VITHE BOAT'S SHAREI was sitting on the steps of Shreelane House, smoking a cigarette after breakfast. By the calendar, the month was November, by the map it was the South-west of Ireland, but by every token that hot sun and soft breeze could offer it was the Riviera in April.Maria, my wife's water spaniel, elderly now, but unimpaired in figure, and in character merely fortified in guile by the castigations of seven winters, reclined on the warm limestone flags beside me. Minx, the nursery fox-terrier, sat, as was her practice, upon Maria's ribs, nodding in slumber. All was peace.Peace, I say, but even as I expanded in it and the sunshine, there arose to me from the kitchen window in the area the voice of Mrs. Cadogan, uplifted in passionate questioning."Bridgie!" it wailed. "Where's me beautiful head and me lovely feet?"The answer to this amazing inquiry travelled shrilly from the region of the scullery."Bilin' in the pot, ma'am."I realised that it was merely soup in its elemental stage that was under discussion, but Peace spread her wings at the cry; it recalled the fact that Philippa was having a dinner party that same night. In a small establishment such as mine, a dinner party is an affair of many aspects, all of them serious. The aspect of the master of the house, however, is not serious, it is merely contemptible. Having got out the champagne, and reverentially decanted the port, there remains for him no further place in the proceedings, no moment in which his presence is desired. If, at such a time, I wished to have speech with my wife, she was not to be found; if I abandoned the search and stationed myself in the hall, she would pass me, on an average, twice in every three minutes, generally with flowers in her hands, always with an expression so rapt as to abash all questionings. I therefore sat upon the steps and read the paper, superfluous to all save the dogs, to whom I at least offered a harbourage in the general stress.Suddenly, and without a word of warning, Minx and Maria were converted from a slumbrous mound into twin comets—comets that trailed a continuous shriek of rage as they flew down the avenue. The cause of the affront presently revealed itself, in the form of a tall woman, with a shawl over her head, and a basket on her arm. She advanced unfalteringly, Minx walking on her hind legs beside her, as if in a circus, attentively smelling the basket, while Maria bayed her at large in the background. She dropped me a curtsey fit for the Lord Lieutenant."Does your Honour want any fish this morning?" Her rippling grey hair gleamed like silver in the sunlight, her face was straight-browed and pale, her grey eyes met mine with respectful self-possession. She might have been Deborah the prophetess, or the Mother of the Gracchi; as a matter of fact I recognised her as a certain Mrs. Honora Brickley, mother of my present kitchen-maid, a lady whom, not six months before, I had fined in a matter of trespass and assault."They're lovely fish altogether!" she pursued, "they're leppin' fresh!"Looking"THEY'RE LOVELY FISH ALTOGETHER! THEY'RE LEPPIN' FRESH!"Here was the chance to make myself useful. I called down the area and asked Mrs. Cadogan if she wanted fish. (It may or may not be necessary to mention that my cook's name is locally pronounced "Caydogawn.")"What fish is it, sir?" replied Mrs. Cadogan, presenting at the kitchen window a face like a harvest moon."'Tis pollock, ma'am!" shouted Mrs. Brickley from the foot of the steps."'Sha! thim's no good to us!" responded the harvest moon in bitter scorn. "Thim's not company fish!"I was here aware of the presence of my wife in the doorway, with a menu-slate in one hand, and one of my best silk pocket handkerchiefs, that had obviously been used as a duster, in the other."Filleted with white sauce—" she murmured to herself, a world of thought in her blue eyes, "or perhaps quenelles——"Mrs. Brickley instantly extracted a long and shapely pollock from her basket, and, with eulogies of its beauty, of Philippa's beauty, and of her own magnanimity in proffering her wares to us instead of to a craving market in Skebawn, laid it on the steps.At this point a series of yells from the nursery, of the usual blood-curdling description, lifted Philippa from the scene of action as a wind whirls a feather."Buy them!" came back to me from the stairs.I kept to myself my long-formed opinion that eating pollock was like eating boiled cotton wool with pins in it, and the bargain proceeded. The affair was almost concluded, when Mrs. Brickley, in snatching a fish from the bottom of her basket to complete an irresistible half-dozen, let it slip from her fingers. It fell at my feet, revealing a mangled and gory patch on its side."Why, then, that's the best fish I have!" declared Mrs. Brickley in response to my protest. "That's the very one her honour Mrs. Yeates would fancy! She'd always like to see the blood running fresh!"This flight of sympathetic insight did not deter me from refusing the injured pollock, coupled with a regret that Mrs. Brickley's cat should have been interrupted in its meal.Mrs. Brickley did not immediately reply. She peeped down the area, she glanced into the hall."Cat is it!" she said, sinking her voice to a mysterious whisper. "Your Honour knows well, God bless you, that it was no cat done that!"Obedient to the wholly fallacious axiom that those who ask no questions will be told no lies, I remained silent."Only for the luck of God being on me they'd have left meself no betther than they left the fish!" continued Mrs. Brickley. "Your Honour didn't hear what work was in it on Hare Island Strand last night? Thim Keohanes had the wooden leg pulled from undher me husband with the len'th o' fightin'! Oh! Thim's outlawed altogether, and the faymales is as manly as the men! Sure the polis theirselves does be in dhread of thim women! The day-and-night-screeching porpoises!"Seven years of Resident Magistracy had bestowed upon me some superficial knowledge of whither all this tended. I rose from the steps, with the stereotyped statement that if there was to be a case in court I could not listen to it beforehand. I then closed the hall door, not, however, before Mrs. Brickley had assured me that I was the only gentleman, next to the Lord Almighty, in whom she had any confidence.The next incident in the affair occurred at about a quarter to eight that evening. I was tying my tie when my wife's voice summoned me to her room in tones that presaged disaster. Philippa was standing erect, in a white and glittering garment. Her eyes shone, her cheeks glowed. It is not given to every one to look their best when they are angry, but it undoubtedly is becoming to Philippa."I ask you to look at my dress," she said in a level voice."It looks very nice——" I said cautiously, knowing there was a trap somewhere. "I know it, don't I?""Know it!" replied Philippa witheringly, "did you know that it had only one sleeve?"She extended her arms; from one depended vague and transparent films of whiteness, the other was bare to the shoulder. I rather preferred it of the two."Well, I can't say I did," I said helplessly, "is that a new fashion?"There was a spectral knock at the door, and Hannah, the housemaid, slid into the room, purple of face, abject of mien."It's what they're afther tellin' me, ma'am," she panted. "'Twas took to sthrain the soup!""They took my sleeve to strain the