Hungry Hill

BOOK ONE Copper John, 1820–1828

On the third of march, 1820, John Brodrick set out from Andriff to Doonhaven, intending to cover the fifteen miles of his journey before nightfall. It was typical south-westerly weather, the clouds travelling low, and the soft, blustering wind bringing scattered showers that fell heavy for five minutes and then passed, leaving a space of blue no larger than a man's fist in the sky, with a glimpse of a sun that promised nothing.

The road in those days was rough and uneven, and John Brodrick, swinging from side to side in the chaise, called to the post-boy to have a care, unless he wished to break the bones of the pair of them and land in the ditch for the night, with no supper into the bargain.

There was constant talk of a new road being built, but there the matter ended, like everything else in the country, and never a penny would come from the Government for the improvement of the roads. The expense in the long run would fall upon himself and the other landlords. The trouble was that none of the others had energy enough to put their hands in their pockets, and if they were prevailed upon to do so would oblige with so ill a grace, and with such a pother of words about the hardness of the times, the arrears of rent, and the slackness of their tenants, that it would save time and temper to leave the matter alone, and let the road become little better than the bogs around Kileen.

However, the elections were pending soon in Slane, and if Hare wished to hold his seat, which no doubt he did, John Brodrick would put it to him pretty forcibly that votes were not given for nothing, and certainly not for Ministers to sit in London twiddling their thumbs and neglecting their own country.

How few men of enterprise there were, when all was said and done. It was not a question of conceit, but he could think of no other man but himself who would have achieved what had just been done that day in Andriff, and who would have had the vision in the first place to know that such an undertaking was possible.

Too risky, old Robert Lumley had said in the beginning, shaking his head and bringing up objection after objection-how they would never get a return for their money, and would all be beggared, and be forced to sell their land.

"Risk?" John Brodrick had answered him.

"Why, no doubt there is a risk, just as every day in every man's life he risks breaking his neck when he steps outside his door. I grant you the expense in sinking the mine will not be trifling, machinery will be necessary, much labour will be required, and I admit freely that the land here is a different proposition from that of Cornwall, where they shovel and wheel out ore as fast as they can put it in a barrow, whereas we shall not be able to break an ounce without gunpowder. But the copper is there, ours for the taking. One of the most experienced directors of mines in Cornwall, a Mr. Taylor, has been over the ground with me this past week, and his opinion of the place is the same as my own. There is a fortune awaiting us, on my property, Mr. Lumley, and on yours. If you are agreeable to forming a private company under my direction- and mark you, according to the conditions I have just shown you, which my agent has drawn up, you can see well for yourself I shall be risking more than you-then I can promise you that within a few years your royalty will be more than a thousand pounds a year. If you would rather not be a party to the agreement, then there is no more to be said."

And he had risen from his seat, gathered his papers together, and made a signal to his agent that there was nothing further to discuss. He had got half-way across the room before Robert Lumley called him back.

"My dear Brodrick, there is no need to be hasty. There are naturally one or two points that require clarifying before I make my final decision."

And then they had sat down once again, and patiently gone over everything that had been gone into twenty times before, with old Lumley quibbling at his already gross percentage. At last the agreement had been signed, the papers sealed, hands shaken, and some refreshment taken in the old library at Castle Andriff, with John Brodrick impatient to be gone now that his object had been achieved, but forced to stay and exchange a few words with his host for common courtesy's sake.

"I shall hope," he said, "to see you at Clonmere whenever business brings you to Doonhaven.

My daughters will be delighted to welcome you, and my sons to give you some sport with your gun," and old Lumley, civil enough now he had won his point about his twenty per cent share in the future mine, replied with an invitation to the young Brodricks to shoot the hares and the pheasants at Duncroom whenever they had the wish.

And so John Brodrick called to the post-boy and climbed into the chaise, just as Lumley's son-in-law, Simon Flower, returned from hunting, his face and his boots bespattered with mud, his arm round the waist of his twelve-year-old daughter.

"Well," he asked, smiling all over his handsome, florid face, "and did you get the old gentleman to put his name to your piece of paper?"

"We have formed a company to work the copper mines at Hungry Hill, if that's what you mean," said John Brodrick drily.

"Did you now, and all in the space of a few hours?" returned the other. "And here have I been working away these fifteen years trying to get him to put a few slates on the roof of the castle, for I swear to you the rain blows in on my face as I lie in bed, but he won't allow me enough to get even the mortar mixed."

"There'll be money to spare in a year or two that will give you a new roof and an additional wing to your house if you want it," said Brodrick.

Simon Flower raised his eyes to heaven in mock humility.

"It's my conscience that will go against me," he declared, "and I tell you in solemn truth, my dear Brodrick, that if I think the copper is going to come out of the mountains by the sweated labour of young men and of children, why, I won't touch a penny of my father-in-law's money; I would rather the roof of my house fell in upon me."

John Brodrick looked out at the pair of them from his chaise: the smiling, careless Simon Flower, his contemporary, who had never done a stroke of honest work in his life and lived contentedly upon his wife's money; and the pretty, flushed child, with her slanting eyes, laughing in agreement with her father.

"You had better become a director of the company, Flower," he said. "It will mean long hours, you know, supervision of the work at the mines, keeping the fellows in order, taking ship to Bronsea every six months to the smelting works, keeping a check on accounts, and a dozen other things beside."

Simon Flower shook his head, and sighed.

"It's a pity," he said, "that the mines should be started at all. We are peaceful enough as we are.

Why do you want to have us all troubled and excited, and the people sweating, and the poor old hill broken into with explosives?"

John Brodrick settled himself in the chaise.

"I believe in progress, and giving employment to all the poor devils who find living next to impossible in this country, and making money to provide for my children, and my children's children, when I die," he said.

"Ah," said Simon Flower, "they won't thank you for it. All right, Brodrick, go and start your mines and make your fortune, and I'll sit back and reap some of the benefit." He smiled, and kissed his daughter on the top of her head. "Think of all the weary miners digging for our comfort," he laughed, and lifting his hat, he waved it gaily in farewell.

Typical, thought John Brodrick as he looked out across Mundy Bay comtypical of nearly every man in the country. Irresponsible, indifferent, their heads full of nothing but dogs and horses; half the year spent on the Continent chasing the sun, and the rest in yawning on their own doorstep.

Despised by their tenants, their land a disgrace, and, to crown all, more than a trifle drunk at two o'clock in the afternoon.

He dismissed Simon Flower from his mind with little trouble, having a great contempt for people he did not understand, and, watching the long Atlantic rollers sweeping into Mundy Bay, he began to think about the ships that would presently bear the ore from the harbour at Doonhaven, round the coast and across the channel to Bronsea. The shipment would be the hardest part of the business, for the harbour dried out at low water, which would compel the vessels to take the ground, and in bad weather they might be weather-bound for several weeks at a time. He remembered how, when poor Sarah was alive, they had been, held up in Mundy for more than three weeks, on account of the weather, for the master would not risk his ship in the south-westerly gale even for a short distance, and the road was not fit. to travel, with Sarah in her condition, just before Jane was born.

No, the vessels would have to make fast time during the summer months, for the winter would necessarily be a slack period, and he thought with satisfaction of the two or three fine ships he had noticed lying alongside the wharfs in Slane a few weeks back (one of them newly launched, the paint on her barely dry), which might be purchased for a comparatively low figure if he went about it at the earliest possible moment, before the story of the new mining company was spread abroad. Owen Williams, of Bronsea, would keep his eyes open for likely vessels his side of the water. It was lucky he had already come to such an excellent agreement with the firm for the future handling of the ore and its distribution to the smelting companies.

He supposed he would be crossing to Bronsea with increasing frequency during the years to come, and he decided he would have to look out for some small property within easy reach of the port, for to stay in Bronsea itself would be impossible. It would make a change for the girls, too. Clonmere was lonely and cut off from all amenities-they were beginning to remark upon it now they were grown up, especially Eliza.

It was a different matter for the boys. Clonmere was a vacation to them after Eton and Oxford, but girls could not hunt hares on Doon Island or paddle the bogs after snipe.

The chaise was passing the little church of Ardmore, strange, lonely landmark by the sea, the farthest outpost of the scattered Doonhaven parish, and now the road rose and twisted to the foot of Hungry Hill.

John Brodrick called to the post-boy to stop.

"Wait for me a moment," he ordered. "I shall not delay you long."

He climbed a short way above the road, until the boy and the chaise were hidden, and after walking for five minutes or so he came upon the site of the future mine. He stood for a while looking about him, his hands behind his back. Curious to think that in a few months there would be shafts sunk, and chimneys built, and all the grim reality of industry, a road cut here where there was as yet no path, the lean-to sheds, the huts of the miners, the hum and whine of machinery.

Now the scrubby grass blew softly in the wind, and the sun, coming for an instant from behind a cloud, shone upon the lichened stone so soon to be blasted by gunpowder, and suddenly a snipe rose from the ground in front of him, twisting and darting in erratic flight.

John Brodrick looked upward, and above him stretched the great mass of Hungry Hill, wild and untrodden, the summit hidden in mist. He knew the hill in every mood, in every season. In winter* when cold and frost left Doonhaven untouched, there would be a cap of snow on the top of Hungry Hill, and the lake near the summit would have a thin sheet of ice upon the surface. He would see the white face of the hill from the grounds down at Clonmere. Then the gales and rain of February would come, hiding the hill in a curtain of driving mist, until one morning in early spring he would wake to a day of unbelievable brilliance and promise, the air full of that spongy softness, so tender and so beguiling, that belonged only to this country of his birth, and there would be Hungry Hill smiling under the blue sky, the mist dissolved, the gales forgotten, a continual temptation to forget the business of the day and the work of a conscientious landlord, an everlasting reminder that there were snipe to shoot, and hares to hunt, and fish hiding in the waters of the lake, and warm, rough grass where a man could fling his body and lie sleeping under the sun.

Yes, the heat of midsummer too, the silence and the peace, the hawks that hovered in the sky, the butterflies that skimmed the lake, and bathing in the lake as he remembered doing when he was a boy, the water cold and clean.

Now the hidden wealth of Hungry Hill would be revealed at last, her strength harnessed, her treasure given to the world, and her silence disturbed in the name of progress. The forces of Nature, thought John Brodrick, must be made to work for Man, and one day, this country, so poor and so long neglected, will take her rightful place amongst the rich nations of the world. Not in his time, nor in his sons' time, but maybe in little more than a hundred years it would be possible.

Another cloud came across the sun, a spot of rain fell upon his head, and John Brodrick turned his back upon Hungry Hill and went down to the road below.

When he reached the post-chaise, he saw a man standing in the road, waiting for him. He was tall and bent, and leant heavily upon a stick, a man of about sixty years of age, whose light blue eyes made a strange contrast to the mahogany of his face. He smiled when he saw John Brodrick, a smile that had little welcome in it and no pleasure, but appeared to be caused by some secret mirth of his own.

John Brodrick nodded to him curtly.

"Good afternoon, Donovan," he said. "You seem to be a long way from home with that bad leg of yours."

"Good-day, Mr. Brodrick," returned the other. "As to my leg, he's used to tramping the hills and the roads, and serves me well enough. And how did you find the site for the new mine looking?"

"What do you know of a new mine, Donovan?"

"Maybe the fairies told me about it," answered the man, still smiling, and scratching his white hair with the end of his stick.

"Well, there's no harm in anyone knowing now," said Brodrick. "Yes, there is to be a copper mine on Hungry Hill. I signed an agreement with Mr. Lumley of Duncroom this very day, and we intend to start proceedings very shortly."

The man named Donovan said nothing. He stared a moment at John Brodrick, and then turned his blue eyes away from him, upward, to the hill.

"You'll be having no great advantage from it," he said at length.

"That we propose to find out," said Brodrick shortly.

"Ah, I'm not talking about the fortune you'll make," said the other, waving his hand in contempt. "The copper will do that for you, aye, and for your sons and your grandsons too, while me and mine grow poorer on the bit of land left to us. I'm thinking of the trouble it will bring you."

"I think we can take good care of that."

"You should have asked permission of the hill first, Mr.

Brodrick." The old man pointed with his stick to the great mass of hill that towered above them. "Ah, you can laugh," he said, "you, with your Trinity education and your reading and your grand progressive ways, and your sons and your daughters that walk through Doonhaven as though the place was built for their convenience, but I tell you your mine will be in ruins, and your house destroyed, and your children forgotten and fallen maybe into disgrace, but this hill will be standing still to confound you."

John Brodrick ignored this flow of rhetoric, and climbed into the chaise.

"Perhaps," he said, "Mr. Morty Donovan would like to take shares in the copper mine, and then perhaps he would not show his dislike quite so plainly? I shall be paying good wages to the men employed in the mine. If your sons feel like doing some honest work for a change I shall be delighted to employ them."

The old man spat on the ground in contempt.

"My sons have never worked for a master," he said, "and never shall do while I live. Doesn't all the land here belong to them by rights, yes, and the copper too, and couldn't we take it all, if we had the mind?"

"My dear Donovan," said Brodrick impatiently, "you live in the past of two hundred years ago, and talk like an imbecile. If you want the copper why don't you form a company, and engage the labour, and erect the machinery?"

"You know well enough I am a poor man, Mr.

Brodrick; and whose fault is it but that of your grandfather?"

"I'm afraid I have no time to discuss those ancient quarrels, Donovan, which are better forgotten. Good evening to you." And John Brodrick gave a sign to the post-boy to drive on, leaving the old man leaning upon his stick, staring at them, the smile gone from his face.

John Brodrick looked out over the view below them, as the chaise topped the hill. Yonder, across the bay, lay the little harbour of Doonhaven, with Doon Island at the entrance to the bay, and beyond Doonhaven, at the head of the farther creek, stood his own grey castle of Clonmere, like a sentinel guarding the waters.

The chaise rattled down the hill into the town, and past the harbour, scattering the cattle and the geese in the market-place, nearly running over a dog which came barking at the wheels, and avoiding by a miracle a small, barefooted boy who was chasing a hen into a cottage, and so past the Post Office, and Murphy's shop, and up out of the village beyond the few cottages on the hill at Oakmount, to his own gate-house and the park. The gates were open, at which he frowned, for it was by such carelessness that his cattle had strayed last time to the moors, and were caught and kept by one of Morty Donovan's men, and branded with Morty Donovan's mark into the bargain, to add to the usual unpleasantness between the families, and he resolved to speak firmly to the widow Creevy at the gate-house on the first occasion, and to remind her that her position was one of trust, and if she neglected it he had other tenants who might fill it to greater advantage.

Across the park they went and through the second gate, past the belt of trees that his grandfather had planted, past the rhododendron bushes that had been the pride of poor Sarah and were now watched so tenderly by her daughters, and down on to the smooth gravel ride beside the creek and the sunk garden, through the archway of stone, and so back to where the sweep on the ride ended before the grey walls of Clonmere Castle.

The Brodricks dined at five, and by the time John Brodrick had washed and changed his travelling clothes, dinner was upon the table, with his family assembled round it, ready to welcome him after his week's absence in Slane and Mundy. His wife Sarah had died some years previously, and his eldest daughter Barbara now filled her mother's place at the end of the table. She came forward to kiss him, her example followed by her two sisters, Eliza and Jane. Henry, John Brodrick's eldest son, had already welcomed his father on his arrival, and now stood by the sideboard sharpening the carving-knife in preparation for his father's attack upon the roast pig. Thomas, the serving-man, stood in attendance by his side. Before carving, John Brodrick said grace, and this formality disposed of, he proceeded to slice the meat on to the plates handed him by Thomas.

"Is it true, father," asked Barbara, "that there has been some horrible plot to assassinate the Cabinet Minister during his tour of the country?"

"I fear it is only too certain that there was some such plot," answered her father, "but luckily it was discovered in time, and no harm done. The whole affair must have been inspired by some of the dregs of the people, and whoever was responsible will be brought to justice. There was talk of little else in Slane, needless to say. It will have some effect at the elections."

"And is Mr. Hare to stand for the County again?" asked Henry.

"I understand so. Which reminds me, Henry, there is something you can do on the occasion. You can tell all my freeholders to hold themselves ready to vote as I wish them, and if any should absent themselves on the day without valid excuse of ill-health, he will find himself without a roof over his head."

"I can vouch for one or two," laughed Henry, "who will find themselves stricken with fever when the time comes, and the priest by the bedside."

"The Reverend Father will keep himself scarce, and out of trouble, if he has any sense," said John Brodrick, and he took his place at the head of the table.

The empty chair by his side caused him to frown.

"John is late again," he said. "Did he not know I was returning?"

"I believe he went across to the island," said Barbara swiftly. "He wanted to arrange a day's shooting with one of the officers in the garrison.

Perhaps he has had some difficulty in bringing the boat back."

"I will not stand unpunctuality from anyone, and certainly not from a nineteen-year-old boy," said her father. "Clonmere is not Andriff Castle, and I have not the careless go-as-you-please temperament of Simon Flower.

You can all of you remember that. Kindly teach your brother better manners, Henry. I thought civility the least you would learn at Eton and Oxford."

"I'm sorry, sir," said Henry, exchanging a glance with his sister.

"John has never had any idea of time," complained Brodrick's second daughter Eliza, who thought, by seeming to side with her father, to find some favour. "He was still fast asleep at breakfast this morning — Thomas had to call him twice."

The unfortunate John, entering at this moment, found all eyes upon him in sympathy, excluding Eliza's and his father's, and, hastily making his excuses and flushing scarlet as he did so, he took his seat at the table and added to the misery by spilling the gravy on the cloth.

"Curious," observed his father drily, "how a prolonged stay in this country makes a boor of a fellow, so that he dribbles his very food. Your friends at Brasenose College would hardly recognise you. However, let us talk of other things. Thomas, you may leave us. Master Henry and Master John will wait upon the ladies. No, the fact of the matter is," he said deliberately, looking round at his children, when the servant had left the room, "I have something to tell you all, concerning the future."

He laid his knife and fork upon his plate, smiling at Henry as though in confirmation of some previous conversation, while the rest of his family waited for him to continue.

It was a proud moment for John Brodrick. For months now, ever since the possibility of extracting the copper from Hungry Hill had become a certainty in his mind, he had thought and dreamt of little else. He had set himself the task of breaking down the apathy and mistrust of his neighbouring landlord with determination, for he knew that his capital alone would not cover the initial expenses. Besides which, the actual site of the mine was not entirely his possession. Part of the lands of Hungry Hill belonged to the Duncroom estate of Robert Lumley, and without his consent to form the company the mine could not be started. And at last old Robert Lumley had signed the agreement, and the work could begin. It was not, John Brodrick told himself, as he gazed proudly upon his young family, that he wanted a fortune for himself or for them. The money would come, he knew that, he took it for granted. Henry would live in comfort at Clonmere after him, and Henry's children. He would buy more land, plant more trees, build another wing on to the castle, and buy land the other side of the water too, should he have the mind.

No, it was the principle of the thing with which he had most concern. There was wealth in this country of his, ready for the taking, and only the laziness of his fellow-countrymen prevented them from enjoying it.

He looked upon it as a duty, something he owed to his country and to the Almighty, to glean the hidden wealth from Hungry Hill and to give it, at a price, to the peoples of the world. He glanced up at the portrait of his grandfather that hung above the mantelpiece in the dining-room, John Brodrick who had built Clonmere, and had been shot in the back in 1754 on his way to church, because he had tried to put down the smuggling along the coast. He knew his grandfather would have approved the starting of the mine. It would have been a matter of principle, just as it was for his grandson. Well, maybe the people would shoot him in the back as they had done the first John Brodrick, and maim his cattle, and set fire to his crops, but they would never frighten him from doing what he believed to be his duty. Smiling, he looked at each of his family in turn.

