THE HANDSOME BRANDONS

BY

KATHARINE TYNAN

Author of "The Dear Irish Girl" "She Walks in Beauty"
"Oh, what a Plague is Love!" &c.

WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS BY GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND, R.I.

CHICAGO
A. C. M'CLURG & CO
1901

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

THE HANDSOME BRANDONS.

CHAPTER I

CASTLE BRANDON AND CASTLE ANGRY.

I don't know whether Brandon Mountain was called from us or we from the mountain. The country people say that there were Brandons in the land before the mountains were made. Anyhow the mountains are likely to be there when there are no Brandons, so far as I can see. For how is a family to last when it has come to living on nothing, and the number of the family all told nine,—they being nearly all healthy and hungry people? At least there were nine before Pierce and Freda left us, and now there are seven. I foresee that one of these days, in spite of our vows to the contrary, we shall have to sell Brandon after all.

Now if some nice English lord would come along and buy it, to sell it would not be so bitter. Sometimes places do sell just for sheer beauty, and Brandon has nothing else. Time was when it had deer and grouse and pheasants and wild little black cattle, to say nothing of hares and curlews and such small fry. But that was before the prosperity went from us to "the bad De Lacys", as they are called far and near.

I suppose they deserved their name in the old days when they won it. They were a persecuting, wild-living, hard-riding, hard-drinking race ever and always, and the people do not forget it to them that they burned chapels and flayed peasants at the cart-wheel in the old unhappy times that, thank God, are passed for ever.

The Brandons of Brandon and the De Lacys of Angry used in the old days to rule the county between them, though the Brandons, to believe the talk of the peasants and the more reliable county histories, were always good to their people. There was as much difference between them, say the country people, as between Brandon Hill and Angry Mountain.

Dear Brandon, that we all opened our eyes upon nearly as soon as we were born! Brandon always seems to take the sunshine. There, beyond the trees of our park, the blue peak lifts gloriously a smiling face to heaven. The gold of sunset crowns it, and the roses of the dawn fall first upon its head. Usually it is purple as a pansy, but if the clouds lie on it they are silver wisps finer than gossamer. The cold weather turns Brandon to bronze and gold. There are times when the slopes of it are as golden as a May pasture with the gorse in bloom, and times again when the drifts of heather are like fields of scattered rose-leaves.

Up there, where the little woods are, is like fairy-land. You are in a world of feathery aisles and arches. The ground under your feet in spring is dancing with the daffodils, or a little later with the wild hyacinths, and below them a carpet of the greenest moss. There are little trout-rivers, amber-brown, and always singing as softly as Oona, our nurse, used to sing her "Cusha Loo" to us to put us asleep. But for those same trout-streams often and often had we Brandons gone hungry.

Angry Mountain no doubt had its name from its looks. No one ever saw its head out of the clouds. When there is thunder it bellows terribly out of the wall of cloud on Angry. There is a great chasm in the side of it, "The Devil's Slice" they call it, which looks like the track of an avalanche. There are some who say that the hidden lake on top of Angry once emptied itself and swept a whole tract of boggy country before it down upon the villages and churches and farms and cabins. Angry Woods, that clothe the mountain base, have a bad name. People say that the kindly growths of other woods are sparse and thin there—that it is a place of gnarled old trees flinging themselves about in horrible attitudes—that it is damp and full of fungus—and that you never know when you may plunge into a bog-hole unaware, and be drowned there, and dried into a brown mummy, no one knowing your fate.

I expect most of those who have visited Angry Woods have gone there by nightfall, and with their hearts in their mouths, prepared for all manner of horrors. By day the fear of Sir Rupert De Lacy and his bloodhounds is too great. Yet it would be quite in keeping with Sir Rupert's character, if he suspected an intruder in his woods by night, to let the bloodhounds loose. If some poor creature were torn to pieces by them, God help us, no one supposes that Sir Rupert would care; and, from the glimpse I once caught of him, I could believe any ill of him.

That was before I had lamed myself, and become the weak and ugly duckling of the handsome Brandons. There is a great chestnut tree that has grown through the walls of Brandon Abbey and brought down the solid masonry before it. I had my summer withdrawing-room in the chestnut, and nobody knew for a long time. When we were all in the woods, Esther and Hugh, and Donald, and the twins and I, it used to be my sport to disappear into my tree, where the others could never find me. Delicious it was—like a world under the sea—in the midst of green leaves. When the boughs hung up their lamps in spring, and the leaves had just shaken out their delicate fans, I used to feel as if the chestnut tree were fairyland, and too beautiful for anything of earth.

I used to read in the chestnut—I was always the reading one of the family—and used to love to hide in it while the others ran here and there calling me through the woods.

The road runs under the Abbey walls. There used to be a fortified wall running round Brandon to protect it from the Irish chieftains, with whom afterwards we Brandons became such good friends, and even inter-married. The outer wall of the Abbey is an integral part of the old wall.

Well, as I was sitting high in my leafy house one day, I heard the sound of hoofs, and looked out to see who might be passing. There were two men, mounted, and at their heels three heavily-built, lumbering dogs, of a variety new to me. It was easy to guess that they were the bloodhounds of whom the country people stood in such dread.

Poor beasts! I should not have feared them myself half as much as I should have feared either of those men. They looked weary and footsore, being indeed of a breed too heavy to follow mounted men, and they were plodding along in the dust of the road and the hot sun, in a way that made me feel very sorry for them.

The rider in front was evidently Sir Rupert De Lacy. He was a big old man, with square relentless jaws, and the colour of gray granite. His hair was quite white and soft, such hair as might have belonged to an innocent, gentle old man. But Sir Rupert had eyes as ferocious as a wild beast's, with curious red lights in them which I should say were the lights of madness.

You will wonder how I saw all this, but as it happened Sir Rupert was riding bareheaded, and as he passed below my tree he pointed with his whip towards Brandon, and then laughed. My description of him owes nothing at all to fancy, though the others laughed at me about it, and said it was only my romantic way to fancy I could see the fires in our old enemy's eyes.