soup!" repeated Philippa, in a crystal clarity of wrath."She said she got it in the press in the passage, ma'am, and she thought you were afther throwin' it," murmured Hannah, with a glance that implored my support."Who are you speaking of?" demanded Philippa, looking quite six feet high.The situation, already sufficiently acute, was here intensified by the massive entry of Mrs. Cadogan, bearing in her hand a plate, on which was a mound of soaked brownish rag. She was blowing hard, the glare of the kitchen range at highest power lived in her face."There's your sleeve, ma'am!" she said, "and if I could fall down dead this minute it'd be no more than a relief to me! And as for Bridgie Brickley!" continued Mrs. Cadogan, catching her wind with a gasp, "I thravelled many genthry's kitchens, but thanks be to God, I never seen the like of her! Five weeks to-morrow she's in this house, and there isn't a day but I gave her a laceratin'! Sure the hair's droppin' out o' me head, and the skin rollin' off the soles o' me feet with the heart scald I get with her! The big, low, dirty buccaneer! And I declare to you, ma'am, and to the Major, that I have a pain switching out through me hips this minute that'd bring down a horse!""Oh God!" said Hannah, clapping her hand over her mouth.My eye met Philippa's; some tremor of my inward agony declared itself, and found its fellow on her quivering lips. In the same instant, wheels rumbled in the avenue."Here are the Knoxes!" I exclaimed, escaping headlong from the room with my dignity as master of the house still intact.Dinner, though somewhat delayed by these agitations, passed off reasonably well. Its occasion was the return from the South African war of my landlord and neighbour, Mr. Florence McCarthy Knox, M.F.H., J.P., who had been serving his country in the Yeomanry for the past twelve months. The soup gave no hint of its cannibalistic origin, and was of a transparency that did infinite credit to the services of Philippa's sleeve; the pollock, chastely robed in white sauce, held no suggestion of a stormy past, nor, it need scarcely be said, did they foreshadow their influence on my future. As they made their circuit of the table I aimed a communing glance at my wife, who, serene in pale pink and conversation with Mr. Knox, remained unresponsive.How the volcano that I knew to be raging below in the kitchen could have brought forth anything more edible than molten paving stones I was at a loss to imagine. Had Mrs. Cadogan sent up Bridget Brickley's head as anentremetit would not, indeed, have surprised me. I could not know that as the gong sounded for dinner Miss Brickley had retired to her bed in strong hysterics, announcing that she was paralysed, while Mrs. Cadogan, rapt by passion to an ecstasy of achievement, coped single-handed with the emergency.At breakfast time next morning Philippa and I were informed that the invalid had at an early hour removed herself and her wardrobe from the house, requisitioning for the purpose my donkey-cart and the attendance of my groom, Peter Cadogan; a proceeding on which the comments of Peter's aunt, Mrs. Cadogan, left nothing to be desired.LookingTHE INVALID REMOVED HERSELFThe affair on the strand at Hare Island ripened, with infinite complexity of summonses and cross-summonses, into an imposing Petty Sessions case. Two separate deputations presented themselves at Shreelane, equipped with black eyes and other conventional injuries, one of them armed with a creelful of live lobsters to underline the argument. To decline the bribe was of no avail: the deputation decanted them upon the floor of the hall and retired, and the lobsters spread themselves at large over the house, and to this hour remain the nightmare of the nursery.The next Petty Sessions day was wet; the tall windows of the Court House were grey and streaming, and the reek of wet humanity ascended to the ceiling. As I took my seat on the bench I perceived with an inward groan that the services of the two most eloquent solicitors in Skebawn had been engaged. This meant that Justice would not have run its course till heaven knew what dim hour of the afternoon, and that that course would be devious and difficult.All the pews and galleries (any Irish courthouse might, with the addition of a harmonium, pass presentably as a dissenting chapel) were full, and a line of flat-capped policemen stood like church-wardens near the door. Under the galleries, behind what might have answered to choir-stalls, the witnesses and their friends hid in darkness, which could, however, but partially conceal two resplendent young ladies, barmaids, who were to appear in a subsequent Sunday drinking case. I was a little late, and when I arrived Flurry Knox, supported by a couple of other magistrates, was in the chair, imperturbable of countenance as was his wont, his fair and delusive youthfulness of aspect unimpaired by his varied experiences during the war, his roving, subtle eye untamed by four years of matrimony.A woman was being examined, a square and ugly country-woman, with wispy fair hair, a slow, dignified manner, and a slight and impressive stammer. I recognised her as one of the bodyguard of the lobsters. Mr. Mooney, solicitor for the Brickleys, widely known and respected as "Roaring Jack," was in possession of that much-enduring organ, the ear of the Court."Now, Kate Keohane!" he thundered, "tell me what time it was when all this was going on?""About duskish, sir. Con Brickley was slashing the f-fish at me mother the same time. He never said a word but to take the shtick and fire me dead with it on the sthrand. He gave me plenty of blood to dhrink too," said the witness with acid decorum. She paused to permit this agreeable fact to sink in, and added, "his wife wanted to f-fashten on me the same time, an' she havin' the steer of the boat to sthrike me."These were not precisely the facts that Mr. Murphy, as solicitor for the defence, wished to elicit."Would you kindly explain what you mean by the steer of the boat?" he demanded, sparring for wind in as intimidating a manner as possible. The witness stared at him."Sure 'tis the shtick, like, that they pulls here and there to go in their choice place.""We may presume that the lady is referring to the tiller," said Mr. Mooney, with a facetious eye at the Bench. "Maybe now, ma'am, you can explain to us what sort of a boat is she?""She's that owld that if it wasn't for the weeds that's holding her together she'd bursht up in the deep.""And who owns this valuable property?" pursued Mr. Mooney."She's between Con Brickley and me brother, an' the saine is between four, an' whatever crew does be in it should get their share, and the boat has a man's share."I made no attempt to comprehend this, relying with well-founded confidence on Flurry Knox's grasp of such enigmas."Was Con Brickley fishing the same day?""He was not, sir. He was at Lisheen Fair; for as clever as he is, he couldn't kill two birds under one slat!"Kate Keohane's voice moved unhurried from sentence to sentence and her slow pale eyes turned for an instant to the lair of the witnesses under the gallery."And you're asking the Bench to believe that this decent man left his business in Lisheen in order to slash fish at your mother?" said Mr. Mooney truculently."B'lieve me, sorra much business he laves afther him wherever he'll go!" returned the witness, "himself and his wife had business