x^u
 
 THE PIONEER SERIES. 
 
 Across an 
 
 Ulster Bog 
 
 London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN,
 
 Across an Ulster Bog
 
 ftbe pioneer Series. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 35. net ; Ornamental 
 Wrapper, as. 6d. net. 
 
 JOANNA TRAILL, SPINSTER. By ANNIE 
 
 E. HOLDSWORTH. 
 
 GEORGE MANDEVILLE'S HUSBAND. 
 
 By C. E. RAIMOND. 
 THE WINGS OF ICARUS. By LAURENCE 
 
 ALMA TADEMA. 
 AN ALTAR OF EARTH. By THYMOL 
 
 MONK. 
 THE GREEN CARNATION. By ROBERT S. 
 
 HlCHENS. 
 
 A STREET IN SUBURBIA. By EDWIN W. 
 
 PlJGH. 
 
 THE NEW MOON. By C. E. RAIMOND. 
 MILLY'S STORY (The New Moon). By 
 
 Mrs. M. CRACKANTHORPE. 
 MRS. MUSGRAVE AND HER HUSBAND. 
 
 By RICHARD MARSH. 
 
 THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE. 
 
 By W. J. LOCKE. 
 
 THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE. By 
 
 STEPHEN CRANE. 
 
 HER OWN DEVICES. By C. G. COMPTON. 
 PAPIER MACHE. By CHARLES ALLEN. 
 THE NEW VIRTUE. By Mrs. OSCAR 
 
 BERINGER. 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG. By M. 
 
 HAMILTON. 
 
 ** Other Volumes are in preparation, and will 
 be issued at short intervals. 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN.
 
 Across an Ulster Bog 
 
 By 
 
 M. Hamilton 
 
 Author of 
 ' A Self-Denying Ordinance," etc. 
 
 London 
 
 William Heinemann 
 1896
 
 All rights reserved
 
 Across an Ulster Bog 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE rain was falling with a soft, persistent sound. 
 
 When Ellen went to the door to look out for 
 her father, she could distinguish little save a 
 brown blur of bog-land, with a grey, misty back- 
 ground. The dark pools of turf-water were full 
 to overflowing, and the dripping rushes beside 
 them bent and clung together; the cotton-grass, 
 with all its fresh whiteness gone, was beaten 
 down into the heather in pitiable, soiled masses. 
 Near the lake, a straggling row of poplars stood 
 out with ghostly indistinctness. 
 
 A sense of utter isolation weighed upon Ellen ; 
 the rain seemed to shut her out from human 
 sight or sound, a solitary human creature. She 
 knew that if the mist lifted she would be able to 
 see the smoke from half-a-dozen chimneys across 
 the bog, and as many distant groups coming back 
 from their work along the damp road ; but the 
 knowledge only gave a background of relief to 
 the strange, unreal feeling of aloneness. 
 
 She held the door open, that her father might 
 see the light of the fire as he came across the 
 bog. A few drops of rain drifted in and touched 
 
 20G1045
 
 2 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 her hair, and she drew back a little farther into 
 the shelter of the cottage. 
 
 Her work for the day was not very heavy, and 
 she had finished it long ago. She had brought 
 in both the goats, after her usual difficulties with 
 the grey one, which was no respecter of persons, 
 and .butted at Ellen as readily as at any one else ; 
 she had fed the chickens on the potatoes left over 
 after dinner, and brushed up the earth floor in 
 the kitchen to leave no three-cornered marks of 
 their wet little feet. Then, just after the rain 
 had come on, she had made up a bright fire, put 
 the kettle on to boil, and got everything ready for 
 her father's tea. 
 
 Most of the live creatures had gone to bed 
 early, in disgust with the weather. The old 
 mother pig was still out for an airing ; she was 
 of an obstinate disposition, and did not allow 
 her regular afternoon walk on the midden to 
 be lightly interfered with. But her temper was 
 ruffled, and she stopped to quarrel viciously with 
 a couple of dissipated-looking chickens over a 
 remnant of potato. 
 
 Ellen interfered and drove her back to her 
 children, grunting ill-humouredly. 
 
 Inside the house a brown puppy and a couple 
 of kittens were having it all to themselves, and 
 were squabbling in a warm corner with small 
 yelps and growls. The father's seat was ready 
 for him a wooden chair drawn in closely to the 
 fire, where a brown tea-pot was warming in the 
 ashes. 
 
 When Ellen caught sight of him, a shadowy 
 figure drawing out of the mist, she went in to 
 get his thick delf cup and saucer and little jug 
 of goat's milk from the dresser.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 3 
 
 Lindsay came in heavily, leaving a little pool 
 behind him with every step. He was a tall man, 
 and would have been taller but for a decided stoop 
 of his shoulders. He had merry blue eyes, like 
 his daughter's, in a face which would otherwise 
 have been stern, with large features and high 
 cheek-bones. 
 
 He drew a stool to the fire and began to un- 
 lace his wet boots. 
 
 "I'll hold you're ready for your tea, da," said 
 Ellen ; " it's a saft evening." 
 
 She had a pretty voice, with less than the 
 usual tendency of her class to speak too loud, 
 and a quick, gentle way of moving, which was 
 peculiarly her own. 
 
 " Ay ; it's terrible coorse," Lindsay said. 
 
 He was not a man of many words. He shook 
 the rain from his coat, and warmed his hands 
 over the fire in silence. 
 
