From where Mr Fanshawe stood, with his pipe in his mouth and his gun under his arm, you might have started with a brave heart to walk to the hills of Cloyne. Ten miles distant, or at most twelve, they seemed, those hills that lay thirty Irish miles away. Fanshawe was staying for the hunting with Mr Trench of Dunboyne House. He had come out to-day to have a shot at the snipe, and he had not done badly, to judge by the weight of the bag Micky Finn, the old keeper, was carrying. “Well,” said the young man, refilling and lighting his pipe, “we’d better be getting back. How far are we from the house, Micky?” “A matter of five mile be the boggs, sir, an’ siven be the road; which way would your ’arner be chusin’ to take?” “The road,” said Mr Fanshawe, and, followed by Micky and the dogs, he struck towards the high-road from Dunbeg which goes across the moors white and straight like a chalk-line drawn by a giant. “You were afther askin’ me, sir, what time the letters came from Dunbeg,” said Micky, as they stepped on to the highway. “Here’s Larry and the letters now, comin’ as hard as he can pelt two hours late, the blackguyard! He’s been stoppin’ to drink at Billy Sheehan’s, or colloguing wid the girls; musha, but it’s little he cares who waits for their letters whin the bottle’s before him.” Mr Fanshawe shaded his eyes, and with a constriction of the heart watched the horseman and the horse coming at a furious pace and developing with magical speed against the sunset. The sound of the hoofs, like the sound of castanets in the hands of a madman, came on the breeze. The horseman, a ragged individual with a leer on his face, no boots on his feet, and a post-bag slung on his back, reined in when he came level with the keeper and the gentleman, bringing his horse literally on its haunches. “Any letters for Mr Fanshawe, Larry?” asked the keeper. “Begob!” said Larry, swinging the post-bag round and opening it, “there’s letters enough for a dozen, but I’m no schollard to tell yiz who thir for; will y’ be afther puttin’ your hand in the bag, sir, and takin’ your chice?” Mr Fanshawe did as he was invited. There was only one letter for him, all the rest were for Mr Trench or members of his household. It was not the letter he had been half expecting by every post for weeks and weeks past, and he opened it with a gloomy brow, and read it by the light of sunset as Larry rode on and the sound of the hoofs died away on the high-road. To be young, rich, healthy, good-looking, and yet unhappy! No other magician but Love could bring about such an extraordinary concatenation of states. Love had done this in the case of Mr Fanshawe. As for the letter, it was addressed from Glen Druid House, Tullagh, Mid Meath, and it ran: “DEAR RICHARD,—I have only just been informed that you are staying with my friends the Trenches, to whom, through you, I send my very kind regards.