enough on the sthrand when the fish was dividing, and it's then themselves put every name on me.""Ah, what harm are names!" said Mr. Mooney, dallying elegantly with a massive watch-chain. "Come now, ma'am! will you swear you got any ill-usage from Con Brickley or his wife?" He leaned over the front of his pew, and waited for the answer with his massive red head on one side."I was givin' blood like a c-cow that ye'd shtab with a knife!" said Kate Keohane, with unshaken dignity. "If it was yourself that was in it ye'd feel the smart as well as me. My hand and word on it, ye would! The marks is on me head still, like the prints of dog-bites!"She lifted a lock of hair from her forehead, and exhibited a sufficiently repellant injury. Flurry Knox leaned forward."Are you sure you haven't that since the time there was that business between yourself and the postmistress at Munig? I'm told you had the name of the office on your forehead where she struck you with the office stamp! Try now, sergeant, can you read Munig on her forehead?"The Court, not excepting its line of church-wardens, dissolved into laughter; Kate Keohane preserved an offended silence."I suppose you want us to believe," resumed Mr. Mooney sarcastically, "that a fine hearty woman like you wasn't defending yourself!" Then with a turkey-cock burst of fury, "On your oath now! What did you strike Honora Brickley with? Answer me that now! What had you in your hand?""I had nothing only the little rod I had afther the ass," answered Miss Keohane, with childlike candour. "I done nothing to them; but as for Con Brickley he put his back to the cliff and he took the flannel wrop that he had on him, and he threwn it on the sthrand, and he said he should have Blood, Murdher, or F-Fish!"She folded her shawl across her breast, a picture of virtue assailed, yet unassailable."You may go down now," said "Roaring Jack" rather hastily, "I want to have a few words with your brother."Miss Keohane retired, without having moulted a feather of her dignity, and her brother Jer came heavily up the steps and on to the platform, his hot, wary, blue eyes gathering in the Bench and the attorneys in one bold comprehensive glance. He was a tall, dark man of about five and forty, clean-shaved, save for two clerical inches of black whiskers, and in feature of the type of a London clergyman who would probably preach on Browning."Well, sir!" began Mr. Mooney stimulatingly, "and are you the biggest blackguard from here to America?""I am not," said Jer Keohane tranquilly."We had you here before us not so very long ago about kicking a goat, wasn't it? You got a little touch of a pound, I think?"This delicate allusion to a fine that the Bench had thought fit to impose did not distress the witness."I did, sir.""And how's our friend the goat?" went on Mr. Mooney, with the furious facetiousness reserved for hustling tough witnesses."Well, I suppose she's something west of the Skelligs by now," replied Jer Keohane with great composure.An appreciative grin ran round the court. The fact that the goat had died of the kick and been "given the cliff" being regarded as an excellent jest.Mr. Mooney consulted his notes:"Well, now, about this fight," he said pleasantly, "did you see your sister catch Mrs. Brickley and pull her hair down to the ground and drag the shawl off of her?""Well," said the witness airily, "they had a little bit of a scratch on account o' the fish. Con Brickley had the shteer o' the boat in his hand and says he, 'is there any man here that'll take the shteer from me?' The man was dhrunk, of course," added Jer charitably."Did you have any talk with his wife about the fish?""I couldn't tell the words that she said to me!" replied the witness, with a reverential glance at the Bench, "and she over-right three crowds o' men that was on the sthrand."Mr. Mooney put his hands in his pockets and surveyed the witness."You're a very refined gentleman upon my word! Were you ever in England?""I was part of three years.""Oh, that accounts for it, I suppose!" said Mr. Mooney, accepting this lucid statement without a stagger, and passing lightly on. "You're a widower, I understand, with no objection to consoling yourself?"No answer."Now, sir! Can you deny that you made proposals of marriage to Con Brickley's daughter last Shraft?"The plot thickened. Con Brickley's daughter was my late kitchenmaid.Jer Keohane smiled tolerantly."Ah! That was a thing o' nothing!""Nothing!" said Mr. Mooney, with the roar of a tornado, "do you call an impudent proposal of marriage to a respectable man's daughter nothing! That's English manners, I suppose!""I was goin' home one Sunday," said Jer Keohane, conversationally to the Bench, "and I met the gerr'l and her mother. I spoke to the gerr'l in a friendly way, and asked her why wasn't she gettin' marrid, and she commenced to peg stones at me and dhrew several blows of an umbrella on me. I had only three bottles o' porther taken. There now was the whole of it."Mrs. Brickley, from under the gallery, groaned heavily and ironically.I found it difficult to connect these coquetries with my impressions of my late kitchenmaid, a furtive and touzled being, who, in conjunction with a pail and scrubbing brush, had been wont to melt round corners and into doorways at my approach."Are we trying a breach of promise case?" interpolated Flurry, "if so, we ought to have the plaintiff in.""My purpose, sir," said Mr. Mooney, in a manner discouraging to levity, "is to show that my clients have received annoyance and contempt from this man and his sister such as no parents would submit to."A hand came forth from under the gallery and plucked at Mr. Mooney's coat. A red monkey face appeared out of the darkness, and there was a hoarse whisper whose purport I could not gather. Con Brickley, the defendant, was giving instructions to his lawyer.It was perhaps as a result of these that Jer Keohane's evidence closed here. There was a brief interval, enlivened by coughs, grinding of heavy boots on the floor, and some mumbling and groaning under the gallery."There's great duck-shooting out on a lake on this island," commented Flurry to me, in a whisper. "My grand-uncle went there one time with an old duck-gun he had, that he fired with a fuse. He was three hours stalking the ducks before he got the gun laid. He lit the fuse then, and it set to work sputtering and hissing like a goods-engine till there wasn't a duck within ten miles. The gun went off then."This useful side light on the matter in hand was interrupted by the cumbrous ascent of the one-legged Con Brickley to the witness-table. He sat down heavily, with his slouch hat on his sound knee, and his wooden stump stuck out before him. His large monkey-face was immovably serious; his eye was small, light grey, and very quick.McCaffery, the opposition attorney, a thin, restless youth, with ears like the handles of an urn, took him in hand. To the pelting cross-examination that beset him Con Brickley replied with sombre deliberation, and with a manner of uninterested honesty, emphasising what he said with slight, very effective gestures of his big, supple hands. His voice was deep and pleasant; it betrayed no hint of so trivial a thing as satisfaction when, in the teeth of Mr. McCaffery's leading questions, he established the fact that the "little rod" with which Miss Kate Keohane had beaten his wife was the handle of a pitchfork.LookingCON