"This afternoon at Castle Andriff I signed an agreement with Robert Lumley, forming a company to work a copper mine on Hungry Hill," he said.

The young Brodricks stared back at him in silence, and he thought, with mingled pride and amusement, how like they were to one another, and how each one, from tall Henry down to the little Jane, although possessing features and a personality of their own, had the one characteristic in common, the unmistakable Brodrick quality of knowing themselves to have more brains and breeding than the usual run of their fellow-creatures.

He remembered his father Henry, who had broken his back out hunting at Duncroom, and how, when they would have carried him on a hurdle to a neighbouring cottage, to place him on a bed, he cursed them, saying, "God damn you, let me die in the open, in my own time," and they waited there, five hours under the rain, while he stared up at the sky.

And here was his own boy, Henry, twenty-one next year, with that same look of easy confidence in his dark eyes, as he smiled across the table at his father, the only one with whom he had already discussed the mining prospects, and who had shown his usual gay enthusiasm and willingness to help.

There was Barbara, twenty-three, and the eldest of the family, her soft brown hair falling over her forehead, which was wrinkled a little as she thought over the news, for Barbara needed time to consider when any new project was put before her; she was conservative by nature and mistrusted changes. Eliza, her sister, and a year younger than herself, stouter, fairer, and more like her dead mother in appearance, was already speculating upon what the future should bring for herself. Father would make a fortune, of course, and then perhaps they need not live all the year at Clonmere, but could visit Bath during the season, and even the Continent perhaps, as Lord Mundy's daughters had done a year ago.

The Continent passed through Henry's mind too, as he watched his father's face. He loved Clonmere, he loved his family, and he believed that the sinking of the mine would be a sound proposition, workable in every way, and a benefit to the people and the country. If it meant that he would be able to go to France, to Italy, to Germany, to Russia, to see all the pictures and to hear all the music that he had heard discussed in Oxford, why then, the sooner Hungry Hill was open to pick and shovel and machinery the happier he would be.

His brother John stared out of the window, down to the creek below the house. He and his sister, Jane were the darkest of the family. There was something almost Spanish about their olive skins and their warm brown eyes, a southern gypsy quality that the others lacked.

Mines upon Hungry Hill, he thought, noise and machinery to drive away the wild birds and the rabbits and the hares, and a crowd of wretched devils working underground day after day, glad of the employment to keep themselves from starving, and cursing the master who gave it to them, all in the same breath. He knew how it would be. He had seen it happen before in Doonhaven, whenever his father talked to the people about progress. They were all smiles and civility to his face, and as soon as his back was turned they muttered amongst themselves, and went and broke down a fence, or stole a cow, or lamed one of his horses, in a strange, impotent resentment.

Oh, well, father would have his mine, and they would all become millionaires, and that was that. As long as he, John, was not asked to supervise the work at the mine, or take up any position of responsibility, he did not care, and if they would leave the summit of Hungry Hill untouched so that he could exercise his dogs there, and lie on his back in the sun, and be left alone without feeling all the time that his father was expecting him to do something, then the new company could sink a hundred mines for all he cared.

And Jane, who at eight years old was already the beauty of the family, petted but unspoilt, the darling of them all, with her lively imagination and strange fancies- Jane saw a great stream of copper running down the side of Hungry Hill, the colour of blood, and a crowd of miners dabbling in it like little black devils, with her father seated upon a throne like God in the midst of them.

"When do you propose to start the work, sir?" asked Henry.

"Within the course of the next month," replied his father. "The preliminary excavations may begin even sooner. I have someone coming over from Bronsea to supervise matters, and he will bring an engineer with him. We ought to be underground before midsummer, and with luck should have three months' trial of the mine before the autumn sets in. We don't want to lose the top prices, if we have anything to sell. But the return for the first two years is bound to be small, while we are paying off expenses."

"What about the labour, father?" said Barbara.

"I have engaged a Cornishman named Nicholson to be head captain of the mine," he answered, "and he will, of course, bring some of his own people over with him.

After that-well, we shall see."

There was a pause for a moment, and then Henry, glancing sideways at his father, said gently, "There will be a certain amount of resentment, sir."

John Brodrick rose from the table, and cut himself another slice of pig from the sideboard.

"Naturally there will be resentment," he said shortly. "There was resentment when the Post Office first came to Doonhaven, there was resentment when the Dispensary was opened. I expect nothing else. But when the people here learn about the wage-packets that the Cornishmen put into their pockets every week, then we shall hear another story. It's been a hard winter, hasn't it? Perhaps they will think about the winter to come.

I rather believe they will. And I shall get them coming up to Hungry Hill, asking for employment."

His son John frowned, picking at the table-cloth with his fork.

"Well, John, what is your opinion?"

The boy flushed. He was never very articulate in his father's presence.

"Yes, sir," he said slowly, "they will come to you for employment all right. But they will be bitter about it.

They will think, "Why should we be obliged to him to keep us from starving?"' It will make a twist in their minds, don't you see? And they will do their best to obstruct the work of the mine, even though it feeds them."

"You appear to sympathise with them," said his father.

"No, sir," stammered John; "it's only that, you see, even now, after all this time, we are looked upon as interlopers; there is no denying it."

"That is ridiculous," answered his father impatiently; "we belong to the country as much as they do. Why, your great-grandfather lived here, and your great-uncle before him. There have been Brodricks in. the country back into the sixteenth century."

"Why did they shoot my great-grandfather, then?" asked John.

"You know very well why they shot him-because he believed in doing his duty to God and the King, and upholding the law. Smuggling was an offence, and he was determined to put an end to it."

"No, sir," said John; "that was just the excuse given. The Donovans shot my great-grandfather because the land here was theirs, before it was his, because the old Donovan chiefs possessed Clonmere, and Doonhaven, and Doon Island when the Brodricks were copying-house clerks in Slane, and they could not forget it. And they haven't forgot" ten it, even to this day. That's why Morty Donovan lets his tenants steal your cattle, and that's why your Cornish miners will stay one season on Hungry Hill, and no longer."

There was a silence, John Brodrick did not answer. He stared thoughtfully at his second son, while the rest of the family, astonished at their brother's outburst, sat in trepidation, scarlet and ill at ease.

"Very good, John," he said at length. "Eton and Brasenose have done more for you than I thought. A few years in London, at Lincoln's Inn, and they will make quite a speaker of you. And now, Barbara dear, if you have finished, I suggest we leave the room for Thomas to clear, and perhaps you will pour out tea in the drawing-room."

"Yes, father," said Barbara, and glancing reproachfully at John for the disturbance he had caused, she led the way upstairs to the drawing-room, where the serving-man had already placed the tea-tray in readiness.

"Silly fellow," said Henry, patting his brother on the shoulder, for their father had not yet come upstairs; "what induced you to speak so, at such a time? You know the irritation it causes my father just to mention the Donovans. And to damp his ardour, too, about the mine."

"John dear, it was thoughtless," said Barbara, "especially when you were late for dinner too. Now you will be in his bad books for a week at least."

"Oh, confound everything," said John wearily, throwing himself into a chair. "Why do I never do anything right? And why does everyone, myself included, always dislike hearing the truth? You don't think I like the Donovans, do you? Old Morty Donovan's a scoundrel, I know that."

He held out his arms to Jane, who came and sat on his knee, her arms round his neck.

"What shall we do, sweetheart? Shall we run away together, and build a little cabin on Doon Island?"

"It would be horrid in the winter," said Jane, laughing, and playing with his collar; "you would soon become ill-humoured, and vent it upon your Jane.

Henry would endure discomfort better than you."

"Henry endures everything better than I do," sighed John, "don't you, old fellow? You attend all the lectures at Oxford with the greatest equanimity, and are on breakfasting terms with half the dons. He has a visiting list of acquaintances, too, nearly a yard long. The only fellows who visit me in my rooms are tradesmen, or sporting chaps wanting to sell me a dog."

"Do you suppose," broke in Eliza, "that once the copper mine starts paying we shall all be very rich?"

"So rich, Eliza," said Henry, winking at John, "that all the impoverished Earls of the country will come from miles around to court you. You had better start planning your wardrobe soon. Poor Mrs. Murphy will have to get in a good stock of needles and thread and material."

"Mrs. Murphy," scoffed Eliza; "thank you very much. I shall purchase my dresses in Bath or Cheltenham, I shall never go to Mrs. Murphy again."

"That would be rather unkind," said Barbara. "We could always allow her to make some of our things. She tries so hard to do her best, poor woman. You could keep your Bath finery a secret from her."

"Barbara, the peace-maker," said John, "who pleases everybody and vexes none; where should we be without you? Jane, stop playing with my collar, you little plague. Isn't it your bed-time? Do you want me to carry you to bed, or will you wait for Martha to fetch you?"

"I haven't said goodnight to father," said Jane.

"Then you shall say goodnight, and afterwards I will take you to your bed," said her brother.

The child ran downstairs, and, listening at the library door, heard voices coming from within. She saw the wide-brimmed hat on the settle, and she made a face up at John, who was watching her from the stairs.

"It's Ned Brodrick with father," she whispered.

"Never mind, go and kiss him goodnight," said John.

Jane's small shoulders shook with laughter, and then, drawing herself up and composing her face to suitable gravity, she knocked at the library door. Her father was standing before the fireplace, confronting his visitor, whose features, though leaner and more cadaverous, bore a striking resemblance to his own. Ned Brodrick was, in point of fact, his natural brother, and John Brodrick, with a curious sense of family duty, had made him his agent now for a number of years. The mother, an extremely respectable woman who had been dairy-maid at Clonmere when she had caught the roving eye of John Brodrick's father, lived on a small pension in one of the cottages at Oakmount, and Ned dwelt with her. The ten pounds annuity left to him by his father when he died in 1800 was given to him with the pious hope, expressed in old Henry Brodrick's own words, that "the sum would keep him out of the mischief that had brought him into the world." The hope had not been fulfilled, however, for Ned Brodrick, disregarding his father's wishes, had become the parent of no less than four illegitimate children, all by different mothers. He was glad, therefore, to supplement his annuity by what he could earn as agent to his brother, and he was careful never to presume upon his relationship in any way, so that John Brodrick was always "Mr. Brodrick," and his nieces "the young ladies." He was, as it happened, as good an agent as John Brodrick could hope to find, and if he made a little extra for his own pocket now and again by falsifying the rent-roll of the tenants, it was no more and no less than any other man would have done in his place.

"Good evening, Miss Jane," he said now, with his customary bow and his usual look of solemnity, so far removed from mischief that it seemed hardly possible he could have ignored Henry Brodrick's will.

"Good evening, Ned," replied the child, turning swiftly from him and lifting her face to her father.

John Brodrick picked Jane up and kissed her on both cheeks, his hard, rather ruthless expression softening as he did so. This little daughter was very dear to him, dearer almost than Henry, if it were possible, and he looked forward to the time when she should become a companion to him and not merely an enchanting plaything.

"Goodnight," he said gently, "sleep well," and watching her for an instant while she opened the door, he then dismissed her from his mind and turned back again to his brother.

Jane climbed the stairs in search of John, but of course-it was typical of him-he had forgotten his promise, and she had to wander along the passage to his room in the tower, at the end of the house.

Jane found him with the window flung open, looking out towards the creek, shining silver under the moon, with the dark hump of Doon Island away in the distance.

She knelt on the window-seat beside her brother, and they were silent for a moment.

"John," she said presently, "what will they do to Hungry Hill? Will they spoil it, so that we can never go there again for picnics?"

"They will spoil the part where the mine is to be," said John; "there'll be chimneys, and shafts, and engines. You've seen pictures of mines, haven't you? But they won't touch the wild part at the top, and they won't spoil the lake. We can still go there and enjoy ourselves."

"If I were Hungry Hill I should be angry," said the child. "I should want to slay the human beings who dared interfere with me, You know how the hill looks in winter, John, when the clouds are upon it, and the rain drives down. Like a giant, frowning. If I were my father I would not have sunk my mine there, I would have found another place."

"Yes, but other places don't have the copper, sweetheart."

"Then I would go without the copper."

"Don't you want to be rich, and marry an Earl, like Eliza?"

"Not in the least. I am like Barbara, I only want all of us to be happy."

"I should be happy if I didn't owe money to half the tradesmen in Oxford," sighed John.

"Are you very much in debt? It's a bad thing, I have heard my father say, to owe money, especially to people in a lower station than oneself."

"It isn't bad. It's merely irritating.

Don't let's talk about it any more. I'll carry you to bed," said John, who always changed the conversation when he drew near to matters affecting his conscience, and taking the little girl in his arms, he carried her to the room she still shared with the old nurse Martha.

Martha was at. supper, and Jane undressed solemnly before her brother, folding up her clothes as she had been taught to do, and she knelt at his knee and said her prayers with a devout intensity and a lack of embarrassment that wrung his heart. When he had kissed her and tucked her up, he went down the corridor to the drawing-room, but paused outside the door without entering. Somehow Eliza's chatter and Henry's good-natured teasing would have jarred upon him this evening, and turning round he went down by the back staircase, and so out of the side-door to the stables across the yard, where his bitch Nellie lay, with her litter of puppies.

Tim the stable-lad was awaiting him with a lantern, and together the two boys knelt in the straw, their shoulders touching, while John held the weakling of the family in his strong but gentle hands.

"Poor pup!" he said. "We'll never make anything of him, with this squashed foot of his."

"Better drown him, Master John," suggested Tim.

"No, Tim, we won't do that. He's healthy enough, it's only that he'll not be winning any prizes for me, but that's no reason why I should take his life. All right, Nellie, I wouldn't hurt your babies."

John always forgot his problems when he was with his dogs. Their devotion and their dependence brought out the best in him, and he would willingly have passed half the night in the stable but for the fact that Tim must have his supper and go to bed.

"Is it true, Master John, what they're saying in Doonhaven?" asked the lad, as he bolted the stable-door and put the empty pail down by the pump.

"What are they saying now, Tim?"

"Why, that Mr. Brodrick is going to blast away the whole of Hungry Hill with dynamite that's coming over in a ship from Bronsea, and we are all going to be turned out of our homes to make room for the Cornish miners he'll be bringing."

"No, Tim, that's a fairy-tale, and you're a rogue to repeat it. My father is going to sink a mine in Hungry Hill, true enough, he and Mr.

Lumley, but you won't have to move for the miners. The work will give employment in Doonhaven, and bring money to the people who are out of work and have no land."

The lad looked at him doubtfully, and shook his head.

"They say in Doonhaven it doesn't do to interfere with Nature," he said. "If the Saints wished for the copper to be used, why then it would be running down the side of the hill in a stream, where we could find it."

"Who told you that, Tim? Was it Morty Donovan?"

"That is what they say in Doonhaven," said the boy, refusing to be drawn, and he wished his young master goodnight, and took himself off to the kitchen.

John shrugged his shoulders, and thrusting his hands into his pockets he walked round the house, and down the steep grass bank to the drive and the creek beyond.

The, moon shone upon the inlet below the castle, and a broad path of silver led to the wide stretch of water around Doon Island, whose dark outline hid Mundy Bay and the open sea.

Away beyond Doonhaven, some seven miles distant from Clonmere, rose the black mass of Hungry Hill, remote and forbidding in the moonlight.

Back in the library John Brodrick spoke impatiently to his agent.

"I myself gave permission to the officers of the garrison to shoot as many snipe and woodcock as they pleased on the island," he said, "as long as they did not destroy a hare or a partridge, and they took it upon themselves to look after the preservation of the game as far as they could. I cannot believe that the officers, most of whom are gentlemen, would have forfeited the pledge.

And yet you say they have half the hares destroyed?"

"It's what Baird himself was telling me, Mr.

Brodrick," said the agent, "that it was one or two of the younger officers he saw out shooting, and Morty Donovan was with them."

"Morty Donovan? Always when I "have any annoyance or trouble it is Morty Donovan who is responsible. You can call upon him from me, Ned, and you can tell him that if I hear of my game being destroyed on Doon Island without my express permission, then the persons concerned will be punished with the utmost severity, and have to answer for it at the Mundy Assizes."

"I will, Mr. Brodrick. The man should be ashamed; it's what I've said often enough in Doonhaven."

"Morty Donovan doesn't know the meaning of the word, nor do any of his family. So you think they will make trouble when we start work on the mine?"

"I don't say they will make trouble, Mr.

Brodrick, but for myself, I would not care to be one of the Cornish miners you are importing. It may be that they would do better for themselves if they stopped at. home."

"You are as bad as the rest of them, Ned. I believe when my back is turned you go and gossip in the cottages like any old woman; yes, and tell your beads too into the bargain."

"It's God's truth, Mr. Brodrick, I never consort with the people at all, except to gather in your rents, which is a sorry business at the best of times; and as for telling my beads, haven't I handed round the plate at the Established Church Sunday after Sunday for as many years as you have sat in the place yourself?"

"That's all right, Ned. I'm not complaining.

You've always done your duty by me, and I won't forget it. But what irritates me beyond measure is that an ignorant, halfeducated fellow like Morty Donovan can so play upon the superstitions of the people in Doonhaven as to lead them to believe that what I am doing for the district is some sort of devil's work or witchcraft, whereas if they had the sense to understand it I am going to put the bread-and-butter into their mouths for nothing."

"There's no gratitude in the country, Mr.

Brodrick, that's the fault."

"Gratitude, is it? I don't ask for gratitude, damn it. I only ask for commonsense. Well, that's enough of the matter. You had better walk home, Ned, while the moon is up.

There's nothing further I want to discuss this evening.

Don't forget to tell that woman at the gate-house to keep the gates closed. I'm tired of seeing my cattle on the moors with Morty Donovan's mark branded on their backs."

And so alone at last, and the estate book put away, and his papers neatly filed, and all business done for the day.

Presently he would go upstairs and chat with the girls for an hour or so, ask them their opinion about a small property across the water to make a change from Clonmere, from which they could pay visits to Bath now and again during the season, and when the girls had gone to bed he would stir the fire with his foot and tell Henry about the mining methods in Cornwall, the suggestions of the fellow from Bronsea, and how old Lumley had stuck out for his twenty per cent royalty, and what a pity it was that Simon Flower was such a good-for-nothing.

But first he would take a turn in the grounds, have a breath of fresh air from the sea to clear his head. He walked down the bank, as John had done, and presently, as he looked out across the creek to Doon Island, he became aware of the figure of his second son, standing aloof and strangely lonely, in apparent aimless meditation.

"Not with the others, John?" he said abruptly.

The boy started. He had been unaware of his father's approach.

"No, sir."

There was a silence, neither knowing what to say to the other, and both remembering the incident at dinner.

Then the boy, impulsive, stammered an apology.

"I'm sorry, sir, that I spoke as I did this evening."

"That's all right, John. I had forgotten it."

The father wondered whether he should tell the boy that he understood well enough what he had been trying to express. He was forty-eight, his son was just nineteen. He knew that the first John Brodrick had been shot in the back for the same reason given by his son, he knew too that the Donovans of the present day had not forgotten it. These things he found convenient to forget. It did not do to have long memories in this country. That was the great fault of the people, they remembered too much. He believed in justice, in fair dealing, in scrupulous honesty with those less fortunate than himself, but it was dangerous to go farther than this. Once a man became sympathetic in this country he became soft, he became idle, he allowed his mind to dwell on supposed injuries, on long-dead feuds, on a past that was buried and gone. If John was not handled properly, was not made to understand discipline and service and respect for his elders and betters, he would turn into another useless idler like Simon Flower.

So John Brodrick said no more. He stood by the side of the creel looking out towards his future mine, and his son stood by his side, nervous, irresolute, watching the moonlight shimmer upon the blank, dark face of Hungry Hill.