Behind him a pace or two rode James Gaskin, Sir Rupert's steward—Sir Rupert's "devil", as I have heard him called. When a man has a mind to be wicked indeed Satan generally gives him tools to his liking, and if half the stories about Gaskin were true, he was as much more wicked than Sir Rupert as hell is wickeder than earth.

Gaskin was yellow and shrivelled, with a slight hump between his shoulders. He was grinning in answer to Sir Rupert's speech, and the grin showed teeth like fangs. I have never, indeed, seen a face in which evil was so terribly written.

Now as they passed below, Paudeen, my little half-bred Irish terrier, who was lying in my lap, must needs cock his ears and growl. The men did not hear it, but the dogs did, and growled in answer. Then the man, Gaskin, snatched from his pocket a horrible knotted whip, and, leaning over, lashed at the poor beasts that were doing no harm. Two of them shrank away whimpering. The third never flinched, but, lifting her tremendous jowl, faced the man with her black lips drawn back over her great teeth, and every hair on her bristling. I almost laughed aloud to see how Mr. Gaskin trotted forward to put a good space between himself and the brute.

Sir Rupert burst into laughter, a harsh and insolent laughter without merriment.

"Take care, Gaskin," he spluttered, "or Venom will pay off old scores on you one of these days. She hasn't forgotten that touch you gave her with the red-hot irons. She'll do you a mischief if she can. I'd confine my attentions to the other brutes if I were you."

So much I heard before the pair rode away out of hearing—a blot on the sunny day. It was seldom that Sir Rupert was seen in our part of the world, or indeed anywhere outside his own Castle of Angry, where they say that he and Gaskin drink together, and the peasants suppose that the devil himself often makes a third.

Somehow I guessed that he had come, casting his shadow on Brandon, that he might see the place he is bent on making his own. Alas! Sir Rupert is our one probable purchaser for our dear old home. Who else would want it?—all gone to ruin as it is, and stripped of all but its beauty. How often we have declared hotly that we would die ere he should have it, every one of us, from Aline to the youngest twin. But there he sits like a great gray old spider in his web, waiting and waiting till we are obliged to walk into it and he gobbles us and our poor Brandon up; and also the poor innocent people as well, in their wretched neglected mountain farms, who exist simply by reason of our forbearance.

Yet Oona, our nurse, remembers when Sir Rupert was a dashing young gentleman,—no one ever suspected that he would grow into an ogre.

"He had the bad drop, though," Oona will say, wagging her old head. "He was personable, but never to my liking. Your grandmama, Miss Hilda, could never abide him, and wouldn't have married him not if your grand-papa had never been born. She guessed at the bad drop in him, dear young lady, though her ears had been kept from hearing what other people knew of him. Your grandpapa and he were like day and night, the one all goodness and brightness, the other with the black passions already marking his face."

Oona has told me over and over again the story of the love of the two men for my grandmother, an episode which has ruined us Brandons, and made Sir Rupert our implacable enemy.

Our grandmother's picture hangs in the boudoir, where Aline sits sewing or writing letters, or puzzling over wretched sums, poor darling! There are beautiful women nowadays, but women like our grandmother seem to have left the world altogether. She must have been very tall; the folds of her white silk dress sweep away an endless distance in the picture. She has the neck of a swan, and a face, pure oval, with large melancholy eyes. Ringlets fall on either side of her exquisite face, and so innocent is her expression that she seems rather a creature for heaven than for earth. And indeed she did not live long after our dear father was born.

Grandpapa I can remember dimly, and can well believe that he was a handsome young man. Trouble had bent him, but there was no bitterness in the blue eyes—"eyes of youth", though youth had long left him. Even for Sir Rupert he had forgiveness at last, so true a Christian was he, so humbly emulous of the Master he loved and served.

Why, Aline is exactly what he must have been at her age, except that Aline has borne the burden of us all so long that she has more lines of care round her dear blue eyes and her gentle mouth than ought to be there.

However, Oona says that grandpapa, good as he was, was as spirited a young gentleman as any of his compeers. No one could say of him that he was a milksop. He and Sir Rupert were ever something of rivals from the days they were boys at school together, and not in bookish matters. At games and sports they strove to outstrip each other. They were ensigns in the same regiment, and in the wars abroad none could say which was the better man in the field, though even then Sir Rupert had begun to have something of a bad reputation. Then the peace came, and the two young gentlemen swaggered it a while against each other in London drawing-rooms before coming back to their neighbouring patrimonies. There both fell in love with the same woman.

There was never any doubt from the beginning as to the way Aline Ashburton's heart had gone. But Sir Rupert would not believe it till she was actually married. Then he seemed to accept the triumph of his rival so generously, to all appearance, that our dear grandfather was full of remorse for the bad opinion he had held of him for long. Among the Brandon jewels is, or was, the collet of diamonds which Sir Rupert sent our grandmother. Inside the clasp is written, "To the Fairest", with the date of grandmother's marriage.

To make a long story short, Sir Rupert most wickedly wormed himself into grandfather's confidence. I can well believe that the generous heart was full of pity and tenderness for its unsuccessful rival. My grandmother, Oona says, never liked the friendship, but she could give no reason, except her feminine instincts, for her distrust of her old suitor, and those were not enough.

Ah! dear grandpapa was surely easily duped. Even when his pseudo-friend had betrayed him, no mist of suspicion ever gathered between those blue eyes and the world. In his latter days, indeed, he grew so much like heaven, so little like earth, that his righteous anger against Rupert De Lacy was lost in his profound pity for the sinner—such pity as an angel might have, who should realize all the horror of sin, and yet yearn over the soul for which Christ died.

Sir Rupert, even in those early days, had had something of a taste for science, and in the years that followed his disappointment in love he had devoted a certain amount of time to study in the laboratory which he had fitted up in his house.

Now there was, where Brandon estate wanders away to the mountain, a bit of unenclosed land, bare and poor, which up to that time had been regarded as waste. It was beyond Brandon walls, and nearly trenched on the lands of Castle Angry.

Well, Sir Rupert easily enough cozened my grandfather out of it. There was water there, he said, and his cattle had but brackish bog-pools. My grandfather was for giving it to him, but Sir Rupert would not have it so, and the deeds were regularly made out, signed, and delivered. Then, too late, it was discovered why Sir Rupert wanted the land. Why, underneath its docks and dandelions it was one great seam of copper!