BRICKLEY"I was counting the fish the same time," went on Con Brickley, in his rolling basso profundissimo, "and she said, 'Let the divil clear me out of the sthrand, for there's no one else will put me out!' says she."Looking"LET THE DIVIL CLEAR ME OUT OF THE STHRAND!""It was then she got the blow, I suppose!" said McCaffery venomously; "you had a stick yourself, I daresay?""Yes. I had a stick. I must have a stick," deep and mellow pathos was hinted at in the voice; "I am sorry to say. What could I do to her? A man with a wooden leg on a sthrand could do nothing!"Something like a laugh ran round the back of the court. Mr. McCaffery's ears turned scarlet and became quite decorative. On or off a strand Con Brickley was not a person to be scored off easily.His clumsy yet impressive descent from the witness-stand followed almost immediately, and was not the least telling feature of his evidence. Mr. Mooney surveyed his exit with the admiration of one artist for another, and rising, asked the Bench's permission to call Mrs. Brickley.Mrs. Brickley, as she mounted to the platform, in the dark and nun-like severity of her long cloak, the stately blue cloth cloak that is the privilege of the Munster peasant woman, was an example of the rarely blended qualities of picturesqueness and respectability. As she took her seat in the chair, she flung the deep hood back on to her shoulders, and met the gaze of the Court with her grey head erect; she was a witness to be proud of.LookingA WITNESS TO BE PROUD OF"Now Mrs. Brickley," said "Roaring Jack" urbanely, "will you describe this interview between your daughter and Keohane.""It was the last Sunday in Shrove, your Worship, Mr. Flurry Knox, and gentlemen," began Mrs. Brickley nimbly, "meself and me little gerr'l was comin' from mass, and Jer Keohane come up to us and got on in a most unmannerable way. He asked me daughter would she marry him. Me daughter told him she would not, quite friendly like. I'll tell ye no lie, gentlemen, she was teasing him with the umbrella the same time, an' he raised his shtick and dhrew a sthroke on her in the back, an' the little gerr'l took up a small pebble of a stone and fired it at him. She put the umbrella up to his mouth, but she called him no names. But as for him, the names he put on her was to call her 'a nasty long slopeen of a proud thing, and a slopeen of a proud tinker.'""Very lover-like expressions!" commented Mr. Mooney, doubtless stimulated by lady-like titters from the barmaids; "and had this romantic gentleman made any previous proposals for your daughter?""Himself had two friends over from across the water one night to make the match, a Sathurday it was, and they should land the lee side o' the island, for the wind was a fright," replied Mrs. Brickley, launching her tale with the power of easy narration that is bestowed with such amazing liberality on her class; "the three o' them had dhrink taken, an' I went to shlap out the door agin them. Me husband said then we should let them in, if it was a Turk itself, with the rain that was in it. They were talking in it then till near the dawning, and in the latther end all that was between them was the boat's share.""What do you mean by 'the boat's share'?" said I."'Tis the same as a man's share, me worshipful gintleman," returned Mrs. Brickley splendidly; "it goes with the boat always, afther the crew and the saine has their share got."I possibly looked as enlightened as I felt by this exposition."You mean that Jer wouldn't have her unless he got the boat's share with her?" suggested Flurry."He said it over-right all that was in the house, and he reddening his pipe at the fire," replied Mrs. Brickley, in full-sailed response to the helm. "'D'ye think,' says I to him, 'that me daughter would leave a lovely situation, with a kind and tendher masther, for a mean, hungry blagyard like yerself,' says I, 'that's livin' always in this backwards place!' says I."This touching expression of preference for myself, as opposed to Mr. Keohane, was received with expressionless respect by the Court. Flurry, with an impassive countenance, kicked me heavily under cover of the desk. I said that we had better get on to the assault on the strand. Nothing could have been more to Mrs. Brickley's taste. We were minutely instructed as to how Katie Keohane drew the shawleen forward on Mrs. Brickley's head to stifle her; and how Norrie Keohane was fast in her hair. Of how Mrs. Brickley had then given a stroke upwards between herself and her face (whatever that might mean) and loosed Norrie from her hair. Of how she then sat down and commenced to cry from the use they had for her."'Twas all I done," she concluded, looking like a sacred picture, "I gave a sthroke of a pollock on them." Then, an after-thought, "an' if I did, 'twas myself was at the loss of the same pollock!"I fixed my eyes immovably on my desk. I knew that the slightest symptom of intelligence on my part would instantly draw forth the episode of the fish-buying on the morning of the dinner party, with the rape of Philippa's sleeve, and the unjust aspersion on Miss Brickley following in due sequence, ending with the paralytic seizure and dignified departure of the latter to her parents' residence in Hare Island. The critical moment was averted by a question from Mr. Mooney."As for language," replied Mrs. Brickley, with clear eyes a little uplifted in the direction of the ceiling, "there was no name from heaven and hell but she had it on me, and wishin' the divil might burn the two heels off me, and the like o' me wasn't in sivin parishes! And that was the clane part of the discoorse, yer Worships!"Mrs. Brickley here drew her cloak more closely about her, as though to enshroud herself in her own refinement, and presented to the Bench a silence as elaborate as a drop scene. It implied, amongst other things, a generous confidence in the imaginative powers of her audience.Whether or no this was misplaced, Mrs. Brickley was not invited further to enlighten the Court. After her departure the case droned on in inexhaustible rancour, and trackless complications as to the shares of the fish. Its ethics and its arithmetic would have defied the allied intellects of Solomon and Bishop Colenso. It was somewhere in that dead hour of the afternoon, when it is too late for lunch and too early for tea, that the Bench, wan with hunger, wound up the affair by impartially binding both parties in sheaves "to the Peace."As a sub-issue I arranged with Mr. Knox to shoot duck on the one-legged man's land on Hare Island as soon as should be convenient, and lightly dismissed from my mind my dealings, official and otherwise, with the House of Brickley.But even as there are people who never give away old clothes, so are there people, of whom is Flurry Knox, who never dismiss anything from their minds.
I was sitting on the steps of Shreelane House, smoking a cigarette after breakfast. By the calendar, the month was November, by the map it was the South-west of Ireland, but by every token that hot sun and soft breeze could offer it was the Riviera in April.
Maria, my wife's water spaniel, elderly now, but unimpaired in figure, and in character merely fortified in guile by the castigations of seven winters, reclined on the warm limestone flags beside me. Minx, the nursery fox-terrier, sat, as was her practice, upon Maria's ribs, nodding in slumber. All was peace.