When John Brodrick told Robert Lumley that his royalty in the mine, after a few years, would be near a thousand pounds, he did so in no spirit of foolish optimism, but in firm belief in the accuracy of his statement. Actually the sum paid into the old man's account in the Slane bank at the close of the fourth year exceeded fifteen hundred pounds, all initial expenses having been paid off in the second year.

The price of copper had never been so high, and by purchasing three vessels that were wholly employed in shipping the ore from Doonhaven to Bronsea, John Brodrick managed to keep freights low.

Robert Lumley, when he saw how matters were progressing, forgot his former caution and would have had his partner employ double the men he did, so that every ounce of ore might be extracted, but this John Brodrick refused to do.

"We might," he said, "employ more miners, and merely pick out the best of the copper as fast as we want, but my object is that nothing should be lost to our families, or left behind in such a situation that we never could get at it afterwards. If Captain Nicholson goes down too deep we defeat our own object. The force of water is too great to be dealt with, and in a short time whatever ore is there would be lost beyond recovery."

Old Robert Lumley would drive down to Doonhaven once in every six months to inspect the mine, and each time he would find fault with some part of it or other, understanding nothing of the work himself, until John Brodrick, who made a practice of riding over every day, and knew the mine as well as the miners themselves, would lose his patience and his temper.

"You complain that the mine is not properly conducted?" he said. "Perhaps you would like to read this letter from the foremost expert in the country, who visited us last month?"

And the old man would peer at the letter of praise through his spectacles, and lay it aside again, and say that anyway, properly conducted or not, the miners were too well paid, and Captain Nicholson in particular.

"In Cornwall," John Brodrick told him, "they have a custom long established by which the proprietors make a payment to their Captains every year in proportion to the produce, in addition to the fixed salary. I propose to do the same with Captain Nicholson."

"But that will mean another deduction from our profit, Brodrick?"

"It will indeed, but I consider the deduction necessary.

Captain Nicholson has worked this mine from the start, in conditions that at times have been extremely unpleasant for him and his men, owing to the opposition of people in the neighbourhood, and he has never once suggested returning to Cornwall."

And so Robert Lumley would argue and protest and finally be won over, and drive away again in his carriage, leaving the Director in high ill-humour, wishing he could buy the old man out of the Company and be rid of him for ever.

The mine was a success, and the profits were high, but there had Deen many difficulties to overcome, and they were not all over yet. For one thing, the people in Doonhaven had proved even more obstructive than he had anticipated. He had not expected them to welcome the Cornishmen, he had been prepared for a certain amount of animosity, and had provided, as he thought, against it. For instance, he had huts erected, at his own expense, close to the mine on Hungry Hill, and fitted them up with the necessary furniture, bedding, and cooking apparatus. Some of the men were married, and brought their wives and children.

It was when they went down into Doonhaven to buy provisions that the trouble started. Murphy's shop would quite unaccountably appear to be bare, without so much as a candle or a bar of soap on the premises, and Murphy himself, with smiles and apologies, declare to the disappointed Cornish housewives that never a candle had he seen for three months, and as for soap, why his own wife had been scouring the beach that morning for a bucket of sand to wash down the floor of the shop.

It was the same if they wished to buy eggs, or butter, or even milk from the farms. The chickens would not have laid since Easter, they would have a disease amongst them, and as for the milk, why the sun had turned it sour and it had all been thrown away, not even the pigs would touch the stuff. In fact the unfortunate miners and their families would have starved had not John Brodrick sent one of the ships express to Slane for provisions, and this perforce became a custom, so that the only means of feeding the workers at the mine was by getting provisions once a week from Mundy, for they could get nothing at all in Doonhaven. It spoke highly indeed for Captain Nicholson that he was able to prevent his men returning home.

They became, with the aid of the provision ship, self-supporting, and by planting vegetables and keeping a few chickens, managed to live in not too uncomfortable a fashion. But even so the potato plants would be lifted in the night for no reason, the cabbages would disappear, and the chickens wander, and if questions were asked in Doonhaven or the neighbouring cottages, the answer would be a shaking of the head and a raising of eyes to heaven. John Brodrick would be obliged to send over sacks of potatoes from his own fields, and cabbage plants, and a brood of young chickens to make up for the loss sustained by the miners.

In winter there would be losses of firewood, and no turf to be had, and the miners be forced to go and cut timber or gather the driftwood below Clonmere, on John Brodrick's estate, to keep themselves and their families warm. Ned Brodrick went round among the people, and by a deft mixture of threat and persuasion would inveigle some half-dozen of the younger men to try their hands at the mine, and at last, at the beginning of the second year, they began to wander up, in twos and threes, to ask for employment at Hungry Hill, but even so, the animosity against the mine remained.

No, it had not been easy, thought John Brodrick, and indeed it was a relief sometimes to get away from Clonmere and across the water to Bronsea, and so up to the cheerful, homely farmhouse of Lletharrog that he had bought for his daughters, where they would spend two or three months of the winter now, every year. Henry's dream had been realised, and he had visited Paris, Brussels, and Vienna, while John was still reading for the Bar in Lincoln's Inn.

It was during the autumn of 1825, when the family had been settled in Lletharrog since August, that John Brodrick had a letter from an anonymous correspondent in Doonhaven. The writing was smudged and practically illegible, but the message ran: "You'd do well to come home if you wish to stop trouble." The letter was addressed to the shipping-office in Bronsea, and he put it in his pocket and forgot all about it. A week later, when one of his ships, the Henrietta, docked at Bronsea with her shipment of copper, John Brodrick remembered the letter, and as a matter of curiosity showed the message to the master of the vessel. The man looked thoughtful, and did not speak for a moment or two.

"You have not heard from Captain Nicholson, then, Mr. Brodrick?" he said at last.

"No, not since the first of the month, when he writes as a matter of course. Why? Is anything wrong?"

"Maybe he did not wish to cause you anxiety.

There's little to go upon anyway. No, sir, I'm wondering whether the letter you have there refers to the losses they have had lately at the mine."

"Losses? What losses?"

"I cannot tell you a great deal about it, sir, having only been in Doonhaven for this shipment, and we were loaded and away in four days. But there's stuff being taken into Slane and Mundy and other places along the coast, that doesn't find its way into your vessels, and is not handled by Captain Nicholson or by us."

"How do you know this?"

"Two or three of Captain Nicholson's own men were speaking of it, sir. The ore is taken up from the mine right enough, but it's when it is above ground that the mischief starts. I understand that Captain Nicholson is to order some system of watching by night, for it is then that the stuff must be taken away, but whether he has done so or not I cannot say."

"Is the matter discussed at all in Doonhaven?"

"Not directly, sir. But I had the feeling that the people knew about it all the same."

John Brodrick thanked the master of the Henrietta, and, ordering his carriage, drove back to Lletharrog, resolved to write to Nicholson that evening and demand an immediate explanation. The letter was never posted, for the very next day there arrived a letter from the mining captain himself, written in great haste and obviously in a state of extreme agitation.

"A system of plunder is in progress," he wrote, "that, if it continues, will eventually put a stop to our work. Little by little I have noticed losses of material that was stacked above ground, ready for shipment, but two days ago a large consignment disappeared, over which I had stationed a watch, for I had my suspicions that the theft took place after dark. The man in charge-one of my own people, a Cornishman named Collins-was found in the small hours of the morning with a broken head, and is not likely to recover. It seems he was struck from behind, and saw nothing of his assailant. This attack has so intimidated the rest of his fellows that I am having difficulty in getting men to undertake sentry duty at all, and some of them are even talking of packing their things and returning to Cornwall with their families."

John Brodrick read the letter aloud to his daughters and announced his intention of travelling home to Clonmere immediately.

"I shall send word to London to Henry and John to join me," he said, "if they can see their way to do so. I have little doubt who is at the bottom of the trouble."

"You mean Morty Donovan?" said Barbara, after a moment's hesitation.

"He may not take part in the actual plunder, in fact I think he is too shrewd a man to do so," replied her father, "but if he is not the brains behind it I shall be extremely astonished."

"Who do you suppose wrote the anonymous letter?" asked Eliza.

"I neither know nor care," said John Brodrick. "Possibly one of my tenants who is too scared of Morty Donovan to declare himself.

At any rate, the writer of the letter does not matter. What matters is that the men responsible should be tracked and punished, and this I am determined to do, if I risk my own head being broken in consequence."

His daughters looked at each other in distress.

"I implore you," said Barbara, "not to do anything rash. Could you not get assistance from the garrison on the Island?"

"Dear child," returned her father, "if I cannot quell one or two of my own country-people who have fallen into mischief without engaging the military to take up the matter for me, I should never be able to hold up my head in Doonhaven again. Your great-grandfather did not ask for help when he put down the smuggling seventy-five years ago."

"No," said Jane, "but he got shot in the back for doing it."

John Brodrick looked at his youngest daughter with severity.

"I suppose your brother John has been talking to you," he said.

Jane shook her head, her eyes filling with tears, and suddenly she got up from her chair at the breakfast-table and ran round to her father, putting her arms about him.

"If you go home," she said, "please let me come with you. I'm not afraid of the Donovans or anybody, and you will need someone to look after you and see that the house is in order. I'm not a child any longer, I'm nearly fourteen."

John Brodrick smiled at her, and patted her cheek.

"D'y think Copper John cannot take care of himself?" he said. "Don't look embarrassed, Eliza, at your end of the table. I know very well what I am called in Doonhaven. So, Jane child, you would look after me, and see that those lazy servants have the water heated, and the dinner served on clean plates, and the linen on my bed not wringing wet?

Well, you must ask Barbara her opinion; it is not within my province. But whatever is decided, I leave here tomorrow for Bronsea in order to embark in the ship that sails for Slane in the evening."

A letter was dispatched to London informing Henry and John of their father's return to Doonhaven, and asking them to join him at Clonmere if they could conveniently do so, and the following day John Brodrick and Jane, accompanied by old Martha, embarked on board the steam-packet that plied regularly between Bronsea and Slane. John Brodrick took the opportunity while in Slane, where they were obliged to put up for the night, to see if he could glean any information there about the illegal sale of copper, and if it was known who had the handling of it.

The manager of the shipping-office was interested and sympathetic, but hardly helpful. He admitted that he had heard of an underground market in the county and that there were always unscrupulous agents who were prepared to handle the stuff and have it shipped across the water to the smelting companies, but who the agents were, and what shipping firms were concerned, he was not prepared to say.

John Brodrick left the shipping-office in a spirit of grim determination. Matters were even worse than he had expected. He had been away exactly three months, and in that space of time a system of plunder had developed that bade fair to put an end to the mining business altogether. He blamed Captain Nicholson for not having made him aware sooner of what was going on, and Ned Brodrick too.

The latter was awaiting them in Mundy, and on seeing the expression on his employer's face, at once sought to justify himself for not having written.

"I would have taken ship and come over to you at Bronsea," he persisted, "but that Captain Nicholson was so persistent that he could deal with the matter himself. And to tell you the truth, sir, I have been so hard put to it with the business of the estate that I felt I must leave the concerns of the mine to him."

John Brodrick said nothing. He guessed that the truth of the matter was that his brother had passed the three months of his employer's absence in idleness, sitting about in his mother's cottage at Oakmount with his feet in the fireplace, and when the weather was fine enough shooting the woodcock on Doon Island, or courting one of the numerous widows in the neighbourhood, who apparently found his lean form and cadaverous appearance not wanting in attraction.

The carriage covered the distance from Mundy to Doonhaven in half the time it had taken a few years back, for the new road had been completed at last, chiefly owing to John Brodrick's influence with the member of Parliament, "The only injury it can receive," he observed to Jane, who was leaning from the window of the carriage, "is from the banks that support the road giving way, but I see no prospect of that ever happening. I wonder if Simon Flower has won his bet, and has travelled the distance in two hours, as he boasted he would. Here we are at the mine. You had better drive on to Clonmere with Martha, Jane, and send the carriage back for Ned and myself."

A thin rain was falling now, and the summit of Hungry Hill was hidden in mist. A broad track led from the road to the mine, the surface deeply rutted by the trucks that passed to and from the mine down to the harbour at Doonhaven, and beside this track were beak the miners' dwellings, the long row of wooden huts, and finally the sheds and tall chimney of the mine itself. The men who were not below ground, but were employed on the surface, touched their hats when they saw the Director approach, and looked at him with a certain amount of curiosity, there having been no rumour of his return. It was soon known throughout the mine that "Copper John" was home, and the general feeling was one of relief, mingled with apprehension, for stern measures would certainly be taken to deal with the theft of material, and the innocent might suffer with the guilty.

Captain Nicholson received the Director in the counting-house, where they could talk without fear of being overheard. His honest face, usually so full of confidence, was lined with anxiety, and it was plain that he had not slept properly for days. He confirmed that the copper was being smuggled out of the mine and taken into the next county, also to Mundy and to Slane, and there disposed of, but the fellows who were doing it were too cunning to be caught.

"I am convinced," he declared, "that the men I brought with me have no part in the business, and that it is certain of the local men, Mr. Brodrick, who are to blame. Those of the local men who are not responsible shield their companions, from a misguided sense of loyalty and from fear of reprisals."

"Do you search the men when they come off duty?"

"I do, Mr. Brodrick. Every man goes to the washing-room when he comes up from below, and is searched, my own people the same as the others. We can find nothing upon a single one of them. And yet the stuff must disappear from the dressing-sheds, before being loaded into the trolleys.

No other way would be possible."

"I should like to go down into the mine, Nicholson."

"You shall do so, sir; I will accompany you myself." The two men donned overalls, and the specially shaped hats, with a lighted candle in front, worn by the miners, and descended the long ladder that led to the various levels below ground, some so narrow that they were only wide enough for each man to go single file. Copper John inspected every gallery, and spoke to each man he saw.

During the time he spent underground he left no corner of the mine unvisited, he even helped to lay the charge of gunpowder against one portion of the rock that required blasting, and waited for the subsequent explosion and the clearing of the rubble, and when he and Nicholson climbed at last to the surface it was already late in the afternoon. Copper John showed no sign of fatigue, however, and proceeded at once to inspect the dressing- and sorting-sheds, and even the row of trolleys drawn up in line by the side of the track, until the gathering darkness made further exploration out of the question.

"Well, Nicholson," he admitted, "we have had little success so far, but I am in no way dispirited, and I think you may be certain that before long I shall get to the bottom of this business. Continue as you are doing, and search every man as he comes up from work, also set a watch by night, paying the men who do so double wages. I shall be over here again in the morning."

On the following afternoon Copper John set out from Clonmere westward to the Kileen moors, in company with his agent and brother, Ned Brodrick.

The air was soft and warm for the lateness of the season, and the snipe twisted and dived above Kileen bog, flushed by Ned Brodrick's water spaniel, which ran ahead of his master, his keen nose to the ground.

Doonhaven lay beneath them and behind them, hidden by the woods of Clonmere, with the tip of Hungry Hill in the far distance pointing to the sky. The brothers ignored the road that would have taken them westward across country to the Denmare river, and, turning right, struck a path that ran closely beside the bog for about a mile or so, until it was ended abruptly by a fence that enclosed some farm-buildings, while a rough drive wound up the short, steep hill to the house at the top.

It was a drear, desolate spot, with the piece of garden round about bare and uncultivated, and the house itself of a dirty brown stone, with large, staring windows, for the most part curtainless, and as they walked up the strip of garden a mongrel dog, half-greyhound, half-terrier, came snarling from an outhouse, his tail between his legs.

A woman appeared at the door of the house on hearing the disturbance, and, seeing the strangers, made at first to shut the door, then, apparently thinking better of it, opened it wide, and curtseyed.

She must have been good-looking in her youth, and even now there was something fine about her features and her dark eyes, while she held herself with dignity.

"It's not often we have your company, Mr.

Brodrick," she said. "I'm afraid you must have found it rough walking out to this poor place, with the road the state it is in. Did you wish to see my husband?"

"I do, Mrs. Donovan," replied the other.

"Is he within?"

"He is, and has not been outside for these last three weeks or more, so troubled he has been with that leg of his, that gives him no peace, day or night. You will find him in the parlour, where he has his bed now, since his illness. Don't trouble to wipe the mud from your shoes, Mr. Brodrick, it can do no damage to my poor carpet that is falling to bits for want of repair."

The note of self-pity was not lost on John Brodrick. Apologising for the darkness of the passage, the woman opened the door of the parlour.

"Here is Mr. Brodrick and the agent to see you," she announced. "the gentlemen having walked all the way from Clonmere."

The room was cold, and full of smoke from the turf fire that gave little heat, and lying upon the trestle bed beneath the window was Morty Donovan, propped up by many pillows that were none too clean.

His mahogany face was paler, and he had aged considerably since John Brodrick had seen him last. He lifted his head at their entrance, and turned his light blue eyes upon them with a blank expression.

"Sit down, gentlemen," he said, "if you can find a chair that will bear you without breaking. I cannot stand up myself, as you can see, this leg of mine having betrayed me at last. Bring some claret for Mr.

Brodrick, woman, and three glasses, instead of gaping there. We may be poor, but at least don't let ourselves be wanting in hospitality to the gentry when they call upon us, and I have claret yet in my cellar that would bear comparison with any you may have in Clonmere, Mr. Brodrick."

The agent looked hopefully at the woman. A glass of claret would have been more than welcome to him at the moment, but his employer waved his hand in dissent.

"I did not come to your house to drink your health or my own, Donovan," he said, "nor to pass the time of day as neighbours. I have come to tell you that I am perfectly acquainted with the mischief you are causing on Hungry Hill, and that I intend to put a stop to it. It is for that purpose alone that I have returned to this country. If you do not command the men under you to desist in their system of plunder, I shall have every man at the mine arrested and taken into custody."

A slow smile crept on the face of Morty Donovan.

"And see them all acquitted at the Mundy Assizes," he said. "I have no notion what you are talking about, Mr.

Brodrick; I have not been near Hungry Hill these many months. As to plunder, I should ask your Cornish workers what they do with the stuff, and Captain Nicholson, who has money enough to buy his wife an embroidered shawl, so they tell me, to parade the street in Doonhaven like a peahen."

"The Cornishmen are innocent, you know that well enough," replied John Brodrick, "and the men of Doonhaven would have worked honestly, and been glad too for the employment, but for the way you have gone behind my back and spread your poison."

"Poison, is it?" cried the old man, pretending to lose his temper. "Is it poison to call down the mercy of the Saints to forgive you for the distress you have caused in Doonhaven with this same mine, where you have the men and the young boys, scarcely more than children, working and sweating to make your fortune? I call on the walls of this house to witness that no word of mine has gone forth to cause you annoyance; rather my speech has been filled with pity for you."

Copper John heard him out without interruption, unmoved by the flow of eloquence.

"You can talk yourself hoarse, Donovan," he said, "you are perfectly aware that none of it will make any impression upon me. Whatever methods you employ to carry away the ore in secret to Mundy, and to Slane, and into the next county, depend upon it I shall discover them, and you and the culprits concerned will be severely dealt with. I suppose you do not wish to end your days in prison, but that you will do, if you persist in robbing me and the members of my company."

Morty Donovan made no answer. His blue eyes had lost their fire, and he leant back in his bed as though weary of the discussion.

"And if the men of Doonhaven do sell your copper unbeknown to you," he said, "it's yourself who is the cause of it, Mr. Brodrick, for starting the mine in the beginning, and putting the poor creatures in the way of temptation."

This last was more than Copper John's patience could stand.

He rose to his feet and curtly bade Morty Donovan good-day.

"Remember," he said, "I came here to warn you, and your sons too if they are acting for you. And I will thank you to leave my tenants alone, and keep your cattle where they belong."

So saying he brushed past Donovan's wife, who stood in the open doorway, and followed by his agent went out of the house into the yard.

"I was a fool to waste my time coming out here," said Copper John, "but at least I have given him warning, and he knows now what to expect."