The copper mines made the De Lacys rich and the Brandons poor. When grandfather discovered how he had been cheated, and that there was no remedy, he began to sink for copper on his own account. People said that by means of paid agents Sir Rupert fostered in my grandfather what soon became a craze. How many thousands of pounds were poured into those wretched pits over there towards Angry I would not like to say. Sometimes copper was found in small quantities, placed there, people said, by Sir Rupert's agents. Such finds only set my grandfather to harder and more feverish endeavour, but they all ended in nothing. The one seam, and that apparently inexhaustible, was on Whinny Waste, as the No Man's Land was called.

While my grandfather was ruining himself and future Brandons, Sir Rupert was heaping up gold. But now the mines are no longer his, for a few years ago he sold them for a great sum to an English company. People say it was because he had a profound contempt for the business capacity of his grandson, a young fellow of whom we see nothing in this country, his youth having been spent with his mother's people in an English rectory. Indeed, Castle Angry would have been no place for a young life to grow up in; and the young man may be like his father, about whose marriage Sir Rupert was so furious that he never laid eyes on him afterwards.

Anyhow, he must be the better for not having known, in the tender days of his youth, his terrible old grandfather and James Gaskin.

CHAPTER II.

WE BRANDONS.

Within Brandon walls we are out of the world. We know nothing of the copper mines, except that sometimes we meet a shock-headed miner or two when we are on our way to the village. The sulphur-coloured washings enter Brandon river some miles away, and are carried out to sea. None of the smoke or smell of the mines is blown our way. In my heart I am glad that no copper was ever found on Brandon Mountain. I could not bear to see his beautiful blue and purple sides disfigured by the brimstone of the pit, whatever of gold it might mean to us.

We keep much within our walls, and fortunately we have no lack of room to stretch our legs. Our neighbours live at long distances from us, and though they would be kind, no doubt, because we are Brandons, we couldn't keep up with them in any way.

Why, we girls would have no clothes to wear at all if it were not for the stores laid away in oak chests and wardrobes upstairs, belonging to dead-and-gone Brandon ladies. Fortunately they made no shoddy in those days, and the things have been safe in their camphor-lined dwellings from the moth and mildew. Brocades are there, fine yellow muslins that you could draw through a ring, woollens nearly as fine; and, as pretty as any of them, chintzes in bunched-up sacques belonging to a day when it was the fashion to be Arcadian.

We have adapted them with the aid of Mary Fahy, the village dressmaker, and a deal of trouble I often have to prevent her alterations being too drastic. A newspaper sometimes comes our way, and I know that it is the fashion for ladies nowadays to dress picturesquely, so I insist, greatly to Mary's discontent, that the precious old stuffs must not be cut, or too much pulled about, but only just pinched in here, or drawn out there, to fit us.

Not that she despises the beautiful material, which I have seen her fingering with rapt enjoyment. It is only that she hankers after the fashions ever since she paid a visit to Dublin, and, having a cousin a house-maid at the Castle, was permitted a peep at various festivities, with all the fine folk taking part in them. Mary's cousin, too, occasionally sends her a lady's paper, which serves to keep her ideas modern. However, I let her have her own way, with modifications, on the print frocks we wear in summer-time, to make up for my obstinacy about the old stuffs.

I feel that I am talking as if I were the head of the family. That is because Aline and Esther leave so much to my judgment. I am supposed to have the brains of the women of the family, which, if it is true, is only fair, as the others have the beauty. I have been delicate since the fall that lamed me, pale and puny and insignificant, with light-coloured hair and washed-out blue eyes. Esther is like mother, but more beautiful—dark, with such vivid roses in her cheeks and lips, and such velvety eyes, and hair with coppery lights in it.

Brandon is a big house, four stories in the middle, with wings of three stories on each side. But the upper stories do not exist for us. They have so long let in the weather that we have given them over to the owls and bats. There is a deal of rubbish up there as well, and the children look upon it as a kind of Treasure Land, so that we have to keep the doors of communication safely locked, or we would never have our young pickles out of the rotting rooms.

I have sometimes gone there myself—of course I am to be trusted—and have leant my arms on a window-sill, and looked down at dear Aline toiling away in the corner of the rose garden, which she has kept from returning to wilderness. I have seen the twins, too, sitting there demurely under Aline's eye with their lesson-books open on their laps, two pattern little damsels; till suddenly in a moment, Aline having forgotten them over her roses, they would slip from the stone seat, and, holding each other's hands, would steal through the sweet-brier hedge, and run, run, till they were far beyond Aline's call; thus keeping tryst, naughty little girls, with Hugh and Donald, who were trout-fishing or rabbit-snaring in the woods.

Then my gaze would wander over the tree-tops to our dear Brandon, and on to Angry Mountain, fuming with clouds. I could see the towers of Castle Angry in the fissure the old bog-slide had left, there on its solid land, and the bog-holes and little rivers which surround it, so that it has to be approached by a causeway. When my eyes rested on Castle Angry, I would always shake my fist and frown, before withdrawing myself from my post of observation.

Oona is our housekeeper now, and as stiff with the Kates and Pollys of the village, who are our clumsy but willing little handmaidens, as though she had a great staff of servants under her. Oona never forgets what the Brandons were in old days, and ignores as much as possible the sad change that has come upon the family fortunes. Even if we have only a skinny chicken and a pig's cheek and greens for our dinner, they are served on silver, and the old table-linen, darned to the last extent, is always beautifully snowy and shining, as its texture deserves.

When we are alone Oona's manner to us is that of a nurse to her children, scolding often, petting again, and sometimes dictatorial. But before the little round-eyed servants she never forgets what is due to a Brandon, and her humility of manner towards us is no end of a jest, for we have always feared Oona so much more than she has feared us,—that is, we younger ones.

Only to-day I was sitting with Aline in the boudoir, to which we have brought our griefs and misfortunes and peccadillos, ever since our dear mother died. I was just looking into the turf fire and prodding it up with a stick to make the sparks fly out of it, while Aline sat mending a pinafore belonging to one of the twins, and now and again smiling at me without speaking.