 Ellen knelt down on the hearth and put on 
 some more turf, with the puppy sprawling over 
 her dress and biting at her bare feet, in imminent 
 danger of getting burned. When it jumped up 
 and caught her hair, she pushed it away and 
 laughed. 
 
 " Quit, will you ! Suchan a dog ! It would 
 take one to have nothing to do but to mind him. 
 I have washed a bucketful of spuds for the dinner 
 to-morrow, da. Would you like one to your 
 tea ? " 
 
 Lindsay shook his head. " I'll do rightly. Did 
 you mind about changing the goat's straw in the 
 byre ? " 
 
 " Sure it's not much I forget. Is it, now ? " 
 
 Lindsay kicked off his boots and put his feet 
 to the fire with a sigh of satisfaction.
 
 4 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 "We had to give over work a bit early," he 
 said. " It's as well the rain held off so long, or 
 it's a quare lint-pulling they'd have had at Daw- 
 son's. What kep' you from going up, daughter ? 
 You'll miss all the dancing and sport." 
 
 " I thought I would as lieve stop at home when 
 it come to the time," said Ellen in a low voice. 
 She knew that her father would be surprised. 
 Dawson's lint-pulling was something looked for- 
 ward to all through the year, next to, even if a long 
 way after, the I2th of July. Last year she had 
 talked about it for weeks before and months 
 after. 
 
 " Why, what ails you, Ellen ? " he said, as she 
 knew he would say. " You're not overly fond of 
 setting at home when there's sport going. I had 
 a sight of them in the field, and there's fifty if 
 there's one. They say there's foreigners from 
 across the lake, and a wheen of boys out of 
 Sloughan. I'm not willing for you to miss it. 
 Clane yourself up, and I'll take you over when 
 I've done my tea. We'll be there by six o'clock 
 clever, and it's not as if Eccles and Wully weren't 
 there to fetch you home." 
 
 " You're just going to set still and dry your- 
 self," said Ellen, with a forced laugh. " I've no 
 mind to go, and I wouldn't like to go for the 
 dancin'.when I'd worked none. And forby that, 
 I've a sore head. Will I get your pipe ? " 
 
 Lindsay said no more. Perhaps, being human, 
 and exceedingly wet and reasonably tired, he was 
 not particularly anxious to go out again. 
 
 Ellen brought him his pipe, and drew in a stool 
 to the fire for herself. She sat with her elbows 
 on her knees, watching the light flame with 
 troubled eyes. She had something to say to her
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 5 
 
 father, but she waited to say it till the dusk had 
 drawn, so that he should not see her face. 
 
 A long silence fell between them. The rain 
 drifted against the window; the clock ticked; some 
 burnt-out turf fell together with a soft noise. 
 Lindsay scarcely moved, except to knock the ashes 
 out of his pipe, and the kittens had crawled into 
 Ellen's lap and fallen asleep. Only the puppy 
 was restless, and finding himself unnoticed, pro- 
 ceeded to amuse himself after his own fashion. 
 
 With much fuss and effort he dragged the 
 cushion of a rough wooden arm-chair into the 
 middle of the kitchen, and collected things from 
 all parts of the room to put on the top an apron 
 of Ellen's, a long feather dropped by one of the 
 hens, an old hat of Lindsay's, and some odd bits 
 of newspaper. He proceeded with little runs and 
 guilty pauses, marvelling at his impunity, and 
 when he could find nothing more he collapsed into 
 a fat, brown heap on the floor, panting and worn- 
 out with his exertions. 
 
 Very gradually the tall, delf-filled dresser grew 
 to a dim blur, and the blue check curtains of the 
 bed which filled one corner became vague. 
 
 Ellen waited till the geraniums in the window 
 were nothing but dark blots. Then she spoke, 
 breaking the silence with an uncomfortable 
 abruptness. 
 
 "Father, I've been wanting to ask you about 
 letting me go to service." 
 
 Her father changed his position with a start 
 and let his pipe drop. Her words came to him 
 as a complete surprise. Six months ago there had 
 been some question of sending her to Australia to 
 her sisters, but he had entirely opposed it, and 
 had hoped it was forgotten. Ellen was only six-
 
 6 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 teen, and she was more to him than all his other 
 children put together. 
 
 He did not answer for a moment or two; he 
 stooped with great deliberation to pick up his 
 pipe, and drew several long whiffs. Then he 
 looked across at his daughter ; her head was bent, 
 and he could only distinguish the thick plait of 
 fair hair which lay down her back, and on which 
 the firelight shone. 
 
 " What's been putting that in your head ? " he 
 said roughly. 
 
 " I've been thinking," said Ellen, with a little 
 hurry in her voice, " that when Eccles marries 
 and if all the sough's true, it won't be long first 
 when Eccles marries, if he brings her here 
 there'll be naught for two of us to do I'd just be 
 lossing myself. And what's the weaving now ? 
 not worth keeping me at home to be winding 
 bobbins for you. Mrs. Baring would likely find 
 me a place." 
 
 Ellen spoke rather breathlessly ; she had con- 
 sidered over and over again what she must say, 
 and the words came like a lesson. 
 
 " I thought you were content enough here," 
 Lindsay said. " Sure I've heard you say time 
 and again that you wouldn't take any money and 
 live anywhere else." 
 
 Ellen plaited her apron with her fingers, and 
 kept her face turned away. 
 
 " But when Eccles marries there'll be naught 
 for me to do." 
 
 " Sure, since the time Eccles was that height, 
 he's always been after some girl or other, and 
 never the same two weeks following other. And 
 if he was married there's no call for him to bring 
 her here. You're better at home, daughter."
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 7 
 
 Ellen gave a long sigh. 
 