At this moment the cur belonging to the farm fell upon Ned Brodrick's spaniel, and the two tumbled over one another, snarling and snapping, and would not let go for all the agent did to separate them. Mrs.

Donovan called shrilly from the house, and a man appeared from the outhouse across the yard and pulled the mongrel away, cuffing and kicking it, so that the poor brute ran whining out of the reach of his boot.

Sam Donovan was about thirty years of age, and was an unfortunate mixture of his father and his mother, having the fine points of neither. His blue eyes were weak and watery, and the stubble of beard on his chin concealed a loose, flabby mouth. He had a way of smiling sideways and looking down at his feet, scratching his ear as he did so.

"Good-day, Sam," said John Brodrick curtly. "Should you want to know why I entered your father's house, you had best go inside and ask him, while the memory of my visit is still fresh in his mind."

"If it's Tom Moore's fence that has brought you here, I wasn't at home when the cows intruded there, I was down in Doonhaven," said Sam Donovan, glancing from Copper John back to the agent. "The fact of the matter is that fence of his is too far to the north, it encroaches on our land, and anyone else would tell you the same. Tom Moore had no business to put up the fence at all."

"The matter of that fence was brought up for arbitration six months ago, and you know it perfectly well, Sam Donovan," broke in the agent, at once in his element, and desirous of showing his authority.

"Didn't I come over myself and measure the ground, and have two unbiased parties here to witness the fairness of what was agreed, and you remember you said yourself at the time…"

"That will do, Ned," said John Brodrick impatiently. "The matter is of no importance, and Sam knows that if his father's cattle broke down the fence his father must pay for the damage done, and there is no more to be said. Let us get home before we are both drenched to the skin."

He turned abruptly away, without bidding Sam Donovan good-bye, and his agent was obliged to follow him, regretting the break in the argument, which might have lasted some considerable time and would have resulted in going once more into the house and continuing the discussion over a glass of whisky, had he been on his own and not in company with his brother and employer.

The weather had changed, as it so often did in the country, to clammy mist and drizzle, and the rain swept now over the moors as though the sun had never shone for the day. One thing was certain, thought Copper John as he strode along beside the bog, always five yards or so ahead of his agent, the time had arrived to make the Donovans understand, finally and for ever, that their influence on the people of Doonhaven must finish. The ridiculous family feud belonged to a past that was dead and buried. If the Donovans had come down in the world it was from their own idleness and feckless way of living; the prosperity of the Brodricks had nothing to do with it. Any fortune that he, John Brodrick, was making came from his own energies and his fortunate ability to march with the times. If the Donovans did not understand this, and continued their policy of obstruction, then the Donovans would be broken. And the sooner they were broken the better it would be for Doonhaven. There were too many families like them in the country, proud, idle, and good-for-nothing, ever ready to raise a protest against the law, a continual menace to the Government and to loyal landlords like himself. Until these people were brought to heel and made to fit in with progress and the general scheme of things, the country would never prosper.

So Copper John decided, coming out on to the road and leaving the wet bog and the brown moors behind him, the rain streaming from his coat. And as he reached his own gate-house, at the entrance to the park, and, dismissing his agent, proceeded to walk down the carriage road, the sky cleared, as suddenly as it had clouded, the grassland shone and glistened under the sun, and down in the wood by the water's edge the herons rose from their nests in the tall trees, and with heavy flapping wings flew slowly down the creek.

He turned up from the drive, and stood on the bank of smooth grass before the castle, looking with pride and affection at the strong grey walls of his house, the tower at the end, the mass of trees climbing the hill behind, and thought how he would build on additions to the house, making it stronger still, with bigger windows, other towers, not for his own sake, but for Henry's, and for Henry's children, and in days to come this castle of Clonmere would be a landmark far and wide, and people travelling the road from Mundy to Doonhaven would stop below Hungry Hill and point westward across the water, saying, "There is Clonmere, the home of the Brodricks." And beside it would be the tall chimneys of the mines.

Henry and John arrived from London at the end of the week. Meanwhile, there had been no further incident at the mine, and Captain Nicholson gave it as his opinion that the return of the Director of the Company had frightened the pilferers, and possibly brought them to some sense of honesty.

This opinion was short-lived, however, for on the day following the young men's arrival, one of the trolleys, which had been fully loaded at the close of the preceding day's work, and which was stationed in the customary track outside the cleansing-shed, where the copper was washed and separated, was found in the morning, when wheeled to the dressing-station, filled not with copper but with iron residue. The men who had been in charge of this particular trolley were summoned at once by Captain Nicholson and closely questioned, but both appeared stupefied at what had happened. Captain Nicholson went down the mine, and, crawling along the narrow gallery, came to the load that had been worked the day before. Gunpowder had been used frequently during the week, and the bitter, pungent smell still clung about the rock-face of the mine, and the rubble had not all been cleared away. The men who were working the seam and had filled the buckets were Doonhaven men, not Captain Nicholson's own Cornish-men, but, like the surface men, they professed themselves ignorant as to how the iron residue came to fill the trolley, and in proof of their innocence reminded the Captain how he himself had been present the evening before when their shift came off duty, and had supervised the now customary nightly search, and not a trace of any mineral had been found on their persons.

"Do you think we swallow the stuff?" asked one of them, in high indignation. "And will you be cutting open our stomachs to look for it?"

"It's my belief," said his companion solemnly, "that the spirits in the old hill make away with it, and put a charm on us in the doing of it, so that we cannot see them crouching beside us with their little barrows."

"The only spirits that come into this mine you bring yourself in a bottle from Murphy's shop in Doonhaven," said Captain Nicholson. "Go on, get to work, and remember to hold yourselves in readiness for further questions from Mr. Brodrick when he arrives. It's my belief he will have every one of you arrested by the police and taken into Mundy."

The new setback meant a great loss of face for Captain Nicholson, who had been congratulating himself that the trouble was over, and it was with extreme reluctance that he sent a lad over to Clonmere with a note to the Director, explaining what had occurred.

Copper John came within the hour, in company with his two sons, and listened to Nicholson's story in silence, his face hard and expressionless.

"Well, Henry," he said at the conclusion, "your brains are young, and you arrive here fresh to the business. What do you make of it?"

Henry looked thoughtful. He did not reply immediately. Although he was now twenty-five, and his brother a year younger, they were so used to deferring to their father's views and opinions, and keeping their own thoughts in abeyance, that to be appealed to in this way was something of a novelty.

Henry's travels in France and Germany had given him plenty of confidence, however, which his brother still lacked, and he was the lucky possessor too of great natural charm and grace of manner, in addition to a good brain, and, glancing across at Captain Nicholson with a smile, he asked for permission to descend the mine.

"By all means, sir," said the Captain, "and I will come with you myself."

"No, don't trouble to do that," said Henry. "I think it might be better if I went alone, and possibly my brother could come with me. We may strike upon something that will give a clue to the business and solve your troubles."

"I wish you success," said his father, with a short laugh, "but take care not to lose yourselves. John is quite capable of tumbling down the shaft and breaking his neck."

The brothers left the small counting-house and walked past the dressing-sheds and the trolleys to the ladder, close to the shaft head.

"Well," said John, "what's in your mind?"

"Just something," smiled his brother, "but I shan't tell you yet. I Want your help, all the same. When we get down to the level where Nicholson told us the men were working yesterday, you must somehow get the fellow there in conversation, while I look about the place without interference. When you see me blow my nose, that will be your signal."

"What am I to talk to the man about?" objected John.

"Anything you please. Tell him about your new greyhound. But keep his attention distracted."

"What a tom-fool business it is!" said John. "If I were my father I should let matters alone, and leave the fellows to take the copper. There must be enough to go round. Confound it, Henry, look at the mess they are making of Hungry Hill."

He pointed at the tall, lean chimney, the long row of sheds, the clustered huts where the miners lived.

"And all," laughed his brother, "so that I can amuse myself in Paris and Brussels, and you can race your greyhounds."

They put on mining hats and overalls, and were soon descending the long, steep ladder into the mine.

The atmosphere was a curious mixture of chill and oppression, and the candles stuck in brackets at intervals gave a gloomy, fitful light.

They reached the first level, where they could see the figures of two of the miners beside the shaft, engaged in steadying the buckets en the chains before they were raised to the surface by a windlass. Henry enquired where the blasting operations were in progress, and the two brothers were directed to a lower level.

"It's the narrowest level in the whole of the mine," said one of the men. "You will have to go single file, and crawl part of the way."

Henry was obviously enjoying himself, and looked about him the whole time with keen interest, now and again tapping the rock-face, and whistling under his breath, a habit of his when thinking very hard, while John, who with his superior height found the low ceiling highly uncomfortable, followed his elder brother in silence, aware that with every step he took farther into the bowels of the mine he became more and more depressed. He longed to be up and out of it, away in the fresh air on the top of Hungry Hill, and to him there was something degrading, almost evil, in burrowing like this into the depths, breaking the age-old rock with gunpowder to extract the hidden mineral.

A low rumble and muffled explosion not very far distant warned them that they were nearly within reach of the work, and through the gloom and smoke they edged their way along the gallery close to the miners.

The men's faces looked grey and haggard in the dim light, and once again John was filled with a sense of oppression. If any harm came to these fellows through their grim work, it would be the fault of his father and himself.

Henry was amongst them immediately, chatting easily, asking questions, while John stood aloof, looking at the dripping walls and the rubble caused by the last explosion, which the men were now clearing with their picks and shovels. He heard his brother enquire how far the gallery ran, and where they had been blasting during the previous weeks, and one of the men, a Cornishman, whose work it was actually to ignite the train, pointed to the far end of the gallery, where a mass of rubble appeared to be uncleared and the height of the ceiling little more than four foot.

"We wasted our time there," he said. "The rock goes chalky, and there is no mineral deposit. You could blast away for weeks, and you would only find chalk. It's my belief the hill slopes suddenly here, above ground, forming a wide hollow, and we are not so very far from the surface."

"Yes," said Henry, "I have often come upon those hollows while walking about the hill-almost like natural quarries. I should say there were earthworks here in days gone by."

"Yes, sir," said the Cornishman, uncertain what was meant by an earthwork, and then John suddenly perceived that his brother was very vigorously blowing his nose. He at once moved into the group of men.

"Do you ever have accidents during these explosions?" he asked.

The man turned to him civilly. "No, sir," he said; "it's only a matter of being careful. Of course it's specialised work."

The Cornishman showed John where holes had been bored in the side of the rock, for the charge to be inserted. John asked many questions, showing a keen interest most foreign to his nature, while the other three men, glad of a respite, leant on their tools and entered into the discussion, which worked round to when and where gunpowder had. first been employed for mining purposes.

No one noticed or cared that Henry did not join in the conversation, and had disappeared in the gloom to the end of the gallery. When he finally returned-John having meanwhile re-told the story of the Gunpowder Plot with great eloquence, professing himself firmly on the side of Guy Fawkes, and thus earning for himself a certain amount of respect from two of the men, who came from Doonhaven-ten minutes or a quarter-of-an-hour had passed by, and John, glancing at his brother, perceived that his clothes were covered in chalk and that there was a look of intense excitement in his eyes.

"Well, John," he said, "if you've had enough of it, we'll leave these fellows to their work and get up to the surface," andwitha brief word of thanks to the men he began to edge his way back along the level to the ladder.

They climbed to the surface in silence, John asking no questions, but as soon as they were above ground, and Henry had dusted the chalk from his clothes, he turned to his brother in triumph.

"My instinct was right," he said. "I know how these devils take the stuff away. Wait until we get to the counting-house, and you shall hear the whole story."

Their father, who was beginning to show signs of impatience, was walking up and down the room, his hands behind his back.

"Well," he said, as his sons entered, "no bones broken?"

"Not yet," said Henry, "but there may be before this business is finished. Captain Nicholson, can we be overheard here?"

"No, sir. The clerk has gone to her dinner, and not a soul but ourselves is within earshot."

"Very well then," said Henry. "I am able to tell you that your stuff is being stolen below ground, before it is ever brought to the surface."

"What the devil do you mean, Henry?" asked his father sharply.

"Only this, sir. I have always understood that in prehistoric days Hungry Hill was inhabited by cave-dwellers, who burrowed passages and tunnels underground, a few traces of which remain to this day. I have come across caves and hollows myself, when walking the hill, but never bothered to explore them to any depth. It was only when I heard about the disappearance of material that I remembered them."

"Well?" said his father.

"Just now, down on the second level, I left John to talk to the men who were blasting, and I went to the end of the gallery, where work has ceased, because chalk was struck. I cleared away some of the rubble, and moved one large piece of rock that looked as though it had been placed there with deliberate intention. I crawled in behind it, and found what I suspected. A narrow tunnel, just wide enough for a man to crawl on his hands and knees, sloping upwards, away from the mine.

It was worn quite smooth with recent use. I did not explore more than a few yards, for fear of discovery, but I can pretty well guess that it leads out into one of those old hollows in the side of the hill. It would be the simplest thing in the world to have a man crawl along that tunnel and dump the stuff at the end of it, and for someone else to come by night on to the hill by the hollow and load up his donkey and cart.

It's easy to see how they work it, too. Two Doon-haven fellows in the business arrange to work the same shift below ground, and one of them goes up the tunnel, while his partner keeps watch. Your Cornishmen are entirely innocent, Captain Nicholson. I'm sure of that. The fellow who was blasting today had no more idea there was a tunnel behind the chalk than my brother John had, but if he had a little more curiosity he would soon find out. So there you have it, father. And make what you like of the discovery."

He smiled at the two older men, and winked at his brother. His achievement was, after all, something of a triumph.

"Well, Nicholson," said Copper John, "my son seems to have accomplished more in half-an-hour than you have done in weeks. Nor do I seek to make any excuses for myself. Now, my plan is as follows. When the men come off shift this evening, you and my son Henry will go down the mine and explore the tunnel to its outlet in the hillside.

We will then post a watch every night until we catch the fellows at work. If there is a scrap, so much the better. John, you are the lawyer of the family.

What do you say?"

John, whose dislike of the law was intense, and who had not the moral courage to say so, glanced appealingly at his brother, who took no notice.

"I don't know, sir," he havered. "Would you not perhaps consider telling the men that their game has been discovered, and block up the tunnel, and so end the business? Then there will be no bad blood spilt on either side."

"If that's what they teach you in Lincoln's Inn no wonder nobody briefs you for Counsel," said his father scornfully. "I fear my second son knows more about his dogs than he does about his profession, Captain Nicholson. Very well, John, you can stay at home and mind Jane. We don't want any faint-hearts amongst us. I suppose we can depend upon your Cornishmen, Nicholson? Meanwhile, I will find one or two neighbours to give us some assistance. I don't want to appeal to the military in this affair. Simon Flower from Andriff might be prevailed upon to help us; he is hefty enough, whatever else he lacks."

John Brodrick returned to Clonmere in high good-humour. They would soon have the whip-hand of the pilferers, and give them such a lesson that no one would try to interfere with his mine again in a hurry. The whole story was related to Jane, whose pleasure at Henry's cleverness was only tempered by the sight of John's gloomy face, which she knew at once to be caused by his own sense of inferiority.

"Let Henry crawl about the confounded tunnel on his hands and knees," he said to Jane afterwards, sprawling on his father's chair in the drawing-room.

"I don't give a tinker's curse what he discovers. I'm sick of the whole affair."

"Why did you come over here, dear, if you did not want to help father?"

"Did you ever know me refuse the chance of a holiday? And the woodcock waiting to be destroyed on Doon Island? Come along to the pantry, and help me clean my gun. The fellows can take every bit of copper out of Hungry Hill for all I care."

It was decided that the following night a watch should be set on the hillside, and that during the day Copper John should sound one or two neighbours as to their willingness to help, while Henry and John rode over to Castle Andriff to see Simon Flower. Old Robert Lumley was in Cheltenham, where he usually spent the winter, and even had he been in the country his presence would not have been much help.

The day was fine, and the sky cloudless, and the two young Brodricks rode over to Andriff in good spirits, bearing a present of wood- cock to Mrs. Flower. She was a large, rather formidable woman, with a great sense of her own importance, and she never could forget that her husband Simon was brother to the Earl of Mundy, a fact which Simon Flower himself found it convenient to ignore.

Castle Andriff, therefore, was a perplexing house to visit, for the drawing-room, which on first inspection appeared to be of a grandeur only equalled by that of a royal palace, with marble floor, and gilt chairs, and Mrs. Flower rising like a queen from her throne to receive the caller, would, on looking a little closer, reveal the fact that many of the legs of the gilt chairs were broken, making them unsafe to sit upon, while the marble floor was so muddied and begrimed by Simon Flower's setters that it would bear comparison with a kennel. A powdered footman, in livery, received the two Brodricks, and escorted them to the drawing-room, his fine appearance spoilt by the darns in his white stockings and the odour of manure about his person, suggesting that his morning had been spent in the stables, while heated voices overhead sounded as though a domestic dispute of some magnitude was taking place. The altercation was not improved by the discordant notes proceeding from a pianoforte, which on entering the drawing-room the Brodricks discovered to their surprise were being produced by Simon Flower himself, who, with a hat on the back of his head, eyes closed, and a pipe of great length between his lips, was swaying backwards and forwards to some strange melody of his own composition.

Mrs. Flower, dressed as for a London reception, was mending a tear in her brocaded bedroom curtains, nor did the entrance of the two visitors embarrass her at all.

"I am delighted to see you both," she said, extending a gracious hand, which Henry wondered whether he was expected to kiss. "You find us as usual in a state of disorganisation. Pray take a chair and tell me the news. Not that one, Mr. Brodrick, the leg is unsafe… How kind of your father to send us a present of game! It so happens that my husband's brother, the Earl of Mundy, is not at the moment in residence in this country-he generally keeps us very plentifully supplied with game, as you can imagine… Are your sisters still picnicking in the little farmhouse? Miss Brodrick must fancy herself Marie-Antoinette at the Petit Trianon. Quite a change after Clonmere…?

She rattled on, hardly pausing to draw breath and never waiting for an answer, and as she talked loudly to make herself heard above the piano, so did her husband increase the volume of sound, until one of the setters, which had been crouching between his legs, crawled from his lair and added a mournful howl to his master's strains.

"Poor Boris cannot abide the pianoforte," shouted Mrs. Flower. "Sometimes he will continue howling for an hour on end, but it never puts my husband out of countenance. When are you both coming over to hunt with my father's hounds at Duncroom?"

The strain of conversing under such conditions proved too much for Henry, for all his charm of manner, and he could do little else but smile and bow and gesture with his hands, while John remained steadily mute, as he invariably did when secretly entertained.

At length the concert came to an end, there was a superb flourish of chords and a loud hammering in the bass that drew forth a final moan of protest from the setter, and Simon Flower rose to his feet, slamming the lid of the piano.

"They say it's a sign of intelligence when a dog sings to music," he said, waving his pipe at the brothers. "Did you hear that hound of mine trying to accompany me? I declare he puts his very soul into his voice; it wrings my heart to hear him."

"Don't be absurd, Simon; the animal dislikes it."

"Dislikes it? I tell you the dog will sit by my side like a leech, with his eyes fixed on the notes, so devoted he is to the instrument. But never mind about that; these lads want refreshment after their journey. Come down to the cellar, both of you; we shall do better that way than if we allow my wife to make tea."

He led the way down a narrow, twisting stair to the labyrinths of his castle, and after poking about with a stump of candle he discovered a bottle of old Madeira, which he proceeded to decant on the spot into an ancient carafe hidden in a cranny of the cellar along with some half-dozen glasses.

"When there's frost on the ground in winter and I can't hunt," he said gravely, "I bring my friends down here, and it would astonish you to see how well we pass the time. My wife imagines us to be playing billiards, and to deceive her I get my servant to click the balls about She never knows but what we are there, the dear trusting soul. Fill up your glasses, my boys, and make yourselves comfortable.