Suddenly there broke into the silence of the little room,—where the smell of yesterday's roses blent with the sharp turf-smoke,—a loud wail. Aline sprang to her feet, but I made a signal to her to be quiet.

"It is only Oona lecturing Polly," I said; "listen, and we will hear what it is all about."

"Indeed," wailed the voice, "'tis doin' me best I am. Amn't I wearin' them ould boots to plase you when me feet does be cut to bits wid them, an' the ould gazebo of a thing you've had me put on me head enough to break me heart? Sure I didn't know there was any harm at all at all in laughin' at the young gentlemen's jokes at dinner, an' they so arch I thought I'd have to run out of the room in screeches, so I did."

"You're a bad, ungrateful little girl!" says Oona, stemming the flow of words, "or 'tis glad an' proud you'd be to have boots on them dirty feet of yours, and a cap to cover your head, that's more like a haystack than a Christian girl's. Why, when I was young, and in service in this very house, the housekeeper would have given me the quare goin' over if I let on any more than the poker that I heard anythin' was said when I was waitin' table. 'Twould be as much as my place was worth."

"O, glory be to goodness, Mr. O'Connor, dear," cried the culprit, "sure we can't all be pokers, let alone that I can see them blessed childher just play-actin' at me to make me run out o' the room wid the laughin'."

"Childher! Am I to understand you as referrin' to the young gentlemen of the house?" we hear Oona say in the loftiest tones; but at this moment a diversion occurs, for the twins come racing along the corridor with a letter for Aline, and Oona transfers her lecture and little Polly to the housekeeper's room.

I always like to sit in Aline's room, there is such an atmosphere of quietness about her. Quietness and the sun are two things I associate with her. Is it always sunny in that little octagon room, or is it only an effect of the faded yellow silk panelling, and the old chairs and sofas in the same sunny colouring? One side of Aline's lantern-shaped room is indeed all window, and the upper panes filled with little golden shields, so that the room receives all the sunlight going. Except Aline's desk, which we have been told is genuine Sheraton, and worth a handful of money, the room has little furniture other than its straight-backed couches and chairs.

I am sure there are secret cupboards behind some of those panels. Often, when Aline has been writing her long letters to Pierce or Freda, I have gone creeping round the room, touching every knob of the curious carved roses that surround the panels of yellow brocade. But I have never succeeded in making a panel slide back, as I have fondly hoped to do. Again and again I have desisted only when I discovered Aline's grave smile upon me.

You will wonder what I expect to find,—well, no treasure, certainly, that is, no money treasure, but perhaps a bundle of faded love-letters, or some such relic of a former occupant of this room, which would be real treasure-trove for me. Aline laughs at me for a romantic child, and says I shall never find anything, but still I hope.

Aline's letter is from Pierce. As she reads it I watch her face unobserved. It is lit up as though she were reading a love-letter. The love between those two is wonderful. We all understand, at least Esther and I do, how it is that Aline can refuse so heartlessly, year after year, that poor good Mr. Benson. Why, with her immense love for Pierce, and the overflowing of it for all us, unworthy, she has none left for a lover or a husband. Not but that we are devoutly grateful for Aline's celibacy, since she is happy in it, for what on earth would we do without her? Of course, she would make an exquisite parson's wife, beneficent without being meddling; but then she is more exquisite as our sister.

It is now five years since Pierce left us; he will be twenty-seven the 3rd of next June. Freda was twenty-five in February, and Aline has actually entered the thirties. Pierce was a tall, slim, active fellow when he went away, with Aline's golden hair and blue eyes, and Aline's sudden radiant smile in a serious face. Those two always rather held aloof from us, much as a very devoted husband and wife might hold aloof from their grown-up children.

They used to walk together a good deal in the woods, and when Pierce would go fishing Aline would accompany him with her basket of mending or her book, and sit by him through the long hours of the day, while we young barbarians held our revels unchecked.

It must have been a great blow to Aline when Pierce went so far away. She has always had an air of loneliness since, as of one who has lost her mate. We have a way of going in couples in our family. Aline and Pierce, Esther and I, the twins of course, and those two dear boys who are always together. I don't know where Freda came in, but of course it mattered less, as she married so young, and was so absorbed in her Jim.

Pierce's going came about through Mr. Desmond's visiting the old country. Mr. Desmond is one of our personalities, and we are immensely proud of him, especially as he was born on Brandon estate. He is the son of a small tenant-farmer, and came into the world, one would say, with a very hard iron spoon in his mouth, and the same spoon quite ignorant of even wholesome stirabout. However, despite his humble origin, he has become a great man, a pioneer in dark continents, a letter-in of light on the hidden places of the earth. He is very wealthy and powerful, yet he is very simple, and as plain-living almost and plain-spoken as the peasants he sprang from. All his people are long dead, and the little house where he was born levelled to the ground; so it must have been a lonely home-coming for him when he arrived that May day now more than five years ago, and, walking into the wretched little "Brandon Arms", asked if he could have a bed and board for a few days.

I believe the people round about would have made a great fuss over him, if he had not quietly and shyly slipped through their fingers. He made nothing like a public appearance, but spent his time walking about by himself revisiting the places he had known in childhood. When he left, in about ten days after he had arrived, the only tangible signs that he had ever come were the magnificent cheques he sent the Rector and Father O'Sullivan, to be used as they thought well among the poor people.

But he carried off our Pierce. He had come upon him fishing, and had sat and talked with him the length of an afternoon, while the May-flies danced above the water, and Pierce filled his basket with beautiful silver trout.

The next day Mr. Desmond called, and sent in his card to Aline. The first we heard of him was that Aline had invited him to lunch, which consisted of Pierce's trout, cooked as only Oona knows how. He came two or three times afterwards, and then we heard that Pierce was to go to Africa with him. Pierce seemed fascinated by the man. So indeed did Hugh and Donald, whose noses at that time were not much more than above the table-cloth, but their scent was as keen all the time for danger and adventure as if they stood six feet in their stockings.