 " But if you're set on it and there was a place 
 near hand. But I wouldn't let you go for the 
 next year or two, till you are come to your strength. 
 And I'd be loath enough to part wi' you then, 
 while I'm fit to keep you at home." 
 
 Ellen made no answer. Sheltered by the dusk, 
 she sat looking straight before her with unseeing 
 eyes. 
 
 There was nothing more to be said ; her father's 
 words were entirely reasonable.
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 AN old man and an old woman sat together over 
 a turf fire. 
 
 The old man had drawn his wooden stool so 
 closely to the warmth that a thick pile of ashes 
 had gathered round it ; he spread his hands over 
 the flame, and looked into it with vacant eyes and 
 down-dropped jaw. 
 
 But the old woman had all her senses about 
 her ; her scanty grey hair was pulled back from 
 her face and twisted into a tight knot at the back 
 of her head ; she was thin and bent, with sharp 
 features and stern eyes. From the plates on the 
 wooden dresser, which absolutely shone, to the 
 earth floor, which showed in damp patches where 
 it had been carefully levelled the day before, the 
 cottage bore testimony to her active fingers. The 
 old man could do nothing ; once he had worked 
 the loom which stood in the kitchen, filling it and 
 leaving little but a passage; now he could not 
 even be trusted to watch the bread and turn it 
 at the right moments. 
 
 i There was a batch of round soda-cakes baking 
 over the fire now on a flat piece of iron which 
 hung from the chimney by a long hook. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney watched them while she 
 stitched at an old coat, and now and then paused 
 to lift and turn them. 
 
 Windows and doors were hermetically closed
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG g 
 
 the Mawhinneys had no undue partiality for fresh 
 air, or even for sunshine. 
 
 The old woman looked up sharply when the 
 half door swung open, bringing a rush of light 
 into the cottage, and giving a glimpse of the lake, 
 where it lay just below, glittering in the morning 
 sun. 
 
 A very old woman stood in the doorway, a very 
 dirty old woman, clothed in innumerable garments, 
 which were all ragged, and which, in the course 
 of unwashed years and endurance of all weathers, 
 had faded to a uniform brownish tint. It was as 
 if, on the wearing out of each article of attire, she 
 had placed another on the top of it, till she had 
 grown to be little but a mass of clothes. 
 
 It was not on record that Mary Ann Brennan 
 had ever been known to take off a garment, even 
 temporarily, much less to cast it away. 
 
 She was a very small old woman, and bent 
 nearly double ; there was little to be seen over 
 the half door except a wrinkled, cheerful old face, 
 with very bright twinkling eyes, surmounted by a 
 succession of caps and bonnets, which had grown 
 to a considerable height. 
 
 " The tap of the morning to you," said the old 
 woman cheerfully. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney greeted her with sufficient 
 cordiality. As a rule Mary Ann received a 
 friendly welcome wherever she went ; she brought 
 with her the news of the county, and she was 
 always cheerful, with a word for everybody. 
 
 "Come in and rest yourself; but pull to the 
 door after you, for I want to keep the chickens 
 off the floor till it's dried." 
 
 " And indeed and it's fine drying weather the 
 day. I'll be glad enough of a rest, for I haven't
 
 io ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 set down since I left Wilson's up by the mill, and 
 it's a long road for an old body, and wearyin' on 
 the childer too." 
 
 Mary Ann found a stool for herself, and sat 
 down with a breath of satisfaction, displaying a 
 good deal of wrinkled bare leg, which the ragged 
 ends of her petticoats failed to cover. Behind 
 her half-a-dozen small dogs tumbled themselves 
 into the cottage, and formed themselves into a 
 decorous row by the fire. 
 
 Mary Ann distributed a few light taps and 
 reproofs. 
 
 "Now, weans, you must be quite, and not be 
 troubliu' the good woman, if she lets you set by 
 the fire. Whisht, Charlie, not a word out of you ! 
 How's himself the day, Mrs. Mawhinney ? " 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney had drawn her skirts well out 
 of reach of the dogs. She did not like dogs, 
 though, like everybody else, she tolerated those 
 of Mary Ann. 
 
 " Well, he just doiters about that's all he's fit 
 for. The doctor has very bad behopes he'll put 
 over the winter. I'll be sorry enough when it's 
 the Lord's will to take him, but it's mortial incon- 
 venient to be always looking after him." 
 
 The old man, crouched up in his corner, showed 
 no sign of understanding ; he was muttering and 
 laughing to himself. 
 
 "Well, well ! He's failed since I was in last," 
 said Mary Ann, shaking her head sympathetically. 
 "Quit, will you, Charlie; you're annoying the 
 little ones." 
 
 Charlie was the least obedient of the dogs ; he 
 jumped against his mistress's knee, pulling aside 
 her rags, from which came the whining of very 
 young puppies.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG n 
 
 " And it's the sough of the country that you're 
 going to have a weddin' over in these parts." 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney shook her head doubtfully. 
 
 " Ay, if Eccles Lindsay holds to the same 
 mind. But I wouldn't trust him ; he'll be taking 
 up with some one else before the day. As for 
 myself, I don't hold with marrying on foreigners ; 
 there's no being up to what outlandish ways they 
 may bring with them." 
 