There's a beer barrel apiece for you to sit upon."

The two young men and their host did indeed do so much better than if their hostess had made tea for them in the drawing-room, that when they finally emerged from the cellar and blinked their way into the upper regions once more Henry had forgotten his mission, John was in a state of bland benevolence, and their host was singing "O! Mistress mine, where are you roaming?" which song, in John's opinion, could hardly be directed at the formidable Mrs. Flower. Tea, however, was being served in the drawing-room, and Henry recovered himself sufficiently to broach, in a somewhat lame fashion, the reason for the visit. The story he told certainly sounded a little muddled, and Simon Flower, in spite of the interlude in the cellar, could hardly be blamed for shaking his head at the end of it.

"I'll not go crawling around in a rabbit burrow for your father or for any man on earth," he said, yawning, the potency of the old Madeira beginning to show in his sleepy blue eyes. "Why, it might be that I'd lose me way, and never a soul would have sight of me again. Do you remember it was in such fashion we lost poor Trouncer, Maria? She got poking into an old badger's earth and that was the end of her, the best bitch I ever bred."

"You mistake me, sir," said Henry; "there was never a question of your descending the mine and going into the tunnel. My father's plan is for you and the rest of us to mount guard at the outlet of the tunnel on the hillside, and to waylay any of these beggars who may appear."

"Is it foxes or men you are after?"

"Men, Mr. Flower. I have just explained to you.

The fellows who are stealing the copper from the mine.

My father wishes to arrest them and make an example of them. He thinks Morty Donovan is at the back of it."

"Ah, I'll not do a thing against Morty Donovan. Didn't he sell me the father of that same Trouncer I was just telling you of? A wonderful dog, John; you would have appreciated the pair of them. No, why should I lie all night on a hillside to pick a quarrel with Morty Donovan? I don't see what your father wants to meddle in the business for at all."

"But, surely, Mr. Flower, you believe in upholding the law? Are you not a magistrate yourself?"

"Shame on you, Simon," said his wife; "there is poor Mr. Brodrick over at Doonhaven working all alone to save the property belonging to him and to my father, and you don't raise a hand to help him. I only wish my brother-in-law were at home, Mr. Brodrick. The Earl of Mundy would never sit by and see such injustice done, and I dare say if I used my influence and perhaps got word to him over the prater…"

"Very good of you, madam, but you see the matter is urgent. I gather think my father hoped that Mr.

Flower would accompany us home tonight."

"Tonight? Impossible. I shall not stir from Castle Andriff this night for all the thieves in Europe," said Simon Flower dramatically. "Let Morty Donovan run away with the copper, and may it bring him better fortune than it has to my house."

And clamping his hat more firmly on his head, Simon Flower sat himself down once more to the piano.

Henry looked across at John and shrugged his shoulders, and at this moment the door of the drawing-room flew open and Simon's daughter rushed into the room, her face flushed, her eyes bright with anger, and her mass of chestnut hair in a tangle down her back.

"It's a shame," she shouted, "a wicked shame, and I told her I would not stand it, and no more I will.

And I've scratched her face, and locked her up in the linen-press, and I hope she dies."

So saying, she slammed down the lid of the piano, forcing her father to silence, and stood with heaving breast, her eyes upon her mother.

The vision that had so suddenly descended upon them was too much for the young Brodricks. They rose to their feet, abashed and speechless, and indeed Fanny-Rosa Flower, at seventeen, would have reduced any man with a sense of beauty to the same state of silence.

Her present anger only added to her loveliness, the flush on her cheeks brought new depth to her slanting green eyes, and the untidy curling hair made her look like a Bacchante from the wild woods. The fact that she was stockingless seemed in perfect keeping with the character. She now noticed, for the first time, that her parents had visitors.

"How do you do?" she said, with something of her mother's regal manner, but with her father's smile. "I am sorry to cause such a disturbance, but I have just had a fight with my governess, and I trust it is the last one."

"Fanny-Rosa," said her mother, "I am pained and surprised. What will Mr. Brodrick and his brother think of you?

Miss Harris will be smothered in the linen-press."

She left the drawing-room in great agitation, while Simon Flower regarded his daughter with indulgence from the piano.

"I never cared for that Miss Harris," he said; "she had a mean, snivelling manner with her that did not suit our ways. I think it is high time that you did without a governess."

Fanny-Rosa, recovered from her burst of temper, looked out of the corner of her eyes at the two Brodricks, and sat herself down in her mother's chair.

"I thought you were both in London," she said softly. "You do not generally come to Clonmere till after Christmas, do you?"

Henry found himself telling once again the story of the mine, and this time he had a more receptive audience.

Fanny-Rosa clasped her bare legs, and never took her eyes off his face.

"I wish I could come with you both," she said, "instead of my father. I would dearly love to wait out on the hillside in the middle of the night. And if you had a fight with your miners I would not be afraid."

"I tell you what it is," said Simon Flower; "your bout with Miss Harris has put you in trim for a scrap. I have little doubt these lads would let you ride pillion behind one of them, and you would give a good account of yourself in the bargain. But you never told us what was the trouble with Miss Harris?"

"She told Tilly and me it was time we learnt to fold up our clothes, and I said I would not. All young ladies, she said, should do so from habit, and not have them strewn about the floor like girls from the kitchen.

"What would your uncle, the Earl of Mundy, say to your slovenly ways?"' she said. "Maybe he would forgive me if I sat by his side and pulled his whiskers and told him how handsome he was," I answered her. And with that she looked down her long nose and said I must learn a page of French verbs, so I scratched her face for her, as I told you before, and had her shut in the linen-press, and I can tell from your eyes that you would have served her the same, Mr. Brodrick."

She looked slyly across at John, who blushed to the roots of his hair and laughed under his breath.

Fanny-Rosa then helped herself to a large piece of cake, and poured herself some tea, while the eyes of the two Brodricks were drawn irresistibly to the fascination of the slim bare feet.

"You have been on the Continent, have you not?" she said to Henry, with her mouth full of cake. "Ah, I know all about you, our footman is cousin to your cook. We were in Paris ourselves last winter, because my grandfather let my father have some money to spend, and we went to Paris instead of buying new curtains for my mother's bedroom."

"Yes, you baggage," said Simon Flower, "and whenever we visited a picture-gallery what should we find in every room but a trail of young Frenchmen behind us? So in the end the people were bowing to us, thinking we were a royal procession."

"It was a Miss Wilson who was our governess then," said Fanny-Rosa, "and I slipped away from her twice when she was conducting me through the streets, so that she thought I had been abducted, and went in tears to the policemen, but they, being French, did not understand her. She was forced to go to a quiet place in the country when we returned, as she had developed nervous trouble. Would you believe it, but I have had a dozen governesses since I was fourteen, and I had my seventeenth birthday last month, so this is the end of it all."

"You will be the end of your parents too," said Mrs.

Flower severely, entering the room at this moment, after a vain attempt to mollify the unfortunate Miss Harris. "You may think yourselves lucky, Mr.

Brodrick, that your own sisters do not behave in similar fashion, and I trust you will not give an account of this daughter of mine to Miss Brodrick when you return."

"I tell you what," cried Simon Flower.

"Why do you two boys go back home at all?

Let your father go down the old burrows after the miners if it pleases him. You shall stay and dine with us, and we will pay another visit to the cellar, and Fanny-Rosa shall come with us."

But Henry shook his head and moved towards the door, much to his brother's mortification.

"You are very kind, sir," he said, "but we have already delayed far too long as it is. My father will be in some anxiety concerning U."

Simon Flower waved a careless hand, and sat himself down to the piano.

"I'll shoot with your father any day he fancies, on Doon Island," he said. "I'd never refuse an invitation of that sort. But to go crawling or my stomach after Morty Donovan in the middle of the night, no, I will not do it, and ye can tell him so to hia'oux"

"bb'face."

And with that he burst once more into song, joined by the faithful setter, and the two Brodricks left Castle Andriff to the confused sound of clashing chords, a rich baritone voice, and the barking of at least half-a-dozen dogs, while the elder daughter of the house, an enchanting barefooted figure, waved to them from the stone steps.

Dazed, bewildered, and still slightly intoxicated, the two brothers rode home at a pace that would have infuriated Copper John could he have seen them. It was not until they were within sight of Doon-haven that they drew rein, and Henry pulled himself to his senses.

"You know, John," he said, "my father is perfectly right. This country will never prosper while it continues to breed people like the Flowers."

John did not answer. The prosperity of the country meant nothing to him. Henry could continue his observations in his critical fashion and abuse Simon Flower if he wished. The only thing that mattered to John was this: that never in his life had he set eyes on anything quite so lovely as Simon Flower's daughter Fanny-Rosa.

On the following Saturday evening the Brodricks were seated round the fire in the library, having dined early, as was their custom. Jane had been gathering cones from the woods during the day, and these she now scattered on the smoking turf, making the fire hiss and crackle, the better to shut out the sound of the wind as it moaned in the trees behind Clonmere. There was a full gale blowing outside in Mundy Bay, but the long Atlantic rollers swept past the entrance to Doonhaven, while the straggling length of Doon Island acted as a natural breakwater.

The tide ebbed swiftly in the creek below the castle, making a strong ripple against the wind, but so sheltered was Clonmere from the full force of the gale that only the sudden tremor of the woods above the house gave warning that the still weather had broken at last.

Henry was seated at his father's desk, writing a letter to Barbara at Lletharrog, while John sprawled as usual in the most comfortable chair, one hand fondling the ear of his favourite greyhound, the other propping up a book he did not read. He was watching the cones as they burst in the fire, and Jane, glancing up at his half-closed eyes, wondered what he was thinking.

The week had been quiet. No further pilfering had been discovered at the mine, and though a watch had been stationed on the hillside every night no one had come upon the hill save the watchers themselves. Yet there was a strange feeling of unrest in the air, a brooding sense of disquiet. And the miners, watching one another in suspicion, went about their work sullenly and in silence.

It was not only at the mine that this atmosphere prevailed. Down in Doonhaven, when Jane, accompanied by old Martha, went to make a purchase at Murphy's shop, and would have chatted as usual in her happy way to Murphy, whom she had known from babyhood, the man avoided her eye, looking uncomfortable, and muttering some excuse, disappeared into the back of his shop, leaving a young ignorant lad to serve her. It seemed to her too that the people in the market square stared at her with hostility, and when she smiled and said good-morning they turned their backs and pretended not to see.

Doonhaven had suddenly become a place of whispers, of figures peering round doorways and then withdrawing, and Jane, who had a place in her heart for all comers and loved the people of Doonhaven, returned home with a heavy feeling of foreboding.

"I don't like it," she said to Henry. "I believe my father takes this business of the mine not seriously enough. All he thinks about is to catch the few miners and to punish them for taking the copper. He does not realise that his mine is hated by every one of the people in Doonhaven."

"The trouble is that they are jealous," said Henry.

"They would like all the benefits of the copper, and none of the trouble in getting it. Father knows what he is talking about. If you were not firm with the people in the country nothing would ever be done, and no progress would be made."

"We were happy enough without progress."

"That is just sentimentality, and you have been listening to John."

Jane threw another cone on to the fire. It spat and hissed, and became still. Soon there was no sound but the scratching of Henry's nib at the desk, and the occasional rustle of a page as John turned the leaves of his book. Suddenly the dog pricked his ears and looked towards the door, and the door itself opened, and their father, Copper John, stood upon the threshold. His coat was buttoned to his chin, his hat was pulled low over his brow, so that little of him could be seen but the long nose and the thin lips above the square jaw, while in his hand he carried his favourite stick, short and nobbled, with a head on it like a club. Behind him, in the hall, stood the agent, Ned Brodrick, his lean, mournful face a contrast to the forceful determination of his more fortunate brother.

"I want you two boys to accompany me immediately," said Copper John. "We are starting for the mine in five minutes. Outside in the drive I have some dozen of the tenants waiting, also Parsons, the customs officer, Sullivan from the Post Office, Doctor Beamish, and one or two others that have mustered. There is no time to lose."

The three young Brodricks had risen to their feet, Henry tense and alert, John a little bewildered, awoken too rudely from his dream, and Jane pale and anxious, clasping her hands in front of her.

"Is anything wrong, sir?" asked Henry.

Copper John smiled grimly.

"Word has come that there are some thirty men or more marching out from Doonhaven to Hungry Hill, and leading them are the half-dozen miners suspected by Captain Nicholson. They are out to do mischief, of course, and I propose to stop them."

Jane followed her father and uncle into the hall, where her two brothers were fastening their coats, their faces pale and excited in the dim candle-light.

The door was open on to the drive, and she could see the small huddled group of men waiting for her father, shuffling their feet on the gravel, talking amongst themselves in whispers. One or two of them swung lanterns in their hands, and all carried heavy sticks.

There was still no rain, but the wind came in gusts, and the clouds raced one another across the sky. It was about half-past eight, and the night was dark. No moon shone, and the stars were mere pin-pricks of light that came and vanished.

Copper John and his two sons joined the others on the drive, and Jane, standing by the open door, watched them disappear, heard the stolid clump-clump of their boots as they crunched the gravel. while round the corner from the stable came Casey and Tim with the horses, and in a moment the whole party were hidden by the bend in the drive, and so up through the park and away to Hungry Hill.

Doonhaven was quiet and still, a village asleep. The doors were closed, and the windows showed no light. No person walked the street or lingered in the square, and the only sound to be heard was the sea breaking on the beach below the harbour wall.

Once clear of the village, Copper John called a halt, and the party divided. One half, led by Copper John and Henry, continued up the road towards the mine; the rest, with John amongst them, struck across country to the outlet in the hill.

Here on the high ground they were exposed to the full force of the wind, which drove them onward blindly, causing them to stumble amongst the loose stones and the heather, and the younger Brodrick, now that he was alone, without either his father or his brother, was aware of a new sense of excitement, almost of exultation, not connected in any way with the mine or the angry men of Doonhaven, but because this was something that he loved and understood, this fighting with the wind on Hungry Hill. Away below him was the sea, sweeping the long length of Mundy Bay, rolling on towards Castle Andriff, where maybe Fanny-Rosa could hear it from her window, and the sound of the sea came to him now, borne on the wind, not a sullen, angry sound, but loud and insistent, a chant of triumph. The men behind him were cursing at the rough ground, their coats bellying around them in the tearing wind. John looked up, and watched the black clouds racing across the sky, felt the first stinging drop of rain upon his cheek, heralding the storm that was to come, and, laughing, climbed yet faster than before, gaining a foothold amongst the stones and the wet, clinging moss, while the wild, sweet scent of heather filled the air. They came at last to the outlet in the hill, so well concealed by the tangle of gorse that in the darkness and the spitting rain it was well-nigh impossible to find, and there they waited, gaining what shelter they could from the weather by the shoulder of the hill, and the wind went on blowing and the night grew darker yet. Ned Brodrick was of the company; he crouched beside his nephew in the heather, his face lugubrious and long, and now and again he would bite his fingers to restore the circulation.

"Your father should have come to terms with Morty Donovan, Master John," he said. "Many is the time I have come to arbitration with the family myself, in a friendly fashion, over a glass of whisky maybe. But your father is a proud man, and high-handed, and Morty Donovan is proud too. I tell you no good will come of this night, and had I my way I would be sitting now in my cottage in Oakmount, with the curtains drawn, knowing nothing of the business."

"I have no doubt you would, Ned," said John, "but here we are on Hungry Hill, with no choice in the matter, and must make the best of it."

"It's a spice of discretion that is needed, Master John," continued Ned. "I have made it a practice this long while, since acting as agent to your father, to agree with him when in his company, and to agree with the tenants when in theirs. Therefore I have pleased both parties and offended none. Never in my life have I held a quarrel with any man."

"And how do you manage, Ned, when the tenants are in arrears with their rent, and you have to drive them for the money?"

"Why, between you and me, Master John, I so work the figures on the rent-roll as to have the appearance that the money is paid, when oftentimes I have not seen a penny of it. But will you take a small drop of something, to keep up your spirits?" And glancing furtively over his shoulder, the agent produced a bottle from the deep pocket of his coat, and, kneeling, with hunched shoulders, in the heather, tipped it to his mouth with a sigh of satisfaction. "I tell you, Master John," he said, wiping his lips with the sleeve of his coat, "but I am devoted to your family, and Morty Donovan would have to walk across my dead body rather than harm should come to any of them.

As for yourself, you're the best of the bunch, and that's meaning no disrespect to Master Henry."

John laughed, knowing full well that the agent would have said exactly the same thing to his brother had he been there instead, and when he had taken his "small drop," which must have been some hell-brew of Ned Brodrick's own creation, for it tasted of liquid fire, he handed the bottle back, only just in time, for one of the men, who had been watching a little distance away, came running through the heather towards them.

"There's a glow in the sky to the eastward, Mr.

John," he shouted.

"It's my belief the miners are not coming this way at all tonight, but have set fire to the mine."

The other men were stumbling now down the hill, all of them calling and gesticulating, and John could see an angry tongue of flame leap into the sky from beneath the shoulder of the farther hill.

"He's right, Master John," cried the agent, "there'll be no crawling In the burrows this night, but whatever mischief goes on will be above ground, and in the sheds and buildings. May God curse the creatures for their treachery and devilry."

"Why, look yonder," called one of the tenants; "here's someone coming this way with a donkey and cart.

Watch how the cart rocks in the heather-he'll be over for sure."

"You'd say the animal knows every inch of the ground, or the driver has him bewitched," said another.

"He's down-no, he's not- he has him guided in the little bit of track, and he's driving the brute with a stick like a madman."

The donkey and cart advanced towards the party, rocking and lurching over the rough ground in wild, crazy fashion, and the man who was seated in the cart waved his whip at the party in derision, shouting and laughing, while his great black cloak bellied about him in the wind, making him a giant fantastic figure.

"It's the devil himself," cried someone, "it's the devil come out of hell to destroy us," and for a moment the party hesitated, uncertain whether to fly or to fling themselves upon their faces and ask for mercy. And then one of the men, less superstitious than his fellows, gave a shout of recognition, and turned to his companions.

"It's Morty Donovan," he cried.

"Look at his face, look at his eyes! Mr.

John, it's my belief he has gone stark staring mad."

The old man was balancing on the side of the cart, his bad leg propped up in front of him; in one hand he held the reins that guided the donkey, and in the other his whip, which he flourished round his head. As he drew near to the party he pulled the donkey to a standstill, and peering down through the darkness, he recognised John, and once more fell to laughing and shouting, shaking from side to side in a wild extravagance of mirth.

"So you thought to entrap them, did you," he cried, "and bind them here on the hillside, and bear them away to prison? Well, I can tell you that you're wasting your time, every one of you. The boys have a big fire lit at your father's mine, Mr.

John, and not a stick or stone of it will be left by morning. So go join him and your brother, and roast yourselves to cinders, and be damned to the lot of you. I say."

Once more the old man cracked his whip, cursing the donkey to go forward.

"Stop him," shouted someone, "stop him; get hold of the animal; he'll do himself some damage."

One of the men hurled himself at the donkey's head, which, bewildered and frightened, stumbled in the heather, causing the man to fall, while John, climbing on to the step of the cart, endeavoured to wrench the whip from Morty Donovan's hand. The old man was too quick for him. He turned with an oath, and cut the boy over the head with a stinging lash, blinding him for the instant, while a torrent of curses poured from his lips, the wild, extravagant laughter turning in a moment to senseless rage.

"I have cursed your father tonight, and your brother, and now I curse you, John Brodrick," he cried, "and not only you, but your sons after you, and your grandsons, and may your wealth bring them nothing but despair and desolation and evil, until the last of them stands humble and ashamed amongst the ruins of it, with the Donovans back again in Clonmere on the land that belongs to them."