Aline said to us over and over during those days that it was a great thing for Pierce to have found such a friend as Mr. Desmond, and that he couldn't always be at home doing nothing, and that maybe he would become a great man himself, and build up the Brandon fortunes again; to all of which we gave a cheerful assent, though the tears were big in Aline's eyes. We had great food for speculation then about what would be the extent of Pierce's fortune when he came home, and how much it would take to put Brandon on its legs again.

However, all that proved quite futile. Mr. Desmond and Pierce had been together only a couple of years when, for some reason, they quarrelled and separated.

Meanwhile Aline has long worn that look of expectation, which means, we know, that she hopes any day may bring Pierce, or news that he is coming. Every month his room, the upper room of the octagon, is turned out, and afterwards Aline herself puts it to rights, setting all the things tidily just as Pierce left them, in the old untidy fashion. His rod and fishing-tackle, his pipes, his gun, his cricketing things, and all his old rubbish she dusts and sets back in their places. If Pierce walked in any day he would find the room ready for him. Every night, long after I am in bed, I know that Aline's light is burning, for our rooms communicate, and a long shaft of gold comes in under the door after my candle has been extinguished. I do not hear her moving about, and then I know that she is praying for Pierce.

CHAPTER III.

ANNAGASSAN RACES.

It was the very month before Pierce left us, and brilliant April weather, when we played that prank which ended so disastrously for me, and the incidents of which I can never recall without a blush.

I was a pickle in those days, and ripe for all sorts of mischief, while Esther was then, as now, ever ready to follow where I led. As for the boys—did you ever know boys who didn't like forbidden fruit? As they say hereabouts, "Would a duck swim?" and the duck's attitude towards her native element was precisely that of Hugh and Donald towards any wild freak, whether suggested by themselves or by those who ought to have known better.

It was an exquisite day, more like June than April, and Pierce and Aline had gone for one of their fishing excursions together, taking a basket of luncheon with them.

"You'll be good children," Aline had said to us, "and not get into any mischief, and be in punctually for luncheon, and not give Oona any trouble."

We said we would be all she desired us; and she went off with her look of placid contentment. We really meant to behave very well, but we had not remembered then that it was the greatest day of the year for the whole country-side, the day of Annagassan Races.

Well, we remembered it soon enough—too soon—after Aline had gone; and at first we had no wilder idea than to ensconce ourselves in the ivy of the old abbey gable and watch the country people walking and driving by.

"There'll be no one left in the village," said Donald; "even the babies are going."

"Barney M'Gee will be left," said Hugh, "for he told me yesterday he was took with the rheumatiz fearful. 'Yez wouldn't be after wantin' the little mare an' the side-car,' said he, 'for if yez would, yez'll be kindly welcome?'"

"I say," I cried out on the impulse of the moment, "why shouldn't we take Barney's offer, and see the races?"

The boys stood up and jumped over the backs of their chairs to express their enthusiastic approval of the suggestion. Only Esther timidly asked what Aline would say.

"Say!" I responded disingenuously. "Why, what would she say? She never said we weren't to go."

"Let us ask Oona to give us our lunch to take with us," said one of the boys.

"If you do," said I, "Oona will smell a rat and spoil everything. I have threepence, and we can buy some gingerbread. Mind, the twins aren't to know, or they will tell Oona."

"Or they will make us take them. They're horrid cheeky little things," said twelve-year-old Donald, "and it would be ridiculous to be seen with a pair of kids like them."

We got off without Oona suspecting us, and made for the village. So far as sounds of humanity were concerned, it was silent as the grave, the place being given over to cocks and hens, and goats, and pigs, and cats, and ducks, and turkeys,—except that old Barney sat on his door-step wearing an expectant look.

"I thought yez'd come to-day, bein' offered the convayniance of the car an' horse. Sure young blood'll be young blood, an' even the dogs is off to Annagassan Races. Not so much as an intelligent baste for me to exchange a word wid until the people comes troopin' home in the cool of the evenin'."

The boys "yoked up" the old mare under Barney's supervision. She was a very Rosinante of a steed, and her harness, which must have been the first harness made, was broken in many places, and tied together with stout twine. The car was coated with years of mud, which hung down in stalactites behind, and the old cushions protruded their hair stuffing in every direction through the rags and tatters that pretended to cover it. However, Barney looked at it with such pride when it stood ready for us that none of us had the heart to find fault with the equipage.

Off we started, Donald driving, and with lurchings of the old mare to this side and that, which sent the fowls flying in every direction, amid shrieks of indignation from the hens. However, when once she had got clear of the village, she settled down to a leisurely walk, which seemed likely to get us to Annagassan about sunset. When Donald tickled her with the whip she only flicked her tail as at an intrusive fly. This made us laugh, and at the sound of our laughter the old mare turned calmly on to a green patch at the side of the road and settled to make a hearty luncheon.

However, by dint of threats and coaxing we got her to a better pace in time, and reached Annagassan just after the second race had been run. We were all pretty hot and dusty, for we had walked up every hill, and we had assisted the mare over so many difficult places, that, but for the grandeur of it, as the boys said, we might as well have walked.

The boys had come off in their old homespuns for fear of arousing Oona's suspicions, but Esther and I had managed to creep out in our new pink ginghams, which we weren't supposed to wear for a month yet. I thought Esther looked lovely, with the sparkle and glow in her dusky face, and her eyes, brown as a trout stream, made deeper in colour by contrast with her pink frock. Of course she had only cotton gloves and a cheap little black straw hat with pink roses in it, but I am sure she was far prettier than any of the fine ladies who presently passed us by with their cavaliers, on their way to see the horses take the big jump.

I wasn't a bit pleased to see that some of the gentlemen looked at her as if they admired her very much. It vexed me even more than the smiles of some of the ladies at our equipage and ourselves. I felt rather the worse for the wear by this time, though Esther seemed to be irreproachably fresh; and the boys with their hair sticking out through their tattered straw hats, and their muddy boots and faded clothes, looked a pair of little scarecrows indeed.

