“But whatever I cried afther Dan,” she said, after a lengthy exordium on the virtues of the deceased, “Tom have him cried out an’ out, an’ indeed ’tis for I knowing the wish you had always for Tom that I came down throubling your honour. Sure yerself knows he was always innocent like, and when he was a child not a word out of him the longest year ever came only talkin’ of God and the fairies, and the like o’ that, and that was no way for any poor crayture to be. Sure yourself knows well the way he was. Ye had undherstanding always, God bless ye----” “Are you afraid his head is getting wrong again?” interrupted Slaney inexorably. Mrs. Quin fell at once into a rancour and tearful whisper. “It’s whatever owld talk the people have about that place above in Park-na-Moddhera that has him desthroyed. Every spadeful that’s throwing out o’ that hill it’s the same to him as if it was down on his heart they were throwing it, and sure they say that grey fox or whatever it was poor Danny seen is like a witch or a fairy that’d dhraw down bad luck if it wouldn’t be let alone, the Lord save us----” she crossed herself; “didn’t Danny tell me one time he felt like a wind from the say coming bechuxt his skin and his blood afther he seeing the same fox?” “But Tom has nothing to say to the hill now,” said Slaney; “why should the bad luck come to him any more than to Mr. Glasgow?” “Sure isn’t that what I’m tellin’ him, but what himself says that it’s bechuxt the two o’ thim. God help the crayture, ye wouldn’t like to be listening to him.” Mrs. Quin wiped her eyes and groaned; “maybe your honour would spake a word to him, or maybe”--she turned a crafty eye on Slaney--“ye’d spake a word to Mr. Glasgow, maybe he wouldn’t ax to take any more gravel out o’ the hill if it was your honour told him the way Tom is.” The opportunity of speaking to Mr. Glasgow did not come as soon as Slaney had expected. He had given her to understand, in the ambiguous special manner with which he chose to beguile her, that he would meet her at afternoon service, and walk home with her; till the second lesson the special manner was ample guarantee, then the ambiguity began to suggest itself to her memory. She walked home with Uncle Charles, and listened for the twentieth time to his reprobation of the Canon’s popish practice of turning to the east during the Creed. The Honourable Charles Herrick was an elderly and prosperous bachelor, whose blameless life was devoted to two pursuits, gardening and writing controversial letters to the Church papers. He was a small, dry gentleman, very clean, and not in the least deaf. Strangers always experienced a slight shock on finding that he was not a clergyman. Slaney put away her best hat, and felt that there were yet many hours till bedtime. Those who lay out with a confident hand the order of a day’s events would do well to prepare also an alternative. Yet Fate had, after all, reserved a blessing.