John reeled back from the cart, his face cut and bleeding from the whip, and his senses dazed from the force of the blow, while the group of men, shocked and frightened momentarily by the old man's passion, stood aside from the track. Only Ned Brodrick, with a shaky smile and outstretched hand, seemed undismayed.

"Come now, Mr. Donovan," he said; "why now, not a man here, not Master John himself, wishes you any harm, and that's God's truth. I will see Mr. Brodrick myself and ask him as a personal matter to give his true impartial judgement…"

But Morty Donovan cut him short, laughing scornfully.

"Will you shut your mouth, you fool," he said, "and go and hide your face amongst the petticoats?

Haven't you the same tainted blood in your veins?

Let me go, blast ye!"

Once more the donkey stumbled forward as Morty Donovan cracked his whip, and the little cart, swaying from side to side, travelled onward into the darkness, until it was lost to sight round the bend of the hill.

"Are you much hurt, Master John?" asked his uncle, peering into the young man's face. "Should you not go home and let the women bathe it? I think we have done all we can for this night."

"All right, Ned, it will soon mend; and as for going home, that is out of the question. You heard what that old lunatic said? The fellows have set the place on fire. We must get the shortest way to the mine, there's nothing else for it."

The blood was running freely down his face, and his head throbbed painfully, and somehow the exultation of the evening was no more, but turning once more into the wind and the rain, that was coming now faster than before, John led the way across the hill in the direction of the mine. In some twenty minutes the party found their way through the darkness to the track leading to the mine, and at the far end of it they could see the tall chimney, lit up by the glow of the fire, and could hear the roar of voices, shouting and calling directions. The scene was one of incredible confusion, men dashing against one another in the darkness, some calling orders, some jeering, the whole body of men so mingled together that no one knew for certain who was friend or foe.

"It's the huts of the Cornishmen that are alight," said a man of John's party. "Look, sir, down the road there; they have every one of them in flames."

Such proved to be the case, the wooden buildings lending themselves only too readily to fire, and in the little strips of gardens that they had cultivated for themselves stood the women with their children, dismayed and terrified and weeping, while their men-folk endeavoured to quench the fires with buckets of water passed from one to the other.

No part of the mine proper had yet been touched, and this was because John Brodrick and his party, with the aid of Captain Nicholson, had so stationed themselves before the sheds and buildings that the rebel miners dared not advance without fighting, which they were by no means fully prepared to do. They contented themselves, therefore, with destroying the little dwellings of the Cornishmen, pilfering what they could find, and terrorising the women and children. When John and his party arrived on the scene, some half-dozen of the miners, the leaders amongst them, had succeeded in penetrating into the cleansing-shed, and, encouraged by their more timid companions, were engaged in overturning the trolleys and scattering the contents through the open doors, with whoops of triumph and satisfaction.

Suddenly John's arm was seized by Henry, who darted forward from the doorway of the counting-house and dragged him under cover of the building.

"Keep still-lie down," whispered his brother; "father is going to give these fellows the shock of their lives."

He was trembling with excitement, and pointed to two figures- that of his father and Captain Nicholson-who were standing slightly apart from the building, holding something in their hands. Copper John was hatless, and his coat too had been thrown aside, showing his square, powerful frame, while his thick grey hair was tossed and matted from the wind. He glanced up and saw his second son, and grinned, pointing to the instrument in Captain Nicholson's hands.

At once John saw what he was about, and his heart went cold.

"Good God, Henry," he whispered, "it's murder."

His brother did not answer, but kept his eyes fixed on his father and Captain Nicholson. The miners were too intent on their work of destruction to notice the two figures that advanced so steadily and so quietly to the rear of the cleansing-sheds, and, bending for a moment, were busy at the ledge of wall.

The figures waited a moment, and then retreated rapidly, returning to the counting-house where John and Henry waited, and, like them, they threw themselves to the floor.

"Now we have them," said Copper John, and his second son, glancing at him, saw the look of triumph in his eyes, and the hard line of his mouth.

For a minute there was silence, then a shattering explosion rent the air, followed by the crashing sound of falling rubble, of flying sticks and stones, and the screams of men.

Copper John rose to his feet, and looked at Captain Nicholson without a word. Then he led the way out of the counting-house, and stood for a few moments watching the scene in front of him.

The cleansing-shed, fired so swiftly by the train of gunpowder, was nothing more than a heap of rubble and stones, with only the far end of it still standing, and this, ignited in some fashion, was now burning fiercely, while staggering from the ruins came the sole survivor of the team of six who not three minutes previously had been calling and shouting in triumph from within the shed.

A great cry of fear and distress had gone up from the crowd of watchers, and fearing that the explosion was but the first of a series, which would destroy them all, they began to run in panic, screaming and yelling, falling over one another in their haste to get away, and in a moment the broad track to the mine was a mass of struggling, fighting figures, the scene weirdly and horribly lit by the crackling flames of the burning shed.

"After them," shouted Copper John, "let none of them escape, "Hid thrusting his way amongst the crowd, he hit out to left and right with his great nobbled stick, followed by Captain Nicholson and others of his party, while John, standing sick and suddenly exhausted on the steps of the counting-house, with the bitter smell of the gunpowder in his nostrils, could see nothing but this square figure of his father, his stick beating down on the heads of the frightened miners, who scattered before him, bewildered and desperate, all fight in them vanquished by the terrible death of their leaders. And now came the screams of the women and children, for some of them were being trampled upon by the miners in their panic, and the flames of the cottages, lessening in strength because they had spent their full force, were now quenched by the sudden burst of rain from the black sky, rain which fell in torrents, drenching all who were present. In this darkness and sudden downpour the confusion became worse, friend hitting friend, enemy clutching enemy, and above it all the strong voice of Copper John, giving orders, calling directions, shouting advice to Captain Nicholson and the rest of his friends, calling to Henry for assistance, and still John stood on the steps of the counting-house staring at the heap of rubble that had been the cleansing-shed…

It was nearly half-past two in the morning by the time order had been restored to the mine. Some dozen men had been put into custody and locked in the counting-house, the rest had taken to their heels and fled, either to hide in the hills, or else to return to their homes in Doonhaven, trusting that in the darkness they had been unrecognised. The rain, which had now turned to a thin, steady drizzle, with a lessening wind, had put out the last of the fires, and only the wet, smouldering embers showed traces of the Cornishmen's dwellings. The families had been gathered, for the remainder of the night, into the mine buildings themselves, until provision could be made for them in the morning.

Nothing more could be done until daylight, but already, seated at the table in the counting-house, with a glass of hot rum at his elbow, Copper John was dictating his orders to Captain Nicholson.

"I think I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that we shall have no more trouble with the men from Doonhaven. They will return to work, those who have not taken to the hills, and it is even possible that we shall have new men coming up, asking for employment. The tunnel, incidentally, that leads from the mine into the hill we will deal with in somewhat the same fashion as we dealt to-night with the cleansing-shed. Remember, Captain Nicholson, to have the rubble of the shed cleared as early as possible within the next forty-eight hours, to enable us to get forward with the construction of the new building to take its place. Also the fellows lying there must have burial-that is, what remains of them, which will be considerably little… Well, gentlemen, I must thank you one and all for your assistance in this night's work. You will not find me ungrateful. Will those of you who are not too exhausted care to return with me and my sons to Clonmere, where my daughter will be very pleased to offer you refreshment?"

One by one the members of the party, wet and haggard, and drooping from fatigue, made their excuses, and so, in the falling rain, in the heavy, intense darkness that comes before the day, Copper John mounted his horse and rode through the silent streets of Doonhaven back to Clonmere, followed by his sons. Jane and Martha and the other servants, tense and anxious, were awaiting them in the hall, and at the sight of them safely returned old Martha burst into tears, shaking her head and reproving her master, clicking her tongue in distress at John's swollen face.

"That will do, Martha, that will do," said Copper John, dismissing the servants with a wave of his hand.

"None of us has come to harm and we have no bones broken. Master John will survive his cut, I have little doubt. What we need now is food and drink, and a warm by the fire, and very shortly to bed for what remains of the night, for we all of us have work to do in the morning."

They stood in the library, the four of them-the father with a glass in one hand and the other behind his back, his stern features relaxed for the moment while he smiled at his daughter, who tried to smile back at him, but was still so pale, so anxious, that the smile was a ghostly thing, a shadow of no substance; John leaning against the fireplace, his head resting in his hands, his face swollen and discoloured; while Henry, soaked to the skin, his clothes clinging to his slim body, his teeth chattering, lifted his glass and clinked it against his father's.

"Anyway," he said, "whatever happens, we have beaten them, haven't we, father?"

"Yes," said Copper John, "we have beaten them, Henry."

They drank together, watching one another over the rim of their glasses, and smiling.

The mine, thought Jane, has not been destroyed, the mine will continue to be worked on Hungry Hill, and Morty Donovan has lost. Her father and her brothers were safe. John had a swollen face, but that was all. It was a picture she remembered always, the father and son pledging one another across the table, and she remembered too how John, looking up from the fire at the shivering, white-faced Henry, said suddenly, in anger: "For God's sake go and change, Henry; you'll catch your death from this night's work."

She remembered how the rain pattered against the windows, and the wind sighed softly, and how, although they were safe, she was still afraid.

They slept deeply that night, the young Brodricks, and only once did their father, Copper John, stir in his sleep and frown and mutter as though at some passing dream. The wind moaned a little, and was silent. The rain whispered, and pattered, and ceased. And away on the heather, five miles distant, a small donkey stood shivering beside an overturned cart, with Morty Donovan lying beneath it, his neck broken, clutching in his dead hands the stones and moss of Hungry Hill.

On the first of every month, no matter where he should be, or engaged on what business, John Brodrick of Clonmere would write to his partner, Robert Lumley of Duncroom, and tender him a report on the condition of their mine on Hungry Hill, Doonhaven. It was one of those strict rules that he had laid down for himself at the beginning of the partnership, and although he had no great friendship for Robert Lumley, and saw him perhaps but twice in a whole year, yet month by month the letters would go forth, from Clonmere, from London, from Bath, from Lletharrog, from Bronsea, each letter written in his careful, pointed handwriting, signed with the Brodrick seal, a mailed fist holding a dagger, and the paper folded and crossed in the manner of the day.

"It is a pleasure for me to acquaint you, my dear Mr. Lumley," he would say, "that your royalty for the current year has exceeded that of last, and I have this day, the fourteenth of February, paid into your account in your bank at Slane the sum of Two Thousand pounds."

It was typical of John Brodrick that this interesting piece of information should be followed by a slightly bitter pill.

"I am sorry to say," he would continue, "that our expenses for the year have been equally heavy, and I have been obliged to erect yet another Steam Engine, the cost of which will have to be deducted from your royalty for the forthcoming year. As copper is now at a high price, I think it would be worth while to risk a considerable sum in a further trial of a place some quarter of a mile distant from the present mine, on the northern part of the hill, above the road. It will be an expensive trial, but the advantages to the country in works of this kind are so great that I would risk a good deal for the chance of establishing a further mine, even though it should not be Very profitable."

And the shaft would be sunk, and the new mine worked, and more men employed and more ships bought for the purpose of shipping the ore from Doonhaven to Bronsea to be smelted, and so little by little, and then faster and faster, the Brodrick fortune mounted, and Copper John would add to his property at Clonmere, twenty greeves here, and twenty greeves there, land along the coast beyond Doon Island, land beyond Kileen, on the way to Denmare.

Then there would be the question of appointments in Doonhaven, the arranging of which the owner of Clonmere would consider to be his right, and not Robert Lumley's.

"I am sorry we are likely to lose the services of Doctor Beamish in Doonhaven. It would be a matter of great moment to establish a medical man of some skill in the county, who would attend to the complaints of the poor people and in whom we ourselves could place confidence if his attendance was required. It has been hinted to me that Doctor Armstrong, who has been attached to the garrison on Doon Island, is inclined to retire from the army and is not averse to settling in the country, and especially in this district. Colonel Leslie speaks in the highest terms of his skill, and I believe Doctor Beamish knows him very well. As you are aware, the method of choosing a Dispenser in the county is by election, each subscriber to the Dispensary having votes according to the amount of his subscription. As my subscription is double or even treble that of all the other persons in the district, I put it to you that I am the" only person entitled to vote, and that if I so desire it, and he is agreeable, then Doctor Armstrong shall fill the place…?

Needless to say, Doctor Armstrong did, much to the gratification of the young Brodricks, whose friend and companion he had become.

"As to the matter of our tenants," Copper John would add, "on whose subject you asked my advice in your last communication, I may say that I consider it a very bad plan to forgive arrears of rent. Those few who are inclined to pay well find they are not a bit better off than those who do not, and of course have no encouragement to pay better in future. My own system is to give the grounds of those who do not pay to those who do, and thus encourage the latter to pay even better than they did before."

And John Brodrick, the expression in his eyes a little harder, and the lines of his mouth a little firmer as the months went by, would close his letter with remarks about his family.

"We intend to cross the water early in September, and spend the winter as usual at Lletharrog. Henry, I regret to say, is still in very poor health, and we are in a state of great anxiety about him. He does not seem to get rid of his cough, and the doctor he saw in Brighton has recommended a warmer climate for him. He intends to start for the Barbados at the same time, or a little earlier, than we leave for Lletharrog. John is well, and has some greyhounds that he declares will be ruined unless they have some courses before next season, and he intends to bring them over to Duncroom when you are next at home. My daughters, I am glad to say, are also in very good health and they unite with me, my dear Mr. Lumley, in sending best wishes…?

And so the line beneath the signature, and the letter folded and sealed and given to Thomas to take down to Doonhaven, and one more duty had been accomplished and the act dismissed from his mind.

Leaving the house, and finding a stick, Copper John would take a turn or two about the grounds.

He would walk down to the creek, and examine the state of the tide, observe John's boat as she lay at her moorings, have a glance at Jane's water-garden beside the boat-house, look upwards to the herons in the tall trees beyond, and then across the creek to the smoke from the garrison on Doon Island, and away over the harbour waters of Doonhaven to the rise of Hungry Hill. Then up behind the house to the kitchen garden, where he would find Barbara, in earnest consultation with old Baird as to the best method of treating the new vine in the hot-house, and through the woods that his grandfather had planted, the wind singing in the pines like surf upon the shore, and along the narrow, twisting paths that were Barbara's pride, to the summer-house they had built that spring for Henry. He was lying there now, stretched out on his long chair, with Jane beside him, and she was reading to him.

Henry would look up, smiling gaily, his eyes unnaturally bright, a spot of colour on each cheek, so that his father, ignoring the thin body under the coverlet, would think to himself, he is certainly better.

"You observe me, sir," laughed Henry, "taking my ease as usual, and being most confoundedly lazy. I even have to confess that I fell asleep during the early part of the afternoon, and I believe I would be sleeping still had not Jane crept in to read verses to me."

"No, Henry, you are unfair," reproved Jane. "I came at your special request, and you were not sleeping, you were lying with your hands behind your head and an expression of great weariness upon your face.

I only wish you had been sleeping. Doctor Armstrong told John you could not have too much rest."

"Willie Armstrong is an old maid," said Henry; "he fusses over me as though I were a child, instead of a hearty fellow with a rude health temporarily at a low ebb because I was fool enough to catch a bad chill last winter. You wait till I come back from the Barbados. I think I shall have myself tattooed and grow a curly beard. were you going for a stroll, sir? Let me come with you, I have lain here long enough."

And to show how he despised his weakness, Henry threw aside his coverlet and rose to his feet, humming a little tune gaily under his breath, and at once began to discuss some business of the estate with his father, who, taking his arm, walked with him through the woods towards the home farm in the park.

"They will go too far, and father will be so occupied in talking that he will not remember," thought Jane, "and then this evening Henry will be so exhausted that he will eat no dinner, and Barbara will be anxious, and when I look out from my room, some time after midnight, I shall see the light under Henry's door, and I shall know he is not sleeping again."

She went on sitting in the little summer-house, by her brother's vacant chair, and wondered what his thoughts had been, this spring and summer, lying up here day after day, when he had first risen from his bed after his illness. Henry, who so enjoyed activity, discussion, people, and travelling, to be obliged to do without them, and without even the strength to help his father with the business of the mine. Anyone but Henry would have become morbid, restless, irritable, but if he felt any of these things he did not show them. He had always a smile for each member of his family, some jest to make, some amusing observation, and would be full of plans of what they would all do when he was well again, the parties and the picnics they would have.

"We will have one more picnic, anyway," he had said, that very afternoon, "before I sail for the Barbados.

We will take the horses, and go to the lake on Hungry Hill, as we used to do when we were children, and Willie Armstrong shall come, and young Dickie Fox from the garrison-ah, don't blush, Jane-and Fanny-Rosa Flower, if Mrs. White will let her, and her brother Bob, if he is still on leave from his regiment, and we will all enjoy ourselves immensely, and no one will be sick, or sad, or sorry."

And in his excitement and delight at the project he had brought on an attack of coughing, and vividly, horribly, she would remember the night of the trouble at the mine, and Henry standing in the library, shivering in his wet clothes. Well, that was all over, anyway. No more thieving, no more fighting, and Morty Donovan was dead. Sam Donovan had sold the farm, and was keeping a shop in Doonhaven. How angry the proud old man would have been-he would have considered it a disgrace for a Donovan to keep a shop. The other brother lived in a poor way on the road to Denmare. He kept a few pigs, and a cow, and sold whisky without a permit. No, the Donovans would never trouble any of the Brodricks again. The old mine was flourishing, and a new one had been started, and more men than ever were employed. Everything was going smoothly. They would all be so happy, but for the anxiety about Henry. And a little shiver came over Jane. The summer-house felt lonely suddenly without Henry, queer and deserted, as though he had already left for the Barbados and the sun was no longer shining through the trees. They should be thinned, she thought; one day they will enclose the summer-house, and the sun will not come to it at all, and she picked up her book of poetry, and the cushions, and the coverlet, and went away down through the flower-garden to the house.

As she stood on the slope above Clonmere she could see John and Doctor Armstrong mooring the boat in the creek. They had been over to Doon Island to exercise John's greyhounds. John was looking up and laughing, his lock of dark hair falling over his face, and he saw her, and waved his hand. The dogs were coupled together, and stood shivering in the bows of the boat, eager to spring ashore, straining at the leash that held them. The great silver cup they had won last season was now John's proudest possession, and graced the sideboard in the dining-room. He had shown it to Fanny-Rosa Flower, when she had driven over with her father and brother to enquire after Henry, and Jane had been secretly amused when Fanny-Rosa told him, with great seriousness, that he should have his family crest put upon the cup, to give it greater majesty, and that he should also have the Brodrick coat of arms stamped upon the dogs' blankets.

Poor John, he had sat quite abashed and silent, while Fanny-Rosa drank her tea, watching him out of the corners of her eyes; and Jane had wondered how much of what she had said she really believed and was a little unconscious snobbery inherited from her mother, and how much was deliberate teasing, done to amuse herself and to provoke John.

How lovely she was. though, thought Jane, and how amusing a companion, and how extraordinary it was that Doctor Armstrong, who had been at Clonmere at the time of the visit, should have said so firmly, after the Flowers had departed, that Fanny-Rosa was too flamboyant and restless for his taste, and had a careless streak to her nature that was not due merely to youth but was part of her blood. "What type do you admire, then?" Jane had enquired, in all innocence, and he had looked back at her very earnestly, as though he longed to say something, but had not done so, and instead he observed that doctors were forbidden by their profession to admire anyone, in case they became patients, and he left it to Dickie Fox and the young officers on Doon Island to do all the admiring for him.

All this passed through Jane's head as she watched her brother and the doctor climb from the boat with the dogs, and she wondered what Doctor Armstrong would say if he knew that the book of poems in her hand had been sent across to her from the garrison by Lieutenant Fox, with one page in particular marked with a cross-a love poem, by an Elizabethan poet, entitled "On Entering My Lady's Chamber." Perhaps he would find it shocking.