People passed us by with an amused smile whom we should never have dreamt of admitting to Brandon in the old days, nor indeed to-day for the matter of that. There was that horrid Miss Pettigrew, the daughter of a very disreputable attorney, who is said to have done a good deal of dirty work for Sir Rupert De Lacy, and to have made his money by very questionable means indeed. Well, I saw this great flaunting peony of a creature look at Esther's unconscious face with a toss of the head, and an impudent, jeering smile, which made me furious for a moment, till I remembered that she was only Pettigrew's daughter, and could know no better. She took occasion to pass very near to us, flaunting her silks like any peacock, so near that we had to stand back a little to let her pass. There was a gentleman with her, and for a moment I included him in my glance of haughty indignation. But only for a moment.

He was quite young, and his face had a very bright expression, but just then he looked grave, almost angry, I thought, and it occurred to me that what Miss Pettigrew had whispered to him disgusted him not a little. Anyhow, as he passed quite close to us, he lifted his hat gravely, and I caught a glimpse of bright brown hair, rippled all over, despite its close cutting. Then they were gone.

I turned round, to find Mag Byrne, the beggar-woman, and one of the characters of the country, at my elbow. Mag had seen the little drama, and now spat out expressively.

"To think of the likes of her rubbin' her dirty skirts against rale quality like yourselves, Miss Hilda dear! Why, I remember her father thankful to get a plateful of mate at the kitchen door of your own house, my dear, that's a shoneen now, an' his daughter trapesin' about wid the officers from the barracks."

I laughed at Mag's indignation, and my own somehow disappeared. So Miss Pettigrew's escort was one of the officers from the barracks. Well, he looked a gentleman, at all events, however he came to be in such strange company.

All the fine folk were in the carriage enclosure, or on the grand stand. We were out on the hill among the farmers' carts and the dancing tents and Aunt Sallies; and Esther and I enjoyed the humour of it all greatly. Quite early in the day the boys had gone off to amuse themselves, but as they came back frequently to share their raptures with us, we were not anxious. Fortunately for them, the place was full of their friends, people who had lived on Brandon land for more generations than they or we could count, and to whom it was untold pride and joy to "trate" the young gentlemen to all the fun of the fair. I offered them some of the threepenny-worth of gingerbread, but my offer was received with scorn. They had been royally banqueted on ham and chicken and ginger-beer and rhubarb-tart, and had seen the bearded lady and the giant and the dwarf, and were inclined to be rather contemptuous of us.

We ourselves were not a bit sorry when Mrs. O'Sullivan, Oona's cousin, came over to us and implored us humbly to share her home-made bread-and-butter, and the little pot of tea she had made by the aid of a spirit-lamp. We were very hungry by this time, and we were not proud with our own people. I am quite sure that the chicken and the champagne on the drags in the enclosure wasn't half so much enjoyed as was our repast out of Mrs. O'Sullivan's basket.

The people about us vied with each other in being kind and courteous to us. Indeed they were quite congratulatory to Annagassan Races for being honoured by our presence, though they abstained from looking at Barney's car and mare, while they detailed reminiscences of our grandfather's appearance, driving a coach and six, at these same races.

If there had only been our own dear good people, I could have enjoyed the races as heartily as the boys did, but somehow, as the afternoon went on and the bevies of fine folk passed and repassed us, I grew vexed and disquieted. It was not the supercilious glances of the ladies so much as the behaviour of some of the gentlemen. As they passed they stared hard at us; and presently they would come back alone, or accompanied by other gentlemen, and walk past slowly, or stand at a little distance looking at us.

That was the worst, I said to myself crossly, of having a beauty sister, for of course they could not want to look at me. Esther had forgotten her misgivings, and was enjoying the day as thoroughly as the two boys. She had the air of rapture which very small joys have the power of awakening in her, and as she sat there radiant and smiling, with her red lips parted over her little white teeth, and her eyes shining, I couldn't wonder at people liking to look at her.

In other circumstances I should have enjoyed her enjoyment myself. But I had been gradually remembering that I was the really responsible person in this mad freak, that I was seventeen and ought to have known better, that Aline would have been so vexed if she could have seen these men, and so on. Conscience was pricking me so that at last, out of discomfort, I grew cross with Esther, and said to her viciously:

"Don't look so ridiculously happy. You are for all the world like Juliet in the play, and you are making those people stare at us."

Then I was quite sorry, for her dear face fell and her eyes clouded over.

"There, there!" I said repentantly. "I didn't want to frighten you;"—at which her face slowly brightened again. "After all, since we are here, there's no reason why you shouldn't get all the enjoyment you can out of it."

Soon afterwards I had forgotten the disagreeable things myself in excitement over the great race of the day. The race lay between an English horse and a little mare called Brandon Biddy, that came of stock from my grandfather's stables, so that my excitement was at once a family affair and an affair of patriotism. Some one on the hill had brought us a little glass, so that I was able to watch the mare's green and white, as the horses and their jockeys spread themselves over the course like a many-coloured ribbon. The mare won by a length, and all at once I forgot myself and shouted as wildly as anyone there, though, as everyone was shouting, it wasn't likely that I should be noticed.

However, when I discovered what I had been betrayed into doing, I felt myself turning crimson. I shut up the race-glasses sharply and took a furtive look round to see if anyone had observed me. The crowd on the hill-side was laughing and cheering and shaking hands all round; and some men were even flinging their hats in the air again and again in the exuberance of their delight. I was sure I had not been noticed, and I was able to turn to Esther and answer her "Oh, Hilda, isn't it splendid?" with a cheerful affirmative.

But just then I saw, standing quite near us, the gentleman who had been with Miss Pettigrew earlier in the day. His face was full of amusement, and it flashed upon me in a minute that he had been watching my ridiculous capers. I was furious, and looked so, I suppose, for his amused look gave way to one of such gentleness and deprecation, that I felt my anger quite giving way. Though I was sure that I should never cease to blush for having appeared so ridiculous.

However, just then the boys came up.

"They're saddling for the last race," cried Hugh, "and we'd better be making our way out of this crush, or we won't get home till midnight with the old mare. We'll see the last race just as well from the Upper Road."

We agreed, and I was delighted with the boy's foresight, for I didn't want to be coming through the gap side by side with all the carriages and drags. So we turned our Rosinante around, and came down from the hill and across a field, and through the gap, where half an hour later there would be such a tremendous struggle for precedence.