Peace, I say, but even as I expanded in it and the sunshine, there arose to me from the kitchen window in the area the voice of Mrs. Cadogan, uplifted in passionate questioning.
"Bridgie!" it wailed. "Where's me beautiful head and me lovely feet?"
The answer to this amazing inquiry travelled shrilly from the region of the scullery.
"Bilin' in the pot, ma'am."
I realised that it was merely soup in its elemental stage that was under discussion, but Peace spread her wings at the cry; it recalled the fact that Philippa was having a dinner party that same night. In a small establishment such as mine, a dinner party is an affair of many aspects, all of them serious. The aspect of the master of the house, however, is not serious, it is merely contemptible. Having got out the champagne, and reverentially decanted the port, there remains for him no further place in the proceedings, no moment in which his presence is desired. If, at such a time, I wished to have speech with my wife, she was not to be found; if I abandoned the search and stationed myself in the hall, she would pass me, on an average, twice in every three minutes, generally with flowers in her hands, always with an expression so rapt as to abash all questionings. I therefore sat upon the steps and read the paper, superfluous to all save the dogs, to whom I at least offered a harbourage in the general stress.
Suddenly, and without a word of warning, Minx and Maria were converted from a slumbrous mound into twin comets—comets that trailed a continuous shriek of rage as they flew down the avenue. The cause of the affront presently revealed itself, in the form of a tall woman, with a shawl over her head, and a basket on her arm. She advanced unfalteringly, Minx walking on her hind legs beside her, as if in a circus, attentively smelling the basket, while Maria bayed her at large in the background. She dropped me a curtsey fit for the Lord Lieutenant.
"Does your Honour want any fish this morning?" Her rippling grey hair gleamed like silver in the sunlight, her face was straight-browed and pale, her grey eyes met mine with respectful self-possession. She might have been Deborah the prophetess, or the Mother of the Gracchi; as a matter of fact I recognised her as a certain Mrs. Honora Brickley, mother of my present kitchen-maid, a lady whom, not six months before, I had fined in a matter of trespass and assault.
"They're lovely fish altogether!" she pursued, "they're leppin' fresh!"
Looking"THEY'RE LOVELY FISH ALTOGETHER! THEY'RE LEPPIN' FRESH!"
"THEY'RE LOVELY FISH ALTOGETHER! THEY'RE LEPPIN' FRESH!"
Here was the chance to make myself useful. I called down the area and asked Mrs. Cadogan if she wanted fish. (It may or may not be necessary to mention that my cook's name is locally pronounced "Caydogawn.")
"What fish is it, sir?" replied Mrs. Cadogan, presenting at the kitchen window a face like a harvest moon.
"'Tis pollock, ma'am!" shouted Mrs. Brickley from the foot of the steps.
"'Sha! thim's no good to us!" responded the harvest moon in bitter scorn. "Thim's not company fish!"
I was here aware of the presence of my wife in the doorway, with a menu-slate in one hand, and one of my best silk pocket handkerchiefs, that had obviously been used as a duster, in the other.
"Filleted with white sauce—" she murmured to herself, a world of thought in her blue eyes, "or perhaps quenelles——"
Mrs. Brickley instantly extracted a long and shapely pollock from her basket, and, with eulogies of its beauty, of Philippa's beauty, and of her own magnanimity in proffering her wares to us instead of to a craving market in Skebawn, laid it on the steps.
At this point a series of yells from the nursery, of the usual blood-curdling description, lifted Philippa from the scene of action as a wind whirls a feather.
"Buy them!" came back to me from the stairs.
I kept to myself my long-formed opinion that eating pollock was like eating boiled cotton wool with pins in it, and the bargain proceeded. The affair was almost concluded, when Mrs. Brickley, in snatching a fish from the bottom of her basket to complete an irresistible half-dozen, let it slip from her fingers. It fell at my feet, revealing a mangled and gory patch on its side.
"Why, then, that's the best fish I have!" declared Mrs. Brickley in response to my protest. "That's the very one her honour Mrs. Yeates would fancy! She'd always like to see the blood running fresh!"
This flight of sympathetic insight did not deter me from refusing the injured pollock, coupled with a regret that Mrs. Brickley's cat should have been interrupted in its meal.
Mrs. Brickley did not immediately reply. She peeped down the area, she glanced into the hall.
"Cat is it!" she said, sinking her voice to a mysterious whisper. "Your Honour knows well, God bless you, that it was no cat done that!"
Obedient to the wholly fallacious axiom that those who ask no questions will be told no lies, I remained silent.
"Only for the luck of God being on me they'd have left meself no betther than they left the fish!" continued Mrs. Brickley. "Your Honour didn't hear what work was in it on Hare Island Strand last night? Thim Keohanes had the wooden leg pulled from undher me husband with the len'th o' fightin'! Oh! Thim's outlawed altogether, and the faymales is as manly as the men! Sure the polis theirselves does be in dhread of thim women! The day-and-night-screeching porpoises!"
Seven years of Resident Magistracy had bestowed upon me some superficial knowledge of whither all this tended. I rose from the steps, with the stereotyped statement that if there was to be a case in court I could not listen to it beforehand. I then closed the hall door, not, however, before Mrs. Brickley had assured me that I was the only gentleman, next to the Lord Almighty, in whom she had any confidence.
The next incident in the affair occurred at about a quarter to eight that evening. I was tying my tie when my wife's voice summoned me to her room in tones that presaged disaster. Philippa was standing erect, in a white and glittering garment. Her eyes shone, her cheeks glowed. It is not given to every one to look their best when they are angry, but it undoubtedly is becoming to Philippa.
"I ask you to look at my dress," she said in a level voice.
"It looks very nice——" I said cautiously, knowing there was a trap somewhere. "I know it, don't I?"
"Know it!" replied Philippa witheringly, "did you know that it had only one sleeve?"
She extended her arms; from one depended vague and transparent films of whiteness, the other was bare to the shoulder. I rather preferred it of the two.
"Well, I can't say I did," I said helplessly, "is that a new fashion?"
There was a spectral knock at the door, and Hannah, the housemaid, slid into the room, purple of face, abject of mien.
"It's what they're afther tellin' me, ma'am," she panted. "'Twas took to sthrain the soup!"
"They took my sleeve to strain the soup!" repeated Philippa, in a crystal clarity of wrath.