 "You'll not be thinking that when you see 
 Nancy Jane. She's a fine swaddy, a real good 
 wee worker, and not a lazy bone in her body. 
 And then with a fortune. I think Eccles hasn't 
 done that ill for himself. And it'll be a fine 
 weddin'; there'll be two cars, and her sister to 
 best maid." 
 
 " Be that as it may, it's in my mind that Eccles 
 would have done better to suit himself with some 
 decent wee girl hereabout, like his father before 
 him. What call has he with foreigners from 
 acrost the lake ? " said Mrs. Mawhinney tren- 
 chantly. She proceeded to explain that she did 
 not hold with travelling, and considered it an 
 insult to the Lord to imply, as Eccles had done, 
 that there was nobody good enough to marry 
 without setting forth into unknown regions, eight 
 or ten miles away. 
 
 Mary Ann Brennan listened, nodding her head, 
 with remarks interpolated when it seemed neces- 
 sary. " It's likely you're right." " I wouldn't say 
 but that that's the way to look at it." "Well, 
 well ! it be to be like that." 
 
 The old man stretched his hands to a sudden 
 bright jet of flame that came leaping from the 
 turf, and laughed to himself. It was said that he 
 had been a very stern man in his middle-age ;
 
 12 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 stiff m a bargain, stiffer even than his wife in 
 what he considered his religious duties ; but now 
 the only thing that roused him to interest was a 
 pipe or a cup of tea. On days when he could not 
 get out and potter round he would ask for his 
 tea incessantly, and cry if it was delayed. 
 
 There was something very cheerless about the 
 three old people sitting there in the semi-darkness, 
 with the light from two tiny windows almost 
 blotted out by the huge loom. 
 
 Ellen Lindsay came in with a flash of youth 
 and sunshine. 
 
 She was a pretty girl, with dark blue eyes and 
 brown cheeks and fair hair, which gleamed when 
 the sun shone on it. Ellen was almost a child 
 still ; she had not done growing, arid she was half 
 developed; but she was not awkward, and this 
 was the most noticeable thing about her. There 
 were plenty of pretty girls about Ballyturbet, but 
 none who could move and hold themselves like 
 Ellen. 
 
 She came in quietly, closing the door behind 
 her in response to her grandmother's querulous 
 commands, and with a nod to the old beggar- 
 woman, knelt down and began to play with the 
 dogs. 
 
 Her grandmother spoke to her sharply. Ellen 
 was not a favourite of hers. 
 
 " What's come of you these last days, daugh- 
 ter ? You haven't been down this length since 
 Saturday." 
 
 " I'm very throng. My father's out till daily - 
 goin', and it's all on me. I've the pigs' food to get, 
 and that keeps me busy," said Ellen in her soft, 
 pleasant voice. 
 
 " And I'll hold you you were at the lint-pulling
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 13 
 
 at Dawson's yesterday ? " said Mary Ann ; " and a 
 terrible coorse evening they got for it." 
 
 "Ay, there's little fear of Ellen's being away 
 when there was any dancin' or foolishness going-. 
 And I don't doubt your da was wakened up at all 
 hours with you gettin' home. Well, it seems to 
 be the way with the girls now to be always run- 
 ning ; but when your mother was like you, I mind 
 many's the month she wasn't across the door-step 
 from week-end to week-end, barring to church 
 and to the Sabbath-school. And now it's just 
 dancing and worldly amusement you're thinking 
 off, when a prayer-meeting would fit you better." 
 
 Ellen gave the faintest movement of impatience. 
 
 " I wasn't at Dawson's at all," she said. Some- 
 how her grandmother's harsh, monotonous voice 
 jarred on her this morning, but it was scarcely 
 worth the trouble of justifying herself; Mrs. 
 Mawhinney was certainly silenced, but only for 
 a moment. 
 
 As for Mary Ann Brennan, she threw up her 
 wrinkled hands in amazement. 
 
 " Well, well ! how's that ? I thought you were 
 so great with Dawson's ones ? But there's aye a 
 good reason when a girl stays away from a bit of 
 sport like thon ; maybe there's somebody who 
 wasn't to be there " 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney interrupted ruthlessly. 
 
 " There's foolishness enough in the wean's head 
 without your putting more there, Mary Ann ; so 
 just hold your whisht. For one wasteful divarsion 
 she's stayed from there's many she's been to. If 
 she was mine it's a different girl she'd be ; no 
 foolishness and nonsense then. Why, look at her 
 now, running out of the house at this hour, and 
 I'll be bound it isn't half tidied up. But there !
 
 H ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 her father just spoils her, and she can come round 
 him any road she likes." 
 
 "It's not easy to keep the place clean," said 
 Ellen in a resolutely cheerful voice, " with the 
 sow and the little ones in and out, do what you 
 like ; and there's no keeping the chickens off the 
 fiure unless the door is aye shut." 
 
 "And you can't expect the house to be minded 
 if you're always running. If you were half as 
 ready to spare the time for the Lord's service 
 but there ! it was only the day I was speaking to 
 Mr. Duffin about your missing church and Sab- 
 bath-school the twa-three Sundays, and I wasn't 
 going to tell a lie, and says I, ' To the best of my 
 belief, your reverence, it's nought but idle-set.' " 
 
 The colour flamed suddenly into Ellen's cheeks. 
 She pushed back her stool from the fire, and got 
 up abruptly, to the great discomfort of a couple 
 of the little dogs which had established them- 
 selves comfortably on her knee. For a moment 
 she thought of walking out of the cottage ; then 
 recalling with an effort her half-indifferent tolera- 
 tion for these accustomed reproofs, she went over 
 to the corner of the dresser which was consecrated 
 to her grandfather's pipe. Him, at least, she could 
 easily make happy. 
 