The mare was eager for her stable and trotted briskly enough over the grass fields to the road. We halted to see the last race run, and then we turned from the Upper Road into a quiet by-road which would take us to Brandon village by a slight detour. By taking it we should escape the crowd, and as we turned off the highroad and caught in the distance already the shouting and tumult that showed the people were trying to get first through the gap, I heaved a deep sigh of relief. Then I turned to the others with a smile.

"Well," said I, "we've had a delightful day and no harm done. All's well that ends well!"

But just at that moment there came from the Upper Road a blast of a horn, followed by the clatter of hoofs. Barney's mare started and flung herself almost back on us; then she was off like the wind. Barney had always said that she had a touch of the racer. Perhaps the events of the day had wakened it in her. Anyhow the noise of the drags was too much for her, and she was off.

CHAPTER IV.

I PAY THE RECKONING.

I just remember the boys shouting at us to hold on and sit steady. We didn't require that instruction, for every country-bred girl knows that the only thing to do when a horse bolts, is to keep quiet and do nothing. I gripped my side of the car and watched Hugh, who was driving beside me, fling himself half-way across the car in his effort to keep a tight grip of the reins. The wretched car was swinging from side to side, and I caught a glimpse of Esther, rather pale, holding on quietly to her side as I was doing to mine.

I wondered at the calm of my own mind. "If we meet nothing," said I, "and the harness holds, we are safe enough, for it won't take long to tire her out." On the other hand, if the harness did not hold, or we met anything coming in the opposite direction, some of us would get hurt. I watched the flying hedges as the car flung us high and low, with an absolute calm that looked neither before nor after. I hope God always sends such courage when one really needs it. So the mad flight went on in absolute silence as far as we were concerned.

But of course the wretched harness could not stand the strain. Hugh suddenly fell back towards us with a broken rein in his hand. The mare gave a tremendous leap to one side. There was a heap of stones on the side of the road, obligingly left there for our misfortune by Mullaly, the road contractor. In a moment she had kicked herself free of her harness and was off again, but I saw nothing of this, for I was lying at the bottom of a deep ditch, with my foot turned under me, and I don't know how many newts and young frogs walking about my pink frock.

I am not the fainting sort, but the fall stunned me. When I came to myself I had my head on somebody's shoulder. I looked up into the face bending over me, and saw a pair of gray eyes full of honest concern for me. It was the young man who had been Miss Pettigrew's escort. He was bathing my face with a silk handkerchief dipped in water someone had brought. I looked at him for a minute and tried to sit upright, but I only succeeded in uttering a sharp cry.

"My poor little girl," he said with pitying tenderness, "I am afraid you are hurt. Where is it?"

"My foot," I gasped; and I felt that I was half-fainting again with pain.

"Keep quiet. It is probably sprained," he said quickly. "Let me look at it."

I heard him call to someone for a coat, which he arranged under my head. Then I remembered.

"Are the others all right?" I cried.

"Here they are to answer for themselves," he said; and then I saw that the boys and Esther were standing by, with very frightened faces, all plastered with mud and dirt, but evidently none the worse for the accident.

"We are all right, darling," said Esther, who was crying, "only alarmed about you."

"I am going to hurt you, my poor little girl," said the strange young man, "but you must be brave, and I will make you easier for the journey home."

I felt him cutting away my shoe and stocking. It was agony every bit of it, but I endured it, only saying my prayers, as I had seen the peasants do when they suffered. Then I felt him binding my ankle about with something cold and wet, that seemed to relieve me a little; when he had finished, he bent over me again, and I smiled faintly at him.

"You are very good to me," I managed to say.

"Good to you!" he echoed. "I wish I could save you the horrible suffering I know it is. I hope it is no worse than a bad sprain, but a doctor must see it immediately you get home. But how to get you home, that is the question?"

"I'll run to the cross-roads," volunteered Donald, "and bring Larry Brady's ass and cart. The ass will travel as slow as you like, and she can lie full-length in the cart."

"Right, my boy! If they can send a feather-bed and pillow, so much the better."

Donald was off like a shot.

"I hope you have not far to take her," he said, turning to Esther.

I saw she was about to tell him, and I darted a warning glance at her which she understood.

"Not very far," she said, haltingly.

"To Brandon village," he asked, "or one of the farm-houses yonder? I don't think this road leads anywhere else, except to Brandon itself."

Now I was vexed at his taking us for peasants or farmers' daughters, though I didn't want him to know we were Brandons. So I took the words out of Esther's mouth.

"Yes, to Brandon village," I said, which was true enough, for we had to pass through the village, and some of us would have to explain to Barney the accident to his property. That was worrying me too, for we could ill afford to make up the damage.

I closed my eyes after that and said nothing, for the throbbing pain in my ankle made me feel exhausted. Through my closed eyelids I could feel the pity in the kind strange eyes that were watching me. He was so kind that I felt I could forgive him not only for not recognizing us at once as Brandons—which I should have hated him to do—but for having walked with that Pettigrew creature. Evidently she had not told him who we were. Whatever her jibe had been, it had not told him that we were Brandons,—the proudest and most impoverished race within the four seas of Ireland.

My thoughts went from one thing to another, and presently grew hazy and dull with continued pain. Then I became aware that the ass-cart had arrived, with Mrs. Brady as well, full of lamentations and wirrasthrues. I was very much afraid she would give us away to the stranger, but he was so engaged looking after my comfort that I don't think he heard a word she said. It was he who lifted me into the little cart, so gently that my ankle scarcely hurt. As he lifted me, I saw his fine bay horse fastened to a gate. He must have been riding from the races and witnessed our mishap from the Upper Road.

He laid me down gently on the soft feather-bed. As he bent low to do it, his face almost touched mine. "Good, brave little girl!" he whispered. Then he turned to the others.

"Who is going to lead the ass?" he asked.

"I," said Hugh. "I," said Donald.

"You had better lead, being the oldest and wisest," he said to Hugh, with a smile; "and take care you do not jog her. Fortunately the road seems pretty level."

He lifted his hat, and I thought I detected a wistful look in his eyes. I am sure he wanted to know who we were, and to ask if he might hear how I progressed, but nobody said anything. He stood watching us as we moved off slowly, and when we had gone quite a long way, before the road turned, Hugh looked back, and said:

"Your friend is watching us still, Hilda." And then added in his emphatic way, "I call that no end of a good fellow!"