"She said she got it in the press in the passage, ma'am, and she thought you were afther throwin' it," murmured Hannah, with a glance that implored my support.
"Who are you speaking of?" demanded Philippa, looking quite six feet high.
The situation, already sufficiently acute, was here intensified by the massive entry of Mrs. Cadogan, bearing in her hand a plate, on which was a mound of soaked brownish rag. She was blowing hard, the glare of the kitchen range at highest power lived in her face.
"There's your sleeve, ma'am!" she said, "and if I could fall down dead this minute it'd be no more than a relief to me! And as for Bridgie Brickley!" continued Mrs. Cadogan, catching her wind with a gasp, "I thravelled many genthry's kitchens, but thanks be to God, I never seen the like of her! Five weeks to-morrow she's in this house, and there isn't a day but I gave her a laceratin'! Sure the hair's droppin' out o' me head, and the skin rollin' off the soles o' me feet with the heart scald I get with her! The big, low, dirty buccaneer! And I declare to you, ma'am, and to the Major, that I have a pain switching out through me hips this minute that'd bring down a horse!"
"Oh God!" said Hannah, clapping her hand over her mouth.
My eye met Philippa's; some tremor of my inward agony declared itself, and found its fellow on her quivering lips. In the same instant, wheels rumbled in the avenue.
"Here are the Knoxes!" I exclaimed, escaping headlong from the room with my dignity as master of the house still intact.
Dinner, though somewhat delayed by these agitations, passed off reasonably well. Its occasion was the return from the South African war of my landlord and neighbour, Mr. Florence McCarthy Knox, M.F.H., J.P., who had been serving his country in the Yeomanry for the past twelve months. The soup gave no hint of its cannibalistic origin, and was of a transparency that did infinite credit to the services of Philippa's sleeve; the pollock, chastely robed in white sauce, held no suggestion of a stormy past, nor, it need scarcely be said, did they foreshadow their influence on my future. As they made their circuit of the table I aimed a communing glance at my wife, who, serene in pale pink and conversation with Mr. Knox, remained unresponsive.
How the volcano that I knew to be raging below in the kitchen could have brought forth anything more edible than molten paving stones I was at a loss to imagine. Had Mrs. Cadogan sent up Bridget Brickley's head as anentremetit would not, indeed, have surprised me. I could not know that as the gong sounded for dinner Miss Brickley had retired to her bed in strong hysterics, announcing that she was paralysed, while Mrs. Cadogan, rapt by passion to an ecstasy of achievement, coped single-handed with the emergency.
At breakfast time next morning Philippa and I were informed that the invalid had at an early hour removed herself and her wardrobe from the house, requisitioning for the purpose my donkey-cart and the attendance of my groom, Peter Cadogan; a proceeding on which the comments of Peter's aunt, Mrs. Cadogan, left nothing to be desired.
LookingTHE INVALID REMOVED HERSELF
THE INVALID REMOVED HERSELF
The affair on the strand at Hare Island ripened, with infinite complexity of summonses and cross-summonses, into an imposing Petty Sessions case. Two separate deputations presented themselves at Shreelane, equipped with black eyes and other conventional injuries, one of them armed with a creelful of live lobsters to underline the argument. To decline the bribe was of no avail: the deputation decanted them upon the floor of the hall and retired, and the lobsters spread themselves at large over the house, and to this hour remain the nightmare of the nursery.
The next Petty Sessions day was wet; the tall windows of the Court House were grey and streaming, and the reek of wet humanity ascended to the ceiling. As I took my seat on the bench I perceived with an inward groan that the services of the two most eloquent solicitors in Skebawn had been engaged. This meant that Justice would not have run its course till heaven knew what dim hour of the afternoon, and that that course would be devious and difficult.
All the pews and galleries (any Irish courthouse might, with the addition of a harmonium, pass presentably as a dissenting chapel) were full, and a line of flat-capped policemen stood like church-wardens near the door. Under the galleries, behind what might have answered to choir-stalls, the witnesses and their friends hid in darkness, which could, however, but partially conceal two resplendent young ladies, barmaids, who were to appear in a subsequent Sunday drinking case. I was a little late, and when I arrived Flurry Knox, supported by a couple of other magistrates, was in the chair, imperturbable of countenance as was his wont, his fair and delusive youthfulness of aspect unimpaired by his varied experiences during the war, his roving, subtle eye untamed by four years of matrimony.
A woman was being examined, a square and ugly country-woman, with wispy fair hair, a slow, dignified manner, and a slight and impressive stammer. I recognised her as one of the bodyguard of the lobsters. Mr. Mooney, solicitor for the Brickleys, widely known and respected as "Roaring Jack," was in possession of that much-enduring organ, the ear of the Court.
"Now, Kate Keohane!" he thundered, "tell me what time it was when all this was going on?"
"About duskish, sir. Con Brickley was slashing the f-fish at me mother the same time. He never said a word but to take the shtick and fire me dead with it on the sthrand. He gave me plenty of blood to dhrink too," said the witness with acid decorum. She paused to permit this agreeable fact to sink in, and added, "his wife wanted to f-fashten on me the same time, an' she havin' the steer of the boat to sthrike me."
These were not precisely the facts that Mr. Murphy, as solicitor for the defence, wished to elicit.
"Would you kindly explain what you mean by the steer of the boat?" he demanded, sparring for wind in as intimidating a manner as possible. The witness stared at him.
"Sure 'tis the shtick, like, that they pulls here and there to go in their choice place."
"We may presume that the lady is referring to the tiller," said Mr. Mooney, with a facetious eye at the Bench. "Maybe now, ma'am, you can explain to us what sort of a boat is she?"
"She's that owld that if it wasn't for the weeds that's holding her together she'd bursht up in the deep."
"And who owns this valuable property?" pursued Mr. Mooney.
"She's between Con Brickley and me brother, an' the saine is between four, an' whatever crew does be in it should get their share, and the boat has a man's share."
I made no attempt to comprehend this, relying with well-founded confidence on Flurry Knox's grasp of such enigmas.
"Was Con Brickley fishing the same day?"
"He was not, sir. He was at Lisheen Fair; for as clever as he is, he couldn't kill two birds under one slat!"
Kate Keohane's voice moved unhurried from sentence to sentence and her slow pale eyes turned for an instant to the lair of the witnesses under the gallery.
"And you're asking the Bench to believe that this decent man left his business in Lisheen in order to slash fish at your mother?" said Mr. Mooney truculently.
