rats and mice and general decay.

People used to wonder he did not try to sell it. Indeed, it was common
talk that before Mr. Dawson had bought Damerstown he had tried to obtain
possession of Brosna, and that his offer had been refused by Anthony
Cardew with contempt. The common talk even found words for the refusal.

"What?" Captain Cardew was reported to have said. "You have plucked me
clean enough, God knows, but I keep my honour intact, and that forbids
that I should see Dawsons in the house where Cardews lived honourably
and wronged none but themselves."

The low sun going down in a blaze behind the trees brought these things
into my mind. I remember that the wood was as sweet from the scent of
the white-thorn and the lilacs and a thousand other sweet and fresh
things as though some heavenly censer swung there. The thrushes and the
blackbirds were singing their wildest as is their custom about sunset;
and below their triumphant songs you could hear the whole chorus of the
little birds' voices as well as the fiddling and harping of the myriad
field-crickets and grasshoppers. Then from the field beyond the wood I
could hear the corncrakes sawing away in the yet unmown grass, and there
were a great many wood-doves uttering their soft laments.

I have always loved the things of nature; but on this evening they had
less power than usual to soothe me. The shame of my recent encounter
with Richard Dawson kept sending the colour to my cheeks and the little
shocks of repulsion through my blood. I felt that if he had really
kissed me I must have killed him or myself. My fingers twitched as I
thought on a certain dagger, little but deadly, which lay in a glass
case in the picture-gallery, and I resolved that I would carry it in my