 " My da sent you over a grain of tobacco, 
 grandpa," she said. 
 
 The old man was eager and alert at once. 
 Ellen made her way to him with some difficulty, 
 as passage between her grandmother's seat and 
 the loom was decidedly scanty ; she knelt down 
 beside him and began to fill his pipe, with the 
 colour slowly dying out of her face. 
 
 Her grandmother, whose attention had been for 
 the moment engrossed with taking the soda-scones
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 15 
 
 off the fire and getting " a piece " ready for Mary 
 Ann, woke up to what she was doing, and asked 
 her sharply if she hadn't more sense than to give 
 her grandfather his pipe when the tea was down 
 to wet. The justice of the reproof was undoubted, 
 and Ellen acknowledged it with her usual good- 
 humour. She was very ready to be useful, and 
 jumped up at once to fetch four substantial cups 
 from the dresser ; the old man, who had a ten- 
 dency to lay his " piece " on his knees butter side 
 downwards, was also supplied with a plate, re- 
 joicing in the picture of a little girl skipping in 
 front of what was apparently a church tower in 
 odd perspective ; there was " A Present from 
 Portnar " written underneath, and certainly, 
 though in an artistic point of view the plate 
 might leave something to be desired, it had been 
 a constant source of satisfaction ever since 
 Ellen had brought it back from a temperance 
 excursion. 
 
 Mary Ann, after a tender inquiry for Ellen's 
 puppy, which had been an offering from her, had 
 floated off to talk of Eccles' marriage. As she 
 talked she munched away contentedly at her 
 piece of soda-bread, share and share about with 
 the dogs, who were well accustomed to meals of 
 bread soaked in tea. The mother of the three 
 little puppies that travelled in Mary Ann's apron 
 was engaged in her maternal duties, and had her 
 luncheon laid aside for her, bit by bit. She 
 watched her mistress with sharp black eyes 
 which followed every morsel. 
 
 Mary Ann wanted to know all about Eccles' 
 marriage when it was to be; was he going to 
 bring her home ? was Ellen to have a new dress 
 for the occasion ? It gave her an opening for
 
 1 6 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 sundry jokes of the kind she found her audience 
 generally appreciated. 
 
 " ' One wedden brings another ' I don't doubt 
 you've heard tell of that, Ellen ? We'll be hearin' 
 of you with a strapping boy of your own the 
 next. It's just wonderful how a wedden sets 
 folk thinkin'. Give me your cup, dear, till I 
 look in the tay-leaves, and see if I can't promise 
 you a handsome husband." 
 
 Mary Ann stretched out her hand, but Ellen 
 drew away her cup with a hasty movement. 
 
 " It's all havers," she said. 
 
 " Not as much havers as you thjnk, maybe. 
 You wouldn't believe that I can see more than 
 you fancy about the past and the future, and 
 maybe name him you're thinking about now." 
 
 With a quick turn of her wrist Ellen flung the 
 tea-leaves from her cup into the fire. She laughed 
 uncertainly. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney had more or less dropped out 
 of the conversation ; she was very scornful of 
 fortune-reading and " such-like foolishness," and 
 she was kept busy enough drinking her own tea, 
 and watching that the old man did not choke 
 over his. 
 
 But just as Mary Ann was beginning to 
 chuckle at Ellen's evident dread of her powers, 
 the grandmother looked up with a sharp ex- 
 clamation. 
 
 " Who's that going by the window ? One of 
 O'Neil's ones, I'll be bound. Heth ! it's a quare 
 thing a body can't have the way between their 
 door and their midden to themselves ! But it's 
 like them Catholics they're that crookit and 
 onraisonable. But, come by our door to the well 
 they shall not "
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 17 
 
 " Sure, Mrs. Mawhinney, it's the minister," said 
 Mary Ann. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney was on her feet in a moment. 
 
 " Sure, then, he'll be coming in. Ellen, take the 
 tea-things ben, and bring a chair from the room. 
 Where was it I laid that clean apron ? Sit up, 
 you ould gomerkal" to her husband "and 
 give over licking your fingers. Ellen " in an 
 undertone " give Mary Ann a lock of meal ; 
 she'll not go till she gets it. There's his reverence 
 knocking open the door till him, wean what 
 ails you ? " 
 
 But Mrs. Mawhinney had to open the door 
 herself ; Ellen made no movement to obey her 
 gave no sign, indeed, that she heard. 
 
 The grandmother was one of the few left of 
 the older generation who had been brought up to 
 greet the " quality " with a curtsey. She dropped 
 her curtsey now, and held out a hand of warm 
 welcome, resolutely ignoring Mary Ann's attempts 
 at greeting, which in the presence of her superiors 
 she considered impertinent. 
 
 " Your reverence is kindly welcome. Will you 
 come forrard to the fire and lain down. Ellen, 
 did you hear me telling you to bring his reverence 
 a chair from the room ? You ould fool " to her 
 husband " where are your manners ? Kise up 
 when you see his reverence. You'll excuse him, 
 Mr. Duffin ; he's a poor foolish old body, and 
 doesn't rightly understand." 
 
 The old man laughed so heartily at this descrip- 
 tion of himself that he had to be picked out of 
 .the fire and rearranged on his stool before con- 
 versation could proceed. 
 