And now Eliza was leaning from her bedroom window, calling that Thomas had rung the dressing-bell, and it wanted but a quarter of an hour to dinner, and if John and Doctor Armstrong were going to walk the dogs to the kennels they would be late, and father would be put out.

Father was coming down through the woods at this moment, with Henry leaning on his arm, and Barbara had joined them from the walled garden, a basket of nectarines on her arm, the fruit still warm from the sun, and Jane was aware of a strange feeling of happiness, of security. We are all here, she thought, the whole family, smiling and chatting and at ease with one another, dinner will soon be on the table, Thomas is walking through from the kitchen with his tray, the doors and the windows of the castle are flung open, catching the last gold rays of the sun before it sinks westward behind the trees. If only these moments would linger, would stay forever, and there would be no packing up and departing, no covering of the furniture with dust-sheets and closing of shutters and taking the steam-packet from Slane one chilly autumn morning, and a winter ahead chat might bring uncertainty and change.

So the long days of August passed, and September came too early and too fast, with the preparations for Henry's journey to the Barbados. It was arranged that he should leave Doonhaven by his father's ship, the Henrietta, which was sailing with her cargoes to Bronsea, and from there Henry would go to Liverpool and embark for the West Indies.

Already he seemed better, stronger, and less troubled by his cough, and on the very day of his departure the long-promised picnic was held on Hungry Hill. The day was fine and clear from the start, with the soft brilliance that late summer brings, and as the little cavalcade set forth on horseback from Clonmere, with Henry driven in state by Tim the stable-boy, the tip of Hungry Hill, shimmering under the sun, held a promise of warm grass and scented heather, of gay dragon-flies skimming the still lake, of great rocks and stones, rusty with lichen, lying hot and bare beneath the sky.

They climbed the western face of the hill, away from the mine, and then, when the track became broken and lost, and the carriage could go no farther, John dismounted from his horse and helped his brother into the saddle, while Tim, weighed down by the picnic baskets, stumbled in the rear. What a party they were! Barbara-carrying a monstrous sunshade to keep off the flies-and Eliza, with sketching materials and stool and easel (for she fancied her water-colours), and Jane, with two volumes of poetry and escorted on either side by two young officers from the garrison, Lieutenant Fox and Lieutenant Davies, the latter having been asked for Eliza but appearing unaware of his duties, and Doctor Armstrong leading Henry's horse, with Henry himself in the saddle directing one way and John directing another, and Bob Flower, who was a Captain in the Dragoons and thought himself a little superior to the young officers from the garrison, and lastly Fanny-Rosa, who kept the whole party, and John in particular, in a frenzy of anxiety, because she would ride her horse at a distance, over the most uneven part of the ground, and when called to in warning shook her head and would not listen.

At last they came to the lake, with shouts of relief from the young men and cries of delight from the ladies, and Barbara at once busied herself with the unpacking of the food and the setting down of rugs, in case the ground was damp-which of course it was not-and seeing that Henry was not fatigued, while Henry himself lay on his back and closed his eyes and felt the warm grass with his hands and was still and happy.

Fanny-Rosa was climbing a rock to have a better view of the bay, and pulling her petticoats above her knees to give her more freedom, and John, who wanted to be with her, watched her moodily, thinking that if he joined her the others would notice and imagine that he did so because she was showing her legs in this barefaced fashion, which would be perfectly true in a sense and yet not the whole truth. Because he could not make up his mind, he went on standing uncertainly by the side of the lake, wishing he had not come on the picnic, yet knowing that if he had stayed at home he would have been miserable, so his day was doomed anyway.

Jane had disappeared with both her young officers, and Doctor Armstrong, sighing for some reason or other, asked Barbara whether he should help her with the setting out of the food.

"Please do," she said gratefully, hoping he was not feeling unwell (for it was unlike him to sigh), and wondering in the same breath what had happened to the dozen meat patties she herself had packed in the basket. If they were lost there would not be enough chicken to go round, and she must somehow manage to warn the family to take a drumstick apiece and leave the white meat to the guests.

Now Eliza, rather red in the face and frowning, was pulling at her arm.

"I wish you would speak to Jane," she whispered fiercely. "She has gone behind a rock with those two young men. It looks so improper. I hardly know what Captain Flower will think of her."

And Barbara, still frantically searching for the meat patties, answered back rather impatiently that "Captain Flower would do well to look after his own sister, and no doubt Jane and the officers were hunting for butterflies."

Eliza sniffed, and said there were plenty of butterflies about without looking for them behind rocks, and as for that Lieutenant Davies, she could not for the life of her imagine why he had been asked to the picnic at all; he was quite odious, and his laugh was too loud; she certainly was not going to have him looking over her shoulder while she sketched, he would be dreadfully in the way.

"Perhaps he won't want to, dear," said Barbara absently, and oh, what a relief! there were the meat patties after all-she remembered now she had put them in a napkin to retain the heat better.

"Would you tell everyone that luncheon is ready?" she asked Doctor Armstrong, and he went off at once to hunt up Jane and the officers, and they all returned almost immediately, Doctor Armstrong and the young officers watching one another like suspicious terriers, and Jane herself very quiet and demure, her large brown eyes turned upon each in turn.

"How delightful this is, and how well I feel, and what nonsense that the foolish fellows of your profession, Willie, should send me to the Barbados," said Henry gaily, sitting up and looking at the food placed so temptingly in front of him. "Barbara, I starve; two meat patties, please."

And soon the whole party were assembled and tucking in to the chicken and the patties, and the cold bacon, and the jellies, as though they had never eaten before.

Fanny-Rosa sat cross-legged, like a tailor, and John wondered whether he was the only one to notice that her feet were bare beneath her dress-he could see the toes peeping out from under her.

She had sat herself down by Henry and was telling him he was the sultan of the feast, and she was a slave-girl ministering to him.

"How extremely amusing it would be if it were really so," said Henry, making her a mock bow.

"Shall I bring you back gold bangles from the West Indies, and ear-rings? Slave-girls always wear those things, you know, as a sign of submission."

"Please," begged Fanny-Rosa, "and a tambourine also, and then I will dance for you."

John wished he could talk in that easy, gay fashion. He supposed Henry had learnt how to do it on the Continent, and Fanny-Rosa too.

"If the Barbados prove disappointing,"

Fanny-Rosa was saying, "then you must come back and join us in Naples. I am quite determined to go to Naples for the winter."

"Father and mother have said nothing about Italy to me," objected her brother. "I should think such a project extremely unlikely."

"You will be with your regiment, and have nothing to do with it," said Fanny-Rosa. "If I make up my mind father and mother will obey, We will go to Naples and gaze at Vesuvius, and listen to music, which will delight father, who will become sentimental and drink more than is good for him, and I shall buy a heap of gowns and dress like a Neapolitan, and wear a flower behind my ear, and throw kisses to you, Henry, from a balcony."

"Take no notice of her," said Captain Flower. "I regret to say that both my sisters are quite mad. Matilda, the young one, is even worse than Fanny-Rosa. She spends all her time in the stables, now we have no governess in the house.

Castle Andriff is like an asylum."

"Poor Mrs. Flower!" said Barbara. "You ought to try and help her, Fanny-Rosa, and set Matilda a good example. Jane is a great help to me, and she is nearly three years younger than you."

"Ah, but Jane thinks always of other people, Miss Brodrick," said Fanny-Rosa, "and I think only of myself. "Enjoy yourself while you can," said father to me only yesterday; "we may all be dead before the year is out."

"That is certainly true," said Henry, "but before it happens let us meet in Naples, as you suggest, and I will claim that kiss from the balcony."

And so they continued through lunch, laughing, and teasing, and making plans, while John filled his mouth savagely with cold fat bacon, thinking of Lincoln's Inn, and his gloomy chambers, and the grey, damp fogs of December, that had nothing in common with sunny Naples and balconies.

After lunch there was more conversation, and then sighs, and yawns, and a feeling that everyone must do as he pleased.

Henry rested in the shade of a boulder, with Barbara beside him, under her large sunshade, and Jane and the young officers read poetry behind a clump of heather.

Eliza had planted herself down in front of a stunted gorse-bush, through which she could peer from time to time at Lieutenant Davies and tell herself how very plain he was, and look from him back to her easel, upon which a sketch of the distant harbour of Doonhaven was taking slow shape. Bob Flower was asleep and snoring loudly, which, thought Eliza, was very ill-mannered of him, and he ought to be looking after his sister, who had disappeared.

John was throwing stones aimlessly into the lake.

He had been a fool not to bring his rod, a trout was rising now in the middle, he could see the sudden ripple and the plop of the water, and he began to stroll along the edge towards the farther end of the lake, out of sight of the picnic party. How warm it was on Hungry Hill, how silent and how still. No one would know that only three miles or so to the eastward were the tall, ugly chimneys of his father's mine. The soft moss squelched under his feet, and there came to him the sour, boggy smell of the cold lake-water, and the scent of the heather as well. Poor Henry, he thought; this is what he would like, standing here with the little soft wind in his face, not lying down under a rug with his head on his arm.

A louder splash than usual caught his ear-there must be some big trout in the lake, after all-and he climbed over a boulder to have a sight of the fish, and oh, God! it was no fish jumping at all, but Fanny-Rosa, naked, with her hair falling on her shoulders, wading out into the lake, throwing the water aside with her hands.

She turned and saw him, and instead of shrieking in distress and shame, as his sisters would have done, she looked up at him, and smiled, and said, "Why do you not come in too? It is cool and lovely."

He felt himself go scarlet, and the sweat broke out on his forehead. Saying nothing, he turned away and began to walk rapidly in the opposite direction until his foot caught in a rabbit-hole and overturned him, and he slipped sideways into the heather, cursing and blaspheming, and sat for a while nursing his injured ankle, while a lark rose from in front of him and hovered in the air, singing his song of freedom.

Presently-hours must have passed, he thought; he did not care- he heard someone come and sit beside him, and turning he saw Fanny-Rosa, dressed once more, her face glowing with her swim, her hair wet on her shoulders.

"You think me shameful," she said softly, "you have a great disgust at me."

"Ah, no," he said swiftly, sweeping her with his eyes, "you don't understand. I came away because you were so lovely…?

And he stammered, and could say no more, because she was smiling at him, and the smile was too much.

"You won't tell Miss Brodrick, will you?" she pleaded. "She would never ask me to Clonmere again, and maybe she would write and tell my mother."

"I won't tell anyone, ever," said John.

They were silent, and she began to pluck at the grass with her hands, which were small and slim. She laid them beside his a moment in contrast, and then, when he still said nothing, she put her hands on top of his, and in a low, quiet voice she said: "I think you are angry with me."

"Angry?" he said. "Fanny-Rosa, how could anyone be angry with you?"

And suddenly he had his arms round her, and she was lying on her back in the heather, with her eyes closed, and he was kissing her.

After a while she opened her eyes, but she did not look at him. She watched the lark flying overhead, and then she put up her hand and touched his cheek, and his mouth, and his eyes, and his dark hair, and she said: "You've wanted to kiss me for a long time, have you not?"

"For nearly ten months," he told her, "I have thought of nothing else."

"Is it a disappointment to you," she said, "now that you have?"

"No," he said, land he wished he could tell her something of the fullness in his heart, something of the tenderness he felt for her, something of the longing that swept his whole body. But words were things of such difficulty, he could not juggle with them, he could only look down at her lying there in the heather, and suffer and worship.

"I thought," she said, "that it was only your old greyhounds you cared for," and she held up her hands for him to kiss the fingers one by one. "That day you came to Andriff," she told him, "in the winter comd you remember? — it was you who seemed light-hearted then, and your brother who was serious. But now that I know you both better I think it is the other way round. Henry is gay, and you are solemn."

When she spoke of Henry he was aware instantly of a pang of jealousy, and he remembered how she had laughed and flirted with his brother all through lunch, and had not looked at him. The memory made a twist in his mind, and he sat up, and gazed out across the hill, and the lark that had been singing overhead came down to earth and was hidden.

"You like Henry, don't you?" he said. "Everyone does."

"I like you both," she said.

In the distance they could hear the sound of voices calling, and Fanny-Rosa made a face.

"They are wondering what can have happened to us," she said. "Perhaps we should be going back."

She got up and brushed her dress, humming to herself, and John, watching her, a pain in his heart, thought how little she guessed the feeling that possessed him, and how foolish she would think him did she know.

He had held her and kissed her, and this was to him a thing of so great a magnitude that he knew in all certainty his life from henceforward would be coloured by what had happened that afternoon. Never would he forget the sight of her naked body in the water, never would he lose the touch of her hands and her lips, as she lay in the heather.

But for Fanny-Rosa it had been an interlude, a moment of enjoyment after her bathe, and he wondered, loving her, whether she would have done likewise with his brother, or Willie Armstrong, or the young officers from Doon Island. She gave him her hand now, like a child, as Jane used to do, and led him across the hill back to the lake, and as they walked she told him some nonsensical story about Simon Flower and his tenants-how he had given them all whisky one Christmas and sent every man home drunk-and he looked at her profile and the cloud of chestnut hair, and the happiness he had was sharp, and bitter-sweet.

She dropped his hand when they came within sight of the others. That is the end of it, he thought; now the day is finished, there will not be anything more, and he went silently to see to his horse, and saddle him, and help Tim with the rest of the horses; for to have laughed and chatted and made conversation, as Fanny-Rosa was doing, would have been beyond his power. They were alien to him now, the group of people; he would rather be alone or in the company of stolid Tim.

"What a day it has been, and how I have enjoyed it!" Henry was saying, "and you are all to come and see me embark on the Henrietta, and wave farewell."

Down they went through the stones and the heather to the track where the carriage had been left, Fanny-Rosa starting the lilting chorus of a song, and the others joining in, the young officers loudest of all. The brilliant blue of the sky had faded now to the still white of a September evening, and little mackerel clouds had gathered about the sun. The first shadows fell upon Hungry Hill. The lovely day, thought Jane, is coming to its close, and behind us we leave the lake, and the rocks, and the heather, and our voices will not trouble the stillness again. Already the day belongs to the past, something we shall look back upon and say to one another, "Do you remember this? Do you remember how Henry laughed, and sang a song with Fanny-Rosa Flower?"

So the party descended to the road, and clattered down the hill into Doonhaven. And there, in the square, were Casey, and another man, and the groom from Castle Andriff, waiting to hold the horses, and everyone dismounted and walked with Henry to the harbour, where the Henrietta lay at anchor, the men casting the sails from the yards preparatory to departure.

Captain Nicholson was on the quayside, having superintended the final stowing of the cargo, and Copper John stood beside him, with the master of the vessel. He smiled as he saw his son approach, and, with a word to the others, came to meet him.

"Not too tired, boy?"

"No, sir. I have had one of the happiest days of my life," said Henry. ' "Good. That is what all of us wished for you. You have cut it rather fine, though.

No time for prolonged farewells, or anything of that sort. The master wishes to weigh anchor as soon as you go on board. The wind is fair, and if it holds you should have a speedy passage to Bronsea."

Henry kissed his sisters, shook hands with his brother and his friends, and the usual forced words of jollity came to the lips of each in turn. "Bring us all back a shawl, Harry, from the Barbados," said Eliza, and "Do remember your cough medicine, dear," from Barbara, while there were injunctions from the young officers not to lose his heart to the native ladies. "Get well quickly, my boy, that is the only thing that concerns me," said his father, and then Henry turned and went down the steps to the waiting boat, and the boat pulled out across the harbour to the Henrietta.

He stood up in the stern, waving his hat, and smiling.

"We will meet in Naples," he called to Fanny-Rosa. "That's a promise, isn't it?"

She nodded, and smiled in return.

"I shall be waiting on the balcony."

They watched the boat draw alongside the vessel, and Henry and the master climbed aboard. Almost immediately there was activity, and noise, and bustle, the mate shouting orders from the fo'c'sle, and the creaking of the windlass.

"Don't let us wait any longer," said Jane suddenly. "I hate to see a ship sail out of harbour. There is so much of finality about it."

"There is your brother," said Fanny-Rosa.

"Look, he is turning this way; he is shouting something to us."

"No use," said Copper John, "the wind carries away his voice, and the sound of the windlass… Come, Jane is right. There is little reason in waiting here any longer. We shall see the ship just as well from Clonmere, if we walk to the end of the creek."

A dog ran across his legs as he turned, nearly throwing him on to the cobbles. He swore angrily, and hit out at it with his stick, catching it severely over the back, so that the dog howled, and ran limping to the doorway of the shop where it belonged.

"Keep your animal under control, can't you?" shouted Copper John to the owner, who appeared at the door of the shop, flushed and scowling, and ready to give quarrel. When Copper John saw who it was he turned his back, and walked away from the quay to the market-square, his son and his daughters following.

The man watched them, sullen resentment in his face, and then bent down to his injured dog, muttering to himself, while from nowhere a crowd collected about him, asking questions and giving shrill advice.

"How unfortunate!" whispered Barbara, flushing.

"Did you see?"

"Yes," said Jane slowly, "yes '

Looking over her shoulder, she saw the Henrietta gathering way through the water, as the boats towed her into mid-channel, and the sails broke out upon the yards.

Their father made no allusion to the incident. He helped Fanny-Rosa to mount her horse, and then exchanged a word or two with Bob Flower, giving him some message to take to Robert Lumley, their grandfather, on the next visit to Duncroom.

Doctor Armstrong and the officers shook hands and departed, the Flowers rode away up the hill on the road to Andriff, and the Brodricks, climbing into their father's carriage, drove home to Clonmere. The sun had gone down behind the trees, and the castle and the creek were in shadow. They stood out on the drive for a moment or two, watching the Henrietta in the distance, and then she disappeared behind Doon Island and they saw her no more.

Copper John went slowly into the house, his hands clasped behind his back. Barbara and Eliza followed. Only John and Jane walked down to the far end of the grounds, where the last fir tree spread his bent branches above the sea, and they looked out over the wide harbour water to the last gleam of sunshine that played on Hungry Hill.

"I wish it had not happened," said Jane.

"What do you mean?" asked John.

"I wish that father had not hit Sam Donovan's dog."

"Oh, that… Yes, it leaves a sort of sourness to the day. I would have had a look at the dog, but it would have been no use. My father would have been angry, and Sam Donovan taken it the wrong way."

"You could have done nothing. I only wish it had not happened… Do you really think the Barbados will make Harry better?"

"I am sure of it. He will be in Naples in the spring. You must have heard him arrange a meeting with Fanny-Rosa."

John turned, and began to stroll back towards the house. Jane took his arm. Both were silent, both were thinking about Henry. Jane remembered his gay smile, his laugh, his wave of the hand from the little boat as it drew away from the quay-side to the Henrietta, and she wondered how much of it was spontaneous, natural, and how much might be assumed, a mask hiding his illness from his family and from himself. John saw only a balcony in Naples, and on that balcony a girl who was Fanny-Rosa, with a flower behind her ear that she threw to Henry. Perhaps there were lakes in the hills behind Naples, like the lake on Hungry Hill. Perhaps Fanny-Rosa would bathe there too, and show her nakedness to Henry. Perhaps she would walk with him, hand in hand, and then lie down and let him kiss her.

Henry, who was so much worthier than himself, who was clever, who was charming, who was finer in every way.

Henry, who was ill… The jealousy that possessed him was so shameful and despicable a thing that he was filled with hatred for himself and for his thoughts.

Loving his brother, he yet grudged him one glance, one smile, one touch from Fanny-Rosa, even though that glance and that smile brought a few weeks of gaiety, of forgetfulness, to a sick, perhaps a dying, man. Not only grudged, but hated. And for Henry to think even of Fanny-Rosa in an idle moment was a thing so monstrous and so damnable that Jane, seeing John's white face and burning eyes, was startled and afraid, and said: "What is it? Are you ill?"

