“What avails your repudiation if it will not turn me from my resolve? That it will not, I 'll swear to you as solemnly as ever an oath was taken. I tell you again, the thing is done. For the consequences which are to follow on it you have no responsibility; these are my concern.” “I should like a little time to think over it,” said Upton, with the air of one struggling with irresolution. “Let me have this evening to make up my mind; to-morrow you shall have my answer.” “Be it so, then,” said Glencore; and, turning his face away, waved a cold farewell with his hand. We do not purpose to follow Sir Horace as he retired, nor does our task require that we should pry into the secret recesses of his wily nature; enough if we say that in asking for time, his purpose was rather to afford another opportunity of reflection to Glencore than to give himself more space for deliberation. He had found, by the experience of his calling, that the delay we often crave for, to resolve a doubt, has sufficed to change the mind of him who originated the difficulty. “I'll give him some hours, at least,” thought he, “to ponder over what I have said. Who knows but the argument may seem better in memory than in action? Such things have happened before now.” And having finished this reflection, he turned to peruse the pamphlet of a quack doctor who pledged himself to cure all disorders of the circulation by attending to tidal influences, and made the moon herself enter into the _materia medica_. What Sir Horace believed, or did not believe, in the wild rhapsodies of the charlatan, is known only to himself. Whether his credulity was fed by the hope of obtaining relief, or whether his fancy only was aroused by the speculative images thus suggested, it is impossible to say. It is not altogether improbable that he perused these things as Charles Fox used to read all the trashiest novels of the Minerva Press, and find, in the very distorted and exaggerated pictures, a relief and a relaxation which more correct views of life had failed to impart. Hard-headed men require strange indulgences. CHAPTER XIV. BILLY TRAYNOR AND THE COLONEL It was a fine breezy morning as the Colonel set out with Billy Traynor for Belmullet. The bridle-path by which they travelled led through a wild and thinly inhabited tract,--now dipping down between grassy hills, now tracing its course along the cliffs over the sea. Tall ferns covered the slopes, protected from the west winds, and here and there little copses of stunted oak showed the traces of what once had been forest. It was, on the whole, a silent and dreary region, so that the travellers felt it even relief as they drew nigh the bright blue sea, and heard the sonorous booming of the waves as they broke along the shore. “It cheers one to come up out of those dreary dells, and hear the pleasant plash of the sea,” said Harcourt; and his bright face showed that he felt the enjoyment.