 Mr. Duffin seated himself awkwardly, with a 
 few half-muttered words. He was a short, broad-
 
 18 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 set young man, with a coarse, good-looking face, 
 and black hair and a black moustache, which was 
 long and unkempt, and stood away from his lips. 
 When he spoke he showed a row of small cruel 
 teeth ; his nose was a good one, but was indented 
 with pimples, and his narrow, deep-set eyes were 
 rather too close together. He wore his hair long, 
 and plastered with oil, and was obviously none too 
 careful about the brushing of his coat and the 
 changing of his linen. 
 
 With it all the man was, in his way, handsome, 
 and in the eyes of his parishioners, who admired 
 black hair and red cheeks, he was " beautiful." 
 That he was not a gentleman they knew per- 
 fectly well, and he had an uncomfortable suspicion 
 that they knew it. But he was a clergyman, and 
 as such deserving of all respect and attention. 
 
 He had come into the cottage with a suggestion 
 of hurry in his manner, and a want of ease which 
 was habitual in him; after one quick, almost 
 furtive glance round, he sat with his eyes cast 
 down, his head a little bent forward, and his 
 broad, coarse hands, with their dirty nails, rest- 
 ing on his knees. 
 
 Old Mary Ann had had her portion of meal 
 poured into her sack, and understood it as a signal 
 to go. She collected her little puppies, shaking 
 them back into their travelling-bag, from which 
 their bright eyes gleamed out among her rags, 
 and summoned the troublesome Charlie, who had 
 gone off round the kitchen on an expedition of 
 his own. 
 
 " May Heaven's blessings light on your rever- 
 ence," she began as she moved towards the door. 
 " It's a sight for sore eyes to see you, and you 
 getting so stout isn't that so, Mrs. Mawhinney ?
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG ig 
 
 I'm thinking your reverence wouldn't have the 
 price of a grain of tea about you ? " 
 
 " Now, Mary Ann, you mustn't be troubling 
 his reverence." 
 
 "Well, I'll be giving him a call one of these 
 days," Mary Ann assented cheerfully. "Long 
 life to your reverence, and may you soon bring 
 home a mistress. Come, childer, we must be 
 getting on. I suppose your reverence wouldn't 
 like to hear the childer cheer for King William 
 God bless him ! or give you their opeenion of 
 the Pope ? " 
 
 " That'll do, Mary Ann," said the unyielding 
 Mrs. Mawhinney. 
 
 " Well, it'll be for another day. Good evening 
 to you, Mrs. Mawhinney, and thank you kindly. 
 May the blessings " 
 
 Mary Ann got herself out of the house to a 
 dropping fire of blessings, and tottered away 
 down the road, with her " childer " keeping close 
 to her bare legs. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney entered into voluble expla- 
 nation. There was a complaining whine in her 
 voice, which had come there through long years 
 of taking the worst view of everything, and which 
 was too habitual to be got rid of even on the rare 
 occasions when she was not complaining. 
 
 " That's a foolish, godless old body, Mr. Duffin ; 
 it's a terrible thing to think how it will be with 
 her when the Lord takes her. She has no more 
 sense than to treat them dogs like Christians, and 
 many's the time you might see her talking away 
 to them, and singing light songs to them. And 
 never a word of her latter end, which would be 
 more fitting an old woman like her. Times and 
 again I tell our Ellen it should be a warning to
 
 20 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 her she's overly fond of treats and pleasurings. 
 Ellen, rise up, daughter, and come and speak to 
 his reverence why, where's the wean gone ? " 
 
 Ellen was not in the cottage ; her grandmother 
 had not seen her go, and marvelled how she could 
 have slipped away so quietly. Mr. Duffin did not 
 think it necessary to state that he had been more 
 observant. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney apologised profusely for her 
 granddaughter's want of manners. 
 
 " You will excuse her, your reverence ? she's 
 that backward and petted, and maybe she thinks 
 shame you should see her with her bare feet. 
 Her father can't make enough of her ; you see, 
 she favours the mother, and he's brought her up 
 from a baby. The mother died when she was 
 born. And Eccles and Willy are wild boys; 
 Eccles is always after some petticoat or other, 
 and Wully's very crabbit when the drink's in 
 him." 
 
 The old man had finished his pipe, and after a 
 futile attempt to fall into the fire, had taken up 
 his tea-cup, and was amusing himself by licking 
 up the few drops that remained with a smacking 
 noise of satisfaction. His wife interrupted herself 
 to take away the cup and reprove him sharply. 
 
 " Have done now ! Quit, will you ? and his 
 reverence talking to me. You'll excuse his 
 making so free ? I was telling you about Ellen. 
 Her head is full of foolishness, and I blame it on 
 the reading ; she still has her head in some silly 
 story-book, but she won't be said by me. When 
 I was like her it was very different. If we wanted . 
 to read, the one book was good enough for us ; 
 we just took down the Bible and read what was 
 necessary for us."
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 21 
 
 Mr. Duffin, finding she paused, gave the ex- 
 pected murmur of approbation ; Mrs. Mawhinney's 
 opinions on any subject were supremely indifferent 
 to him. 
 
 " And for me, I may say from the time I could 
 read, there's not a day in my life I've missed my 
 chapter, the Lord be thanked. There's not one 
 chapter in the good book that I have not read over 
 times and again to my pleasure and profit. And 
 it was the same with our wee Annie you'll mind 
 I showed you the picture she sent us of herself 
 out of America ? " 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney's remarks had wandered to a 
 subject in which her guest took not the smallest 
 interest ; he had seen so many photographs " out 
 of America " of girls with lace frills round their 
 necks and silver lockets. He meditated an excuse 
 for departure. 
 
