"You told me that children may ride cock-horse--and I'm not sixteen till to-morrow!" she cried, jumping her horse just as her father's clutching fingers touched his bridle. She was out in the road before Harlan's horse had picked up his heels. She swung her little whip above her head. "Come on, Big Boy!" she urged at the top of her voice, crying above the clamor of the racing dogs. "We're playfellows to-day, and I can't fall in love till to-morrow!" The last words she lilted mockingly, flashing a look backward at Dennis Kavanagh. The old man did not shift his attitude, fingers curved to clutch, arms extended, until he heard the tattoo of their horses' hoofs on the long bridge. "Maybe Brian Boru might have been proud of her for a daughter," he muttered, as he trudged back up the steps, "but I'll be dammed if I know whether I am or not!" CHAPTER VIII THE MANTLE OF THELISMER THORNTON The fire on the Jo Quacca hills was checked at nightfall. Two hundred beaters and trenchers managed to fight it back and hold it in leash to feed on the slash of the timber operation. But, like a tiger confined in its cage, it had reached out through its bars and claimed victims. Three stands of farm buildings were in ruins. Harlan Thornton, sooty and weary, left the fire-line as soon as he knew that the monster had been subdued. He rode about to reassure the owners that their losses would be made up by himself and his grandfather. "Keep away from the lawyers," he counselled the losers. "They'll get half the money out of you if you hire them. We'll settle after appraisal." The men that he talked to seemed sullen in spite of his assurances. They seemed to be repressing taunts or reproaches merely in consideration of the fact that he was holding the purse-strings. He noted this demeanor, and feared to ask questions. Clare Kavanagh rode with him; she had not left his side, even when he led his crews into perilous places and entreated her to keep back. And they rode away together down the long stretch of highway from the hills to the village. Behind them, against the dusk, glowed the red, last signals of the dying fires: tree-trunks upraised like smouldering torches, the timbers of the falling buildings tumbling from their props and sending up showers of sparks. A pale sliver of new moon made the red of the fires even more baleful, and the two who rode together looked back and felt the obsession of something they had never experienced before. "I am unhappy, Big Boy," sighed the girl. "We have never come back from our rides like this." "It has been a wicked day for both of us, child."