along in a dull sort of way, and then suddenly a face springs out from the crowd of one's acquaintances, and you know it at once and certainly for the face of a friend, or rather you recognise it, though you have never seen it before. It is almost as though you had come upon some one long looked for and now gladly recovered. Well, such friends—they are few, no doubt, but after all only the few really count—such friends one does not lose, whether they are absent, or even—dead."

"Unless," said Feversham, slowly, "one has made a mistake. Suppose the face in the crowd is a mask, what then? One may make mistakes."

Ethne shook her head decidedly.

"Of that kind, no. One may seem to have made mistakes, and perhaps for a long while. But in the end one would be proved not to have made them."

And the girl's implicit faith took hold upon the man and tortured him, so that he could no longer keep silence.

"Ethne," he cried, "you don't know—" But at that moment Ethne reined in her horse, laughed, and pointed with her whip.

They had come to the top of a hill a couple of miles from Ramelton. The road ran between stone walls enclosing open fields upon the left, and a wood of oaks and beeches on the right. A scarlet letter-box was built into the left-hand wall, and at that Ethne's whip was pointed.

"I wanted to show you that," she interrupted. "It was there I used to post my letters to you during the anxious times." And so Feversham let slip his opportunity of speech.

"The house is behind the trees to the right," she continued.

"The letter-box is very convenient," said Feversham.

"Yes," said Ethne, and she drove on and stopped again where the park wall had crumbled.

"That's where I used to climb over to post the letters. There's a tree on the other side of the wall as convenient as the letter-box. I used to run down the half-mile of avenue at night."

"There might have been thieves," exclaimed Feversham.

"There were thorns," said Ethne, and turning through the gates she drove up to the porch of the long, irregular grey house. "Well, we have still a day before the dance."

"I suppose the whole country-side is coming," said Feversham.

"It daren't do anything else," said Ethne, with a laugh. "My father would send the police to fetch them if they stayed away, just as he fetched your friend Mr. Durrance here. By the way, Mr. Durrance has sent me a present—a Guarnerius violin."

The door opened, and a thin, lank old man, with a fierce peaked face like a bird of prey, came out upon the steps. His face softened, however, into friendliness when he saw Feversham, and a smile played upon his lips. A stranger might have thought that he winked. But his left eyelid continually drooped over the eye.

"How do you do?" he said. "Glad to see you. Must make yourself at home. If you want any whiskey, stamp twice on the floor with your foot. The servants understand," and with that he went straightway back into the house.

The biographer of Dermod Eustace would need to bring a wary mind to his work. For though the old master of Lennon House has not lain twenty years in his grave, he is already swollen into a legendary character. Anecdotes have grown upon his memory like barnacles, and any man in those parts with a knack of invention has only to foist his stories upon Dermod to ensure a ready credence. There are, however, definite facts. He practised an ancient and tyrannous hospitality, keeping open house upon the road to Letterkenny, and forcing bed and board even upon strangers, as Durrance had once discovered. He was a man of another century, who looked out with a glowering, angry eye upon a topsy-turvy world, and would not be reconciled to it except after much alcohol. He was a sort of intoxicated Coriolanus, believing that the people should be shepherded with a stick, yet always mindful of his manners, even to the lowliest of women. It was said of him with pride by the townsfolk of Ramelton, that even at his worst, when he came galloping down the steep cobbled streets, mounted on a big white mare of seventeen hands, with his inseparable collie dog for his companion,—a gaunt, grey-faced, grey-haired man, with a drooping eye, swaying with drink, yet by a miracle keeping his saddle,—he had never ridden down any one except a man. There are two points to be added. He was rather afraid of his daughter, who wisely kept him doubtful whether she was displeased with him or not, and he had conceived a great liking for Harry Feversham.

Harry saw little of him that day, however. Dermod retired into the room which he was pleased to call his office, while Feversham and Ethne spent the afternoon fishing for salmon in the Lennon River. It was an afternoon restful as a Sabbath, and the very birds were still. From the house the lawns fell steeply, shaded by trees and dappled by the sunlight, to a valley, at the bottom of which flowed the river swift and black under overarching boughs. There was a fall, where the water slid over rocks with a smoothness so unbroken that it looked solid except just at one point. There a spur stood sharply up, and the river broke back upon itself in an amber wave through which the sun shone. Opposite this spur they sat for a long while, talking at times, but for the most part listening to the roar of the water and watching its perpetual flow. And at last the sunset came, and the long shadows. They stood up, looked at each other with a smile, and so walked slowly back to the house. It was an afternoon which Feversham was long to remember; for the next night was the night of the dance, and as the band struck up the opening bars of the fourth waltz, Ethne left her position at the drawing-room door, and taking Feversham's arm passed out into the hall.