 " Annie, now, would sit with her grandfather 
 and me till I had to bid her go out, and there was 
 hardly a hymn in the hymn-book she didn't know, 
 and she could read us a chapter so beautiful ! 
 As for church if you'd took and broken Annie's 
 two legs she'd have got to church somehow ! She 
 was that petted on me and a beautiful scholar 
 I'd just like to show your reverence a wheen of 
 her copies I have up the room " 
 
 Mr. Duffin rose precipitately. He had had 
 more than enough of Mrs. Mawhinney, and he had 
 not walked out to the lake, after long indecision^ 
 to talk to her. He disliked old women exceed- 
 ingly, and they were in undue proportion 'among 
 his parishioners. 
 
 "Some other evening," he said blandly, "I'll 
 be calling in again passing " 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney said he was in a great hurry ;
 
 22 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 she would have considered it due to politeness to 
 say this however long his visit had been. She 
 escorted him to the door, still talking volubly. 
 
 " It's been overly kind of your reverence calling 
 in again so soon, and you are most kindly welcome. 
 It's lonesome enough down here, and I am not 
 one that cares to kaly with everybody. And 
 what's that poor old man but a care and a trouble ? 
 Then, you see, there's none of our own sort round 
 here. Not but what for the most part they're 
 agreeable enough, but you can't trust a Catholic ; 
 you never know when they'll turn on you. There's 
 many a story I could tell you but I see your 
 reverence is pressed for time." 
 
 Mr. Duffin fiddled impatiently with his stick ; 
 he could not get his hand away from the old 
 woman, who held it and patted it approvingly. 
 
 "It often comes as a trouble to me to think 
 how it would have been if the battle of the Boyne 
 had gone otherwise than as the Lord allowed it 
 should," said Mrs. Mawhinney meditatively, " for 
 true it is He does sometimes allow the devil's ones 
 their way for the punishment of His people's sins. 
 And it intrigues me to think " 
 
 A sudden rush of chickens, encouraged by the 
 open door, interrupted Mrs. Mawhinney's specu- 
 lations, and gave Mr. Duffin a chance of escape 
 of which he was not slow to avail himself. 
 
 He took his departure with more haste than 
 ceremony.
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 THE Eeverend Samuel Duffin walked straight on 
 down the lane till he was out of sight of Mrs. 
 Mawhinney as she stood by her door, and had 
 reached the road by which he had come. Then 
 he paused. 
 
 He stood in the middle of a wide-stretching 
 bog, with a narrow strip of road running through 
 it, broken down and deeply rutted by the wheels 
 of hundreds of turf -carts. Yesterday's rain had 
 turned the cart-tracks into puddles, and even 
 streams of water, between banks of velvety grey 
 mud. 
 
 The wet bog had gained a brighter brown, with 
 thick purple patches of heather and white cotton- 
 grass, still a little dishevelled and dirty, to mark 
 the soft places. Here and there were dark, still 
 pools of bog- water outlined by tall rushes. Near 
 where Mr. Duffin stood a drunken man had met 
 his death only a few weeks ago; he had been 
 found one morning with his face in the water, and 
 his legs deeply embedded in the soft brown turf 
 quite dead. 
 
 Where the bog had been entirely cut away 
 there were yellow fields of corn, and others green 
 with flax. Over to the right a lint-pulling was 
 going on. It was dinner-time, and the workers 
 had gathered in a group at one end of the field ;
 
 24 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 two of the women had bright red petticoats, and 
 white handkerchiefs tied over their heads to keep 
 off the sun. Their talk and laughter floated over 
 to Mr. Duffin where he stood, through the still air. 
 
 The smoke rose up almost straight from the 
 cottage chimneys. The Lindsays' cottage lay the 
 nearest, and was all by itself, with bog on every 
 side. The lake was almost out of sight ; just a 
 gleam of it showed behind the poplars. There 
 was sunshine on everything, making every bit of 
 colouring vivid and definite. Mr. Duffin could 
 even distinguish the green moss on the Lindsays' 
 thatched roof; in a corner near the chimney a 
 growth of half-ripened corn shone like gold. 
 
 He hesitated, looking over the bog, himself 
 an incongruous little patch of black in the middle 
 of it. 
 
 He saw Ellen Lindsay come out at the house- 
 door and gather an apronful of turf from a stack 
 in the yard. She stopped on her way to drive 
 back a brood of half-grown chickens that clus- 
 tered round her, suspecting food. 
 
 Mr. Duffin's eyes followed her. She was certain 
 to be alone; her father worked every day for a 
 farmer called M'Cance, and Eccles and Willy were 
 both hired out, and did not sleep at home. She 
 had looked very pretty half-an-hour ago, with 
 Hushed cheeks and a strange look in her blue eyes 
 which had made him vaguely uncomfortable. 
 
 He took a few uncertain steps in the direction 
 of the cottage ; as he did so he caught sight of a 
 waggonette which was coming towards him at 
 a quick trot, and he turned and came to a full 
 stop, with a sudden change of ideas. 
 
 The waggonette was followed by a dog-cart and 
 a pony-carriage, and all were full of people a
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 25 
 
 very festive party. It was a way the Barings 
 and the Lawsons had of improving the last sum- 
 mer days. Having practically only each other to 
 depend on for society, they often united and went 
 for picnics and excursions. It was the dream and 
 the ambition of Mr. Duffin's existence to be in- 
 cluded in one of these expeditions. 
 
