consisted in having learned at Cambridge to some slight and painful
extent that if he rode too near them he got sworn at, the purchaser of
the Kerry Rapparee's descendants had undertaken no mean task.

On the morning following on the first run of the Craffroe Hounds, Mrs.
Alexander was sitting at her escritoire, making up her weekly accounts
and entering in her poultry-book the untimely demise of the Leghorn
cock. She was a lady of secret enthusiasms which sheltered themselves
behind habits of the most business-like severity. Her books were models
of order, and as she neatly inscribed the Leghorn cock's epitaph,
"Killed by hounds," she could not repress the compensating thought that
she had never seen Freddy's dark eyes and olive complexion look so well
as when he had tried on his new pink coat.

At this point she heard a step on the gravel outside; Bismarck uttered a
bloodhound bay and got under the sofa. It was a sunny morning in late
October, and the French window was open; outside it, ragged as a Russian
poodle and nearly as black, stood the tinker who had the day before
wielded the frying-pan with such effect.

"Me lady," began the tinker, "I ax yer ladyship's pardon, but me little
dog is dead."

"Well?" said Mrs. Alexander, fixing a gaze of clear grey rectitude upon
him.

"Me lady," continued the tinker, reverentially but firmly, "'twas afther
he was run by thim dogs yestherday, and 'twas your ladyship's dog that
finished him. He tore the throat out of him under the bed!" He pointed
an accusing forefinger at Bismarck, whose lambent eyes of terror glowed