"B'lieve me, sorra much business he laves afther him wherever he'll go!" returned the witness, "himself and his wife had business enough on the sthrand when the fish was dividing, and it's then themselves put every name on me."
"Ah, what harm are names!" said Mr. Mooney, dallying elegantly with a massive watch-chain. "Come now, ma'am! will you swear you got any ill-usage from Con Brickley or his wife?" He leaned over the front of his pew, and waited for the answer with his massive red head on one side.
"I was givin' blood like a c-cow that ye'd shtab with a knife!" said Kate Keohane, with unshaken dignity. "If it was yourself that was in it ye'd feel the smart as well as me. My hand and word on it, ye would! The marks is on me head still, like the prints of dog-bites!"
She lifted a lock of hair from her forehead, and exhibited a sufficiently repellant injury. Flurry Knox leaned forward.
"Are you sure you haven't that since the time there was that business between yourself and the postmistress at Munig? I'm told you had the name of the office on your forehead where she struck you with the office stamp! Try now, sergeant, can you read Munig on her forehead?"
The Court, not excepting its line of church-wardens, dissolved into laughter; Kate Keohane preserved an offended silence.
"I suppose you want us to believe," resumed Mr. Mooney sarcastically, "that a fine hearty woman like you wasn't defending yourself!" Then with a turkey-cock burst of fury, "On your oath now! What did you strike Honora Brickley with? Answer me that now! What had you in your hand?"
"I had nothing only the little rod I had afther the ass," answered Miss Keohane, with childlike candour. "I done nothing to them; but as for Con Brickley he put his back to the cliff and he took the flannel wrop that he had on him, and he threwn it on the sthrand, and he said he should have Blood, Murdher, or F-Fish!"
She folded her shawl across her breast, a picture of virtue assailed, yet unassailable.
"You may go down now," said "Roaring Jack" rather hastily, "I want to have a few words with your brother."
Miss Keohane retired, without having moulted a feather of her dignity, and her brother Jer came heavily up the steps and on to the platform, his hot, wary, blue eyes gathering in the Bench and the attorneys in one bold comprehensive glance. He was a tall, dark man of about five and forty, clean-shaved, save for two clerical inches of black whiskers, and in feature of the type of a London clergyman who would probably preach on Browning.
"Well, sir!" began Mr. Mooney stimulatingly, "and are you the biggest blackguard from here to America?"
"I am not," said Jer Keohane tranquilly.
"We had you here before us not so very long ago about kicking a goat, wasn't it? You got a little touch of a pound, I think?"
This delicate allusion to a fine that the Bench had thought fit to impose did not distress the witness.
"I did, sir."
"And how's our friend the goat?" went on Mr. Mooney, with the furious facetiousness reserved for hustling tough witnesses.
"Well, I suppose she's something west of the Skelligs by now," replied Jer Keohane with great composure.
An appreciative grin ran round the court. The fact that the goat had died of the kick and been "given the cliff" being regarded as an excellent jest.
Mr. Mooney consulted his notes:
"Well, now, about this fight," he said pleasantly, "did you see your sister catch Mrs. Brickley and pull her hair down to the ground and drag the shawl off of her?"
"Well," said the witness airily, "they had a little bit of a scratch on account o' the fish. Con Brickley had the shteer o' the boat in his hand and says he, 'is there any man here that'll take the shteer from me?' The man was dhrunk, of course," added Jer charitably.
"Did you have any talk with his wife about the fish?"
"I couldn't tell the words that she said to me!" replied the witness, with a reverential glance at the Bench, "and she over-right three crowds o' men that was on the sthrand."
Mr. Mooney put his hands in his pockets and surveyed the witness.
"You're a very refined gentleman upon my word! Were you ever in England?"
"I was part of three years."
"Oh, that accounts for it, I suppose!" said Mr. Mooney, accepting this lucid statement without a stagger, and passing lightly on. "You're a widower, I understand, with no objection to consoling yourself?"
No answer.
"Now, sir! Can you deny that you made proposals of marriage to Con Brickley's daughter last Shraft?"
The plot thickened. Con Brickley's daughter was my late kitchenmaid.
Jer Keohane smiled tolerantly.
"Ah! That was a thing o' nothing!"
"Nothing!" said Mr. Mooney, with the roar of a tornado, "do you call an impudent proposal of marriage to a respectable man's daughter nothing! That's English manners, I suppose!"
"I was goin' home one Sunday," said Jer Keohane, conversationally to the Bench, "and I met the gerr'l and her mother. I spoke to the gerr'l in a friendly way, and asked her why wasn't she gettin' marrid, and she commenced to peg stones at me and dhrew several blows of an umbrella on me. I had only three bottles o' porther taken. There now was the whole of it."
Mrs. Brickley, from under the gallery, groaned heavily and ironically.
I found it difficult to connect these coquetries with my impressions of my late kitchenmaid, a furtive and touzled being, who, in conjunction with a pail and scrubbing brush, had been wont to melt round corners and into doorways at my approach.
"Are we trying a breach of promise case?" interpolated Flurry, "if so, we ought to have the plaintiff in."
"My purpose, sir," said Mr. Mooney, in a manner discouraging to levity, "is to show that my clients have received annoyance and contempt from this man and his sister such as no parents would submit to."
A hand came forth from under the gallery and plucked at Mr. Mooney's coat. A red monkey face appeared out of the darkness, and there was a hoarse whisper whose purport I could not gather. Con Brickley, the defendant, was giving instructions to his lawyer.
It was perhaps as a result of these that Jer Keohane's evidence closed here. There was a brief interval, enlivened by coughs, grinding of heavy boots on the floor, and some mumbling and groaning under the gallery.
"There's great duck-shooting out on a lake on this island," commented Flurry to me, in a whisper. "My grand-uncle went there one time with an old duck-gun he had, that he fired with a fuse. He was three hours stalking the ducks before he got the gun laid. He lit the fuse then, and it set to work sputtering and hissing like a goods-engine till there wasn't a duck within ten miles. The gun went off then."
This useful side light on the matter in hand was interrupted by the cumbrous ascent of the one-legged Con Brickley to the witness-table. He sat down heavily, with his slouch hat on his sound knee, and his wooden stump stuck out before him. His large monkey-face was immovably serious; his eye was small, light grey, and very quick.
McCaffery, the opposition attorney, a thin, restless youth, with ears like the handles of an urn, took him in hand. To the pelting cross-examination that beset him Con Brickley replied with sombre deliberation, and with a manner of uninterested honesty, emphasising what he said with slight, very effective gestures of his big, supple hands. His voice was deep and pleasant; it betrayed no hint of so trivial a thing as satisfaction when, in the teeth of Mr. McCaffery's leading questions, he established the fact that the "little rod" with which Miss Kate Keohane had beaten his wife was the handle of a pitchfork.