I said nothing. I was thinking dreamily that the stranger had never once looked at Esther, always at me. I wondered who he might be. Anyhow we were never likely to see or hear of him again. We never went out anywhere we were likely to meet him, and if he was, as Mag Byrne had suggested, an officer from the barracks, he would presently leave with his regiment and go out into the wide world, where even friends find it so hard to meet.

But here we were at last at Brandon hall-door, and Aline was running down the steps. Esther had gone on before to explain things to her. I saw that Aline looked very much disturbed, but when her eyes met mine they held nothing but love and pity.

Well, they sent for old Dr. Devine, who came and examined my sprain. He was very grave about it, for it was no sprain at all, but a compound fracture. After that I was ill for a long time, enduring such pain and fever with my hurt—for there were complications—that it wore me to skin and bone. Then Aline sent for a Dublin specialist, for Dr. Devine was very old, and not altogether to be trusted. Indeed, the Dublin doctor found things so bad that a bone had to be broken again and re-set. However, after months of it I was carried downstairs, hollow-eyed, and the ghost of my old self. But I had plenty of cause for gratitude, for I had very narrowly escaped being a permanent invalid, though, when I could walk about, I was a little lame, as the Dublin doctor had feared I should be for a long time, and I have never been quite my old strong self again.

However, they have all been so good to me, that even in my misfortune there is sweetness. It was quite a novelty in our strong family to have someone to wait on, and I believe the boys and the twins were delighted beyond telling in carrying my footstool or fetching a shawl or pillow for me, or, when I went with them on their expeditions, carrying a little bundle of rugs and wraps with which I should be made comfortable when we sat down to picnic among the harebells, or in a sunny hay-field sloping to the river.

I think it was a comfort to Aline to have me to distract her mind when Pierce went away. Once, after a long time, I said to her that I was sorry for the escapade which had ended so disastrously.

"Poor little Hilda!" she said. "You have had to pay heavily for a bit of childish folly;" and she stroked my hair in her exquisite way.

Yet I think that if all had ended well that day Aline would have been very angry with us, for she is so proud; and lying quietly so long, I seemed to have grown up suddenly, so that I understood how she might wince under the incidents that had seemed glorious fun to us younger ones.

As she sat beside me another day, feeding me with little bits of a peach, I asked her a question which had been in my mind.

"Aline," I said, "where does all this come from—the peaches and grapes, and game and wine? And how did you pay for the Dublin doctor for me?"

She bent down and kissed me again.

"I sold the collet," she said quietly.

"Sir Rupert's collet!" I almost shrieked. "But it was your own—the one beautiful thing you had! Grandmother left it to you herself."

"I had so much more right to part with it," she said, looking at the fruit she was peeling, not at me.

"Why didn't you sell some of the other jewels?" I asked, almost indignantly.

"Family jewels, dear, which must remain Brandon property. They are for Pierce's wife some day. Besides, I didn't care for the collet. That man's gift couldn't be of good omen."

After that I said nothing more, though I cried with sheer love and gratitude, when Aline had left me, to think I had such a sister.

During my illness I had often thought of the gentleman who had been so kind to me that day. When I was at last out-of-doors and able to sit in the rose-garden near Aline, I asked Hugh, who was sitting by me mending his fishing-tackle:

"Do you know, Hugh, what regiment is quartered in Annagassan Barracks just now?"

"No. What do you want to know for?" looking up at me in amazement. "You don't know anyone there."

"Well, I think the gentleman who was so kind the day I got hurt was probably an officer there."

"Oh, is that it? Well, if he was, he's gone, for there is a new regiment just come in. The other's gone to India. Say, Hilda, weren't we duffers not to have asked him to call? I thought it was pretty queer of us, but it wasn't my place, you know."

"We were rather duffers," said I.

"I expect he'd have been glad. He looked a right good sort, and a gentleman. I could have put him up to a lot of things, and Donald and I want some male friends. Of course you girls are all right, but a man wants men," said Hugh, wisely.

"Well," said I with a little sigh, "it's no use talking now. I don't suppose he'll ever come back again."

"I should jolly well think not. I wish I had his chance. Why didn't old Desmond take a fancy to me instead of to Pierce?"

"Maybe he will," said I consolingly. "Some day when he has established Pierce he will send for you."

Somehow after that, when I began to write stories out of my head, the hero always was brown-faced and gray-eyed. He had always a ripple of close-cut brown hair, and a humorous mouth, and such a kind expression, when anyone was in trouble. He must have grown rather monotonous to Esther, my only audience, who will listen entranced for hours while I read my effusions.

She is a most inspiriting audience. She reads her own romance into everything, and to see her flushed cheeks and wet, eager eyes she might be listening to Romeo and Juliet rather than to my poor little tales. It is the worst of Esther, that she has so little discrimination. Give her a love-story, and she doesn't mind whether the scene is Kerry or Mantua, the writer Hilda Brandon or William Shakespeare. "Oh, it is lovely!" she cries all the same, and thirsting for more. If Esther ever falls in love may I be there to see!

Still she found out my hero.

"Why, Hilda," she said one day, "Geoffrey Strafford is exactly like the young officer who helped you after Annagassan Races; and so was Hilton Beresford and Jack Vandaleur, and ever so many more."

"You think so?"—with exaggerated surprise. "You must only fancy it, for if there is anything I pride myself on it is the originality of my characters; and I am sure those three you mention are not a bit alike."

"Perhaps not," she said with a little puzzled line between her brows. "Yet I thought they all looked alike. He was quite nice enough for a hero anyway. You remember him, Hilda?"

"Yes," said I disingenuously; "but you don't remember very clearly things that happened when you were in such suffering, you know."

"Of course not, you poor darling! I don't suppose you really saw him a bit. Still your heroes are very like him."

After this I tried a course of fair heroes, but somehow I didn't succeed with them so well. That is the worst of having such limited experience as we have. I can't get my own brothers to stand for their portraits, and outside them I know only Dr. Devine and Mr. Benson, and the people in the village, and none of those are at all heroic.