 He took a few steps in the direction of the 
 carriage, frowning meditatively and pulling at 
 his coarse moustache. If they saw him there 
 in their way, as it were and if he made it evi- 
 dent by his manner that his time was by no 
 means filled, would it not be likely that Mrs. 
 Baring at least would ask him to join them ? He 
 went slowly towards them, subduing his pace to a 
 saunter, swinging his stick, and cutting at the 
 thistles and tufts of heather by the roadside. 
 
 Nelly Baring, who was sitting in the front of 
 the waggonette, caught sight of him first, with 
 an exclamation 
 
 " There's that awful man ! I shouldn't wonder 
 at all if he tried to insist on joining us ; he's quite 
 forward and thick-skinned enough for that." 
 
 At that moment, had she only known it, Mr. 
 Duffin was meditating a light, half-joking proffer 
 of his society. 
 
 " Perhaps we ought to have asked him," Mrs. 
 Baring said. "He certainly is very objectionable, 
 but it's a lonely life " 
 
 " It would have just spoiled it," said her daugh- 
 ter. "For my part, I don't see why the mere 
 fact of a man's having ' reverend ' before his 
 name a man you would otherwise send to the 
 kitchen " 
 
 There was a general " Hush." Nelly's voice 
 Was very loud and had well-known carrying
 
 26 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 properties, and they were quite close to Mr. 
 Duffin. 
 
 He had almost made up his mind to say some- 
 thing something that must be very light and 
 casual but at the last moment the words re- 
 mained unsaid. Perhaps his courage failed him ; 
 perhaps the time was too short, and Nelly's curt 
 nod too discouraging. 
 
 However that might be, a moment later he 
 found himself standing alone on the road, a little 
 splashed by the mud from the passing carriages. 
 Their laughter and words faded slowly, and 
 mingled with the voices of the lint-pullers. 
 
 Between them Mr. Dnffin stood, a solitary 
 figure. If Nelly Baring had seen the look on 
 his face as they passed out of sight, she might 
 have doubted his being so thick-skinned. 
 
 Samuel Duffin was the son of a farmer in the 
 South of Ireland, who had succeeded in making 
 farming pay. Samuel had been sent to a mode- 
 rately good school, where most of the boys were 
 above him in station, and where he had learnt 
 a smattering of many things, and to despise his 
 family. He had also become imbued with an 
 ambition which in such circumstances is not, 
 perhaps, uncommon to become "a gentleman." 
 
 An adoring father and mother had taught him 
 diligently to think only of himself, and to think 
 nothing beyond his power. At the same time 
 he was no fool, and he understood that there were 
 difficulties. 
 
 He set about making himself "a gentleman" 
 methodically and doggedly, sacrificing much with 
 a resolution worthy of a better cause. It was a 
 small and petty ambition a poor thing to make 
 the desire of a life, as this young man understood
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 27 
 
 the word. Still, it was the one thing which, 
 being as he was, was utterly beyond his reach 
 in every sense. Samuel Duffin would never be 
 either outwardly or inwardly as a gentleman. 
 
 But, not unnaturally, he did not realise this. 
 
 The desire grew up steadily year by year in 
 his mind, and became a resolution ; he considered 
 the matter carefully and to a great extent dis- 
 passionately perhaps as dispassionately as it was 
 possible for any one to consider a thing so per- 
 sonal. No man is prone to recognise that he is 
 irredeemably coarser, more narrow-minded, less 
 capable, than his fellows. Samuel Duffin saw 
 clearly enough the defects in his speech and 
 manner, and the disadvantages of his connec- 
 tions and surroundings, but thousands had over- 
 come worse difficulties than these. 
 
 His father and mother were well-to-do for their 
 class, but that was all. He realised certainly 
 unwillingly that it was necessary for him prac- 
 tically to separate himself from them, and from 
 their friends. 
 
 He persuaded his father .without much diffi- 
 culty to send him to Dublin, where he passed 
 with credit through the divinity school in Trinity 
 College ; he worked so well, in fact, and brought 
 with him such a good record as to character and 
 diligence, that he found no difficulty in obtaining 
 a curacy. It was a first step, and turned out to 
 be much less of an advance than Mr. Duffin had 
 hoped. His two years as a curate had proved 
 eminently satisfactory to his rector, but very 
 unsatisfactory to himself ; he had not found him- 
 self sought after by the people he wished to seek 
 him. 
 
 But he was by no means beaten or turned aside
 
 28 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 from his object ; he had given up too much, sacri- 
 ficed too much, for that. 
 
 One of his fellow -students had laughingly 
 accused him of living the life of an old woman. 
 What it cost this coarse-blooded, passionate young 
 Southern peasant so to live only he himself knew 
 the struggles with his temperament at every 
 step, the many pleasant sins which tempted him 
 almost beyond endurance. 
 
 But there was no medium for him, and he 
 knew it; the stern life to which he condemned 
 himself was his only safeguard. Without friends 
 or interest, a character to which the most cen- 
 sorious could take no objection was his only way 
 towards the object which had become almost a 
 monomania. 
 
 At the same time, as far as his light went, 
 Samuel Duffin did his duty as a clergyman ; he 
 worked hard and neglected nothing. Where the 
 line was drawn between an honest desire to do 
 what lay before him and a selfish regard for his 
 own interest he himself honestly did not know. 
 
 He had not much advanced himself as yet. 
 The better things he had hoped for on being 
 appointed to Ballyturbet living a year ago had 