LookingCON BRICKLEY
CON BRICKLEY
"I was counting the fish the same time," went on Con Brickley, in his rolling basso profundissimo, "and she said, 'Let the divil clear me out of the sthrand, for there's no one else will put me out!' says she."
Looking"LET THE DIVIL CLEAR ME OUT OF THE STHRAND!"
"LET THE DIVIL CLEAR ME OUT OF THE STHRAND!"
"It was then she got the blow, I suppose!" said McCaffery venomously; "you had a stick yourself, I daresay?"
"Yes. I had a stick. I must have a stick," deep and mellow pathos was hinted at in the voice; "I am sorry to say. What could I do to her? A man with a wooden leg on a sthrand could do nothing!"
Something like a laugh ran round the back of the court. Mr. McCaffery's ears turned scarlet and became quite decorative. On or off a strand Con Brickley was not a person to be scored off easily.
His clumsy yet impressive descent from the witness-stand followed almost immediately, and was not the least telling feature of his evidence. Mr. Mooney surveyed his exit with the admiration of one artist for another, and rising, asked the Bench's permission to call Mrs. Brickley.
Mrs. Brickley, as she mounted to the platform, in the dark and nun-like severity of her long cloak, the stately blue cloth cloak that is the privilege of the Munster peasant woman, was an example of the rarely blended qualities of picturesqueness and respectability. As she took her seat in the chair, she flung the deep hood back on to her shoulders, and met the gaze of the Court with her grey head erect; she was a witness to be proud of.
LookingA WITNESS TO BE PROUD OF
A WITNESS TO BE PROUD OF
"Now Mrs. Brickley," said "Roaring Jack" urbanely, "will you describe this interview between your daughter and Keohane."
"It was the last Sunday in Shrove, your Worship, Mr. Flurry Knox, and gentlemen," began Mrs. Brickley nimbly, "meself and me little gerr'l was comin' from mass, and Jer Keohane come up to us and got on in a most unmannerable way. He asked me daughter would she marry him. Me daughter told him she would not, quite friendly like. I'll tell ye no lie, gentlemen, she was teasing him with the umbrella the same time, an' he raised his shtick and dhrew a sthroke on her in the back, an' the little gerr'l took up a small pebble of a stone and fired it at him. She put the umbrella up to his mouth, but she called him no names. But as for him, the names he put on her was to call her 'a nasty long slopeen of a proud thing, and a slopeen of a proud tinker.'"
"Very lover-like expressions!" commented Mr. Mooney, doubtless stimulated by lady-like titters from the barmaids; "and had this romantic gentleman made any previous proposals for your daughter?"
"Himself had two friends over from across the water one night to make the match, a Sathurday it was, and they should land the lee side o' the island, for the wind was a fright," replied Mrs. Brickley, launching her tale with the power of easy narration that is bestowed with such amazing liberality on her class; "the three o' them had dhrink taken, an' I went to shlap out the door agin them. Me husband said then we should let them in, if it was a Turk itself, with the rain that was in it. They were talking in it then till near the dawning, and in the latther end all that was between them was the boat's share."
"What do you mean by 'the boat's share'?" said I.
"'Tis the same as a man's share, me worshipful gintleman," returned Mrs. Brickley splendidly; "it goes with the boat always, afther the crew and the saine has their share got."
I possibly looked as enlightened as I felt by this exposition.
"You mean that Jer wouldn't have her unless he got the boat's share with her?" suggested Flurry.
"He said it over-right all that was in the house, and he reddening his pipe at the fire," replied Mrs. Brickley, in full-sailed response to the helm. "'D'ye think,' says I to him, 'that me daughter would leave a lovely situation, with a kind and tendher masther, for a mean, hungry blagyard like yerself,' says I, 'that's livin' always in this backwards place!' says I."
This touching expression of preference for myself, as opposed to Mr. Keohane, was received with expressionless respect by the Court. Flurry, with an impassive countenance, kicked me heavily under cover of the desk. I said that we had better get on to the assault on the strand. Nothing could have been more to Mrs. Brickley's taste. We were minutely instructed as to how Katie Keohane drew the shawleen forward on Mrs. Brickley's head to stifle her; and how Norrie Keohane was fast in her hair. Of how Mrs. Brickley had then given a stroke upwards between herself and her face (whatever that might mean) and loosed Norrie from her hair. Of how she then sat down and commenced to cry from the use they had for her.
"'Twas all I done," she concluded, looking like a sacred picture, "I gave a sthroke of a pollock on them." Then, an after-thought, "an' if I did, 'twas myself was at the loss of the same pollock!"
I fixed my eyes immovably on my desk. I knew that the slightest symptom of intelligence on my part would instantly draw forth the episode of the fish-buying on the morning of the dinner party, with the rape of Philippa's sleeve, and the unjust aspersion on Miss Brickley following in due sequence, ending with the paralytic seizure and dignified departure of the latter to her parents' residence in Hare Island. The critical moment was averted by a question from Mr. Mooney.
"As for language," replied Mrs. Brickley, with clear eyes a little uplifted in the direction of the ceiling, "there was no name from heaven and hell but she had it on me, and wishin' the divil might burn the two heels off me, and the like o' me wasn't in sivin parishes! And that was the clane part of the discoorse, yer Worships!"
Mrs. Brickley here drew her cloak more closely about her, as though to enshroud herself in her own refinement, and presented to the Bench a silence as elaborate as a drop scene. It implied, amongst other things, a generous confidence in the imaginative powers of her audience.
Whether or no this was misplaced, Mrs. Brickley was not invited further to enlighten the Court. After her departure the case droned on in inexhaustible rancour, and trackless complications as to the shares of the fish. Its ethics and its arithmetic would have defied the allied intellects of Solomon and Bishop Colenso. It was somewhere in that dead hour of the afternoon, when it is too late for lunch and too early for tea, that the Bench, wan with hunger, wound up the affair by impartially binding both parties in sheaves "to the Peace."
As a sub-issue I arranged with Mr. Knox to shoot duck on the one-legged man's land on Hare Island as soon as should be convenient, and lightly dismissed from my mind my dealings, official and otherwise, with the House of Brickley.
But even as there are people who never give away old clothes, so are there people, of whom is Flurry Knox, who never dismiss anything from their minds.