"No," he said, "no, it's nothing."

She hesitated a moment, and then went indoors, and John, looking up at the windows of Clonmere, saw that the candles were being lighted, and the curtains drawn, and the evening had come, and it seemed to him that nothing mattered in the world, or would ever matter, but the longing he had for Fanny-Rosa, and he would perjure himself, commit murder, and go to the devil, to have her waiting for him above there, in his room in the tower; waiting for him, John Brodrick, and not for Henry.

The autumn of 1827 was exceptionally trying to Copper John. The weather was wild and stormy, so that shipments of ore from Doon-haven to Bronsea were quite impossible during November, and the new mine that had been sunk was proving less profitable than had been expected. For one thing, Captain Nicholson had gone down too deep, and had reached a level where the amount of water made work quite impracticable, in spite of the new pump, erected at a cost of several hundred pounds. It was therefore decided to abandon the spot, and to take soundings a little farther east, and here, though results at once justified the trial, the ground was so rocky that there was not an inch of it that could be worked without the use of gunpowder. Here again expense was considerable. An Order in Council was obligatory for every ounce of powder imported into the country, and Copper John had to keep his barrels stored in the magazine at the garrison on Doon Island, and sign a form every time a fresh barrel was taken across the harbour. Then the price of copper, which had been exceptionally high, dropped considerably.

The large smelting companies at Bronsea could pretty well dictate their own terms, and Copper John was of the opinion that he would do well to get rid of some of his produce by private contract.

A hard frost succeeded the wet winds of November, and this brought fresh difficulties to the owner of Clonmere, for the potato crop had largely failed, and many of his tenants were in a fair way to starvation. Under the circumstances he was obliged to tell Ned Brodrick to be lenient with the half-yearly rent roll, and those tenants who were rather better off than their neighbours seized advantage of this, and kept back their payments. The inevitable disputes between one tenant and another, which appeared rooted in the character of the people, broke out, and after a long day's consultation at the mine Copper John would return to Clonmere to be faced with some ridiculous tale by his agent which had neither rhyme nor reason to it, and on which he would be expected to give judgement.

It was a little hard, he reflected, that he was the only man in the neighbourhood to take strong measures, and that he received no thanks and no assistance from the adjoining landlords. Robert Lumley was seldom at Duncroom, and when he was there it was only to drive down to Doonhaven and go through the mining accounts, complaining of his percentage. The Earl of Denmare was never in the country, except to fish for salmon, and Lord Mundy was very much an invalid these days, and hardly well enough to bestir himself in local affairs. As for Simon Flower, it was quite useless to appeal to him on any question at all. A man who drank in the stables with his own grooms, and even sat carousing with them in the drawing-room when his wife was a-bed, so the story ran, was no use as an upholder of truth and justice. Besides, the Flowers were abroad, in Italy — Henry had come across them in Florence, and had some idea of joining them in Naples, which his father felt was a waste of time. The voyage to the Barbados had done him a world of good, so he wrote to his family. He was certainly coughing less, and his father was on no account to worry about him. He had no doubt that a few months in Italy would perfectly restore him to health.

It was in the middle of April that Copper John, while spending Easter with his daughters in Lletharrog, decided to abandon his plan of returning to Doonhaven at the end of the month, where the new mine was giving excellent results, and travel out to Italy instead. The decision was taken after Barbara had received a letter at breakfast from a friend of hers, a Miss Lucy Mallet, written from Paris, where she and her mother were renting an apartment.

"We have just come on here from Italy," she said, "having been in Rome, and also Naples, where we had the pleasure of meeting your brother, in company with some friends of yours, a Mr. and Mrs.

Flower, and their daughter. My mother and myself were much distressed to hear how ill your brother had been, indeed he looked very poorly when we saw him, and had been in bed all the week, so Mrs. Flower informed us…? The letter continued with a description of the sights in Italy, which Copper John did not bother to read. He stared in front of him, tapping with his fingers on the breakfast table, and his daughters sat beside him, white-faced and serious.

"I shall go out to Italy myself," he said at length.

"I have been a little uneasy in my mind about Henry all the winter, and now this news decides me."

"Could we not come with you?" urged Barbara.

"No, my dear, I would prefer to go alone. It is rather extraordinary that we have not had an account of Henry's health from the Flowers themselves, if he is so much with them. Simon Flower would not write, but Mrs. Flower is not altogether lacking in sense."

"No doubt Henry did not wish any of us to be anxious," said Barbara, "and perhaps made light of his illness, even to them."

"It is quite possible," said Eliza, "that Lucy Mallet has exaggerated. She cannot have seen Henry for two or three years, and anyone would be shocked at his appearance these days, compared to what he used to be. His letters always seem cheerful enough, and indeed in his letter to Jane before Easter he talked of taking part in some carnival."

"And probably overtaxed his strength in the doing of it," said her father. "No, I am quite resolved to go to Italy, and shall in all probability set forth towards the end of the coming week. I had hoped to see Robert Lumley in Cheltenham, but that must go by the board, and I will see him on my return."

He consulted with Barbara as to whether Henry should be informed or not of the proposed journey, and finally decided, rather against her advice, that nothing should be said, and he would arrive in Naples as a complete surprise to his son. It so happened that business matters once more obliged him to delay the date of departure, and it was not until May that Copper John finally set out for the Continent. He avoided the long sea route, and travelled by easy stages through France and Italy, spending most of his journey in writing out, from memory, the profits and expenses of the mine on Hungry Hill, from its beginning in 1820 until the present month of the current year. He ignored the scenery entirely, found the heat excessive, the flies troublesome, the people robbers, and wondered why anyone should waste time and money in travelling for pleasure.

When he alighted from the coach at Naples in the third week in May, hot, dusty, and irritable, the first person to meet his gaze was Simon Flower, seated in a cafe on the square, smoking an immense cigar, and being entertained by an Italian lady of doubtful respectability. Simon Flower seemed quite unperturbed by the sudden appearance of a neighbour from home amongst the cosmopolitan crowd of Naples, and, holding his hat above his head, waved John Brodrick to a seat.

"My "dear fellow, what a delightful encounter," he said. "This little lady speaks no English, so it does not matter what you say before her. I am very glad to see you. What in the world are you doing here?"

Copper John, who found Simon Flower a poor companion at the best of times, and even more so at the end of a long journey, replied shortly that he had not time to sit down, that he was on his way at once to Henry's hotel, and perhaps Simon Flower could direct him.

"Henry?" said the other, his mouth falling open.

"But Henry has been gone from Naples for a fortnight."

Copper John stared at him a moment without speaking. Then he sat down at the table, his composure shaken, his plans all fallen to pieces at the news he had just received. He accepted the drink offered him without a word, nor did he protest when Simon Flower pressed a further one upon him.

"You had better tell me," he said at length, "what has happened."

"Nothing has happened," said Simon Flower, "except that you have had a long journey for nothing.

No doubt you passed Henry on the road. He was not very well, poor fellow, and decided to go home before this heat grew too much for him. The best thing you can do is to take the next coach and follow him back along the route you came. But stay a night or two in Naples first. I can promise you an amusing forty-eight hours. If this little lady will bring a friend-I know one or two places that…"

"Was Henry in a very bad state of health?" interrupted Copper John. "Please understand that I, and my whole family, are extremely anxious about him."

"Well, now, I hardly think so. Have another drink, will you not? It's the only thing to do in this climate, I assure you. My daughter would really know more about Henry's health than I do. She trotted him round, you know, and had him esquire her about the town. You had better ask my daughter."

"Would I be likely to find Mrs. Flower and Miss Flower at your hotel?"

"You would, I have no doubt. They are generally resting at this time of the day. That is why I take the opportunity of coming here. This little lady has not the pleasure of my wife's acquaintance."

"I hardly supposed she had," said Copper John, and rising to his feet, he bade his neighbour good-afternoon, ignoring his companion, and leaving the pair in a state of benign and delightful intoxication.

He threaded his way through the busy streets, a tall, purposeful figure, the strong shoulders and the square jaw causing many of the idling people he jostled to turn and stare at him, until finally he came to the hotel he sought, and sent his card up to the apartment of Mrs. Flower.

She received him with a wealth of apology and fuss-the rooms were most insignificant, there had been the usual misunderstanding with the manager, and really she felt quite ashamed, Simon was so forgetful in money matters, and her dress was not suitable for callers, Mr. Brodrick must excuse her. Yes, indeed, Henry had been gone quite two weeks; they had seen such a lot of him, Fanny-Rosa had been so glad of his company, and then really, she hardly knew how it was, but the poor boy must have done rather too much, he seemed sadly pulled down, and one morning he told them he was going home, Fanny-Rosa had been most upset, and said he was jealous of an Italian count-you know the nonsense girls talk-no truth in it at all of course, just some little folly between them, but anyway, yes, Henry did seem to be coughing, and he had left Naples on such a very hot day, dust everywhere, she did so hope it would be better and cooler in France, Mr.

Brodrick would no doubt catch up with him, she understood Henry was not going to rush the journey. '

The door opened, and Fanny-Rosa came into the room. She had a lace shawl thrown over her chestnut hair, in the fashion of the country, and even Copper John, who had little time for admiration, was struck by the vivid colouring, the slanting green eyes, and the real beauty of Simon Flower's daughter. She looked startled when she saw her mother's visitor, and went white.

"What is the matter? Has anything happened?" she asked.

"I've come on a fruitless errand," replied Copper John. "I came to see Henry, and I am told he has left, and is on his way home.

We had a letter from some friends of ours, the Mallets, who met Henry here and gave a very poor account of his health, so I threw up my plan for returning to Clonmere and came here instead. I might have saved myself the trouble."

Fanny-Rosa seemed relieved. She sat down beside her mother, and played with the fringe of her dress.

"I think possibly the carnival festivities were a little too much for Henry," she said. "He looked rather unwell afterwards. He was in bed two or three days."

"Such a charming young man, Mr. Brodrick," said Mrs. Flower; "we were all quite delighted with him. It must have been the last evening of the carnival that exhausted him; he and Fanny-Rosa went to see some procession or other-did you not, my dear? — and returned very late. I know I had gone to bed, and was asleep when you came in. Heaven knows what happened to your father, he never came back for the night, but it was the next day that Henry kept to his room, was it not, Fanny-Rosa?"

"I'm afraid I've forgotten," said her daughter.

She made a little curtsey to Copper John, asked to be remembered to Henry when he met with him, hesitated a moment, and then left the room. Soon after John Brodrick also made his excuses, and departed. He found he had time to dine, rest for a few hours, and then catch the coach for the homeward route.

The Flowers had not been very helpful, he considered.

Their whole attitude to the business was typical of them-they were as careless and as improvident here in Italy as they were at home at Castle Andriff.

It was disgraceful to see a man of middle-age like himself, with a grown family, sitting in a Neapolitan cafe and drinking with some woman of the town, in the middle of the afternoon, as he had seen Simon Flower, and to reflect that the money he did it on, which the luckless proprietor of the hotel had apparently not yet seen, was no doubt a gift from Simon Flower's father-in-law, Robert Lumley, as a result of last summer's profit from the mine on Hungry Hill. He, John Brodrick, the Director, worked ten hours a day to obtain the greatest efficiency from the mine, so that it was probably the best-conducted mine in the kingdom, and an idle good-for-nothing toper like Simon Flower sat on his backside in the sun and reaped the benefit.

He left Naples weary and low in spirits, and the tedious homeward journey, with no certainty of coming up with his son, loomed as a nightmare before him.

Stage after stage was passed, and town after town, and all along the route he made enquiries after a young man of fair complexion and slight build, who would seem fatigued and possibly unwell. Once or twice he met with success. Yes, the people of the hotel in question had seen a young man answering to the description. He had stayed a night under their roof a week or ten days ago. The young gentleman seemed much tired, and coughed a great deal. He had given a letter to be posted. No, they did not recollect to whom. Not to England. To an address in Naples, they thought. No doubt the present gentleman would soon catch up with his son…

And at the next town there would be a blank stare to his question, a shrug of the shoulders, an expression of regret. The young gentleman described had not been seen. '

It was strange, thought Copper John, that the Flowers had made no mention of hearing from Henry.

He would hardly have written to anyone else in Naples. Possibly the letter, or letters, had miscarried, And on he went, day after day, in France now, the heat somewhat less oppressive, but the route dusty and exhausting and the sun staring down from a glazed blue sky. On the evening of the fourth of June the coach rattled into the little old town of Sens, some seventy miles south-east of Paris, and drew up at the Hotel de l'Ecu. Tomorrow, thought Copper John, as he descended stiffly from the vehicle, I shall be in the capital, where I am more than certain to have news of Henry. He would no doubt have called upon the Mallets, and might even be staying in their apartment. What a relief it would be to have the journey three-parts done, and to return home together.

He made his way into the hotel, a dark, stuffy, old-fashioned sort of building, and asked for the proprietor. He came at once, a large man with a cheerful round face, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, for he was in the middle of supper. Copper John, in his poor, careful French, asked him the inevitable question. Had he met with a young man, of slight build and fair complexion, who might seem fatigued or unwell? At his words the expression on the landlord's face changed instantly.

He put his hand on John Brodrick's shoulder, and burst into a torrent of French that the other could not follow, and then turned, and disappeared a moment, returning with a woman, his wife, and one or two other persons. They all began to question Copper John, each one talking above the other, and finally the traveller, in desperation, said: "I am the father of the young man. In God's name, does anyone here speak English?"

There was immediate silence. The woman said softly: "C'est le pere. Quelle tristesse! Faut lui montrer la chambre…?

There was another consultation, in low tones, and then the landlord, his face very grave, asked Copper John to have the goodness to wait a few minutes; he would send for Monsieur Getif, the doctor, who would explain everything, and knew a few words of English.

Copper John was now greatly alarmed. The people at the hotel had obviously seen Henry, and this doctor they spoke of had attended him. The woman offered him refreshment, which he refused, and he sat down to wait, while they stood respectfully at a distance, watching him, and now and again exchanging whispered words the sense of which he could not catch. The suspense of waiting was well-nigh intolerable, but in about twenty minutes the landlord returned, accompanied by a tall, thin man, bearded, and spectacled, who at the sight of Copper John came forward and bowed, removing his spectacles and polishing them, as a little instinctive sign of nervousness.

"You are the father, monsieur?" he said, in a hushed tone.

"I am," replied Copper John. "I beg you to tell me immediately, is there anything amiss with my son?"

Monsieur Getif swallowed, and made a gesture with his hands.

"I regret very much," he said, "you have to prepare yourself for a great shock, monsieur. Your son has been gravely ill, with a congestion pulmonaire.

I did what I could, but the disease was too advanced."

"What exactly are you trying to tell me?" asked Copper John steadily.

"Monsieur, you must have courage… Your son died yesterday, at five o'clock in the morning…

. His body lies in the room above."

Copper John did not answer. He stared past the doctor and the sympathetic, curious faces of the landlord and his wife, out of the window to the dusty, cobbled street. A cart rumbled past, and a boy driving called loudly to the horse, cracking his whip. The bells on the cart tinkled. The clock on the old church across the square chimed out the hour. He loosened his cravat, and then tightened his hold on his stick.

"Would you take me upstairs to my son?" he said.

The doctor led the way, the landlord and his wife following in the rear. They went to a room on the first floor, overlooking the street. The curtains were drawn against the light. Two candles were burning at the head of the bed, and two at the foot. Henry lay between them. There was only a white sheet over him, and his face was uncovered. He looked very young, and peaceful, and still. His clothes were folded neatly on the chair against the wall. His wallet, and keys, and books were on the mantelpiece. A whisper from the wife of the landlord broke the silence.

"She says nothing has been touched," said the doctor, "it is just as he arranged his things."

"How long had he been here?" asked Copper John.

"Six days. He was taken ill the night of his arrival. He would not permit us to send word to England.

It would give anxiety, he said."

"Did he speak of his family at all, of me?"

"No, monsieur, he was too weak. He just lay there, on his bed. He was very patient. It was madame here who heard him cough yester-day morning, and she came in and found him-dying-monsieur, and she sent for me, but it was too late… We are all so very sorry, monsieur."

"Thank you. I am grateful for what you have done."

One by one they withdrew from the room, leaving him alone with his son. He took a chair and sat beside the bed. Outside the Hotel de l'Ecu he could hear the carts as they rattled over the cobbled stones, and the jangling bells of the horses. There were the voices of people too, calling to one another. A woman was singing in the house across the way.

There were things that he should do, and arrangements to be made. He would have Henry embalmed and buried in Paris. Later on they would try to have him removed to England. He would not like to think of Henry lying here, alone, in foreign soil. He must write to Barbara, to Robert Lumley, to the Flowers; there were so many letters he must write. Henry was twenty-eight. He had been twenty-eight three months. He looked younger, much younger, as he lay there on the bed. It made him think of those days when he and Sarah had gone down to visit the boys at Eton. Henry was always so delighted to see them. And at Oxford later.

So many friends to introduce. He could not remember ever having to beat Henry as a lad, or find fault with him. Such a companion too, these last years, ever since the start of the mine. He would have married soon, doubtless, and settled down at Clonmere with his bride. Now Clonmere would go to John…

He went on sitting in the chair, staring at the body of his son, and the candles burnt lower, forming spots of grease upon the floor beside the bed.

After an hour there came a light tap at the door, and the woman of the hotel asked him whether he would come down and have a bite or two to eat; he must keep his strength, she said, he must not give way.

He remembered that the business of living must be continued, that eating and drinking, and planning and sleeping, were part of existence, that Henry's death would alter none of this. He went downstairs and had his dinner alone in the little coffee-room of the hotel, and after dinner the doctor called and accompanied him to the house of the Maire, Monsieur Jacques-Theodore Leroux, where there were papers to be signed and certain formalities to be gone through.

The doctor and the Maire both signed the certificate of death, and another paper which would permit the father to have the body of his son embalmed and taken to Paris within the next few days. This necessary business gave Copper John some measure of comfort. It made something to do. He did not have leisure to be alone with his thoughts. When he had left the Maire and the doctor, he walked awhile in the town of Sens until it was dark, and then he returned to the Hotel de l'Ecu and went upstairs once more to Henry's room. It was as though he expected there to be some change, that Henry might perhaps have moved, or the things be disturbed upon the chair.

But Henry lay still and quiet, as he had been before.

Only the candles had sunk lower, and now burnt dim and fitful in their sockets. His father extinguished them, one by one, and as he did so it seemed to him an act of finality. It was his farewell to Henry.

He left the room, and shut the door behind him.

He asked the landlord for paper, and pen, and ink. He had recollected, when he had signed the death certificate, that the fourth of the month was the day when he always wrote to Robert Lumley and gave him an account of the work at the mine. He had omitted to do so in May, because he had been about to set forth on his journey, and had only sent his partner a short note, explaining that he was leaving for the Continent. Robert Lumley would consider him very remiss if he left him without word for two months. It was a good thing he had thought to bring with him the details of the mining accounts for the last six months.

It would be as well, perhaps, if Robert Lumley had a copy for reference. He dipped his pen in the ink and began his letter.

At the Hotel de I'Ecu, Sens, Dept. de I'allyonne, France.

My dear Mr. Lumley, You will, I am sure, learn with regret that the journey to Italy for the recovery of poor Henry's health has proved fruitless. He was unable on his return to proceed further than Sens in France, where he expired yesterday, the third of the month. It is a heavy blow to me, and will be so to the rest of my family, but we must pray to the Almighty to enable us to bear it with fortitude. I take it for granted that you have received the 1499, the whole of your royalty for last year, but I have nothing as yet to remit from the new mine, though I have great expectations that it will prove even more profitable than the first…