quaking.

"No, sorr, nor do I care if ye belonged to the Castle itself. Answer
me now, as one gentleman to another. Do ye shoot foxes or do ye not?"

And four years before Stalky and Beetle had carefully kicked McTurk
out of his Irish dialect! Assuredly he had gone mad or taken a
sunstroke, and as assuredly he would be slain--once by the old
gentleman and once by the Head. A public licking for the throe was
the least they could expect. Yet--if their eyes and ears were to be
trusted--the old gentleman had collapsed. It might be a lull before
the storm, but--

"I do not." He was still gurgling.

"Then you must sack your keeper. He's not fit to live in the same
county with a God-fearin' fox. An' a vixen, too--at this time o'
year!"

"Did ye come up on purpose to tell me this?"

"Of course I did, ye silly man," with a stamp of the foot. "Would you
not have done as much for me if you'd seen that thing happen on my
land, now?"

Forgotten--forgotten was the College and the decency due to elders!
McTurk was treading again the barren purple mountains of the rainy
West coast, where in his holidays he was viceroy of four thousand
naked acres, only son of a three-hundred-year-old house, lord of a
crazy fishing-boat, and the idol of his father's shiftless tenantry.