrified shouts of the others, and he stopped and held on to the trunk of a small beech tree and laughed till the tree shook. Then he resumed his way back to the Big House at a “sweep’s trot” under the light of the moon that was just rising over the distant hills. His window was still open and the candle had burnt itself out, but the moon gave light enough to get into bed by. Still laughing and chuckling to himself, he got between the sheets. Suddenly the laughing and the chuckling ceased, for the remembrance of his oath came back to him. He had sworn to open the window for Paddy Murphy, and he well knew that, though Paddy might be frightened enough to-night, all the ghost carriages in the world would not stop him from coming if he had made up his mind to steal the jewels. When the knock came to the window he would have to open it or go about for ever with the snout of a pig, his legs where his arms were, and his face where the back of his head ought to be. It seems incredible that he should firmly believe in such a happening, yet he did, for he had the Celtic aptitude for belief, and his head was filled with the most wonderful and wild superstitions. He believed that the holy well at Tullagh would cure warts if you placed your hand in the water. He believed that holy water would drive away devils, and he believed that old Widow Finnegan could think a sick person well if she set her mind to it. He believed in witches and ghosts and banshees and cluricaunes. So it is not, after all, to be wondered at that he believed the oath he had solemnly taken would “fly back on him” if he broke it. Yet for all his youth and simplicity, Patsy had a quickness of intelligence that many a grown man might have envied. Though he made mistakes at times, a week had converted him into a fairly efficient page-boy; and he could have held his own, with his tongue, against any fish-woman on the quays of the Liffey. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XI THE FIRST GUEST “Doris,” said Lord Gawdor, breaking into the schoolroom next afternoon, “Mr Fanshawe is comin’ to-day!” “Don’t say ‘comin’,” replied Doris, looking up from her book; “say ‘coming.’ It’s only the Johnny-jumped-ups that clip their words; I heard Uncle Molyneux saying so.” “Who are they?” “Oh, brewers and shipowners and people,” said Doris with fine contempt. “Who’s Mr Fanshawe?” “I dunno. I heard Mrs Kinsella say he was a cousin of father’s, and I heard Mary, the between-maid, telling Biddy Mahony he was coming to-day. He’s coming for Christmas, and he’s bringing a lot of horses. Rest of the people are coming to-morrow, but Mr Fanshawe’s been staying with some people hunting forty miles away, and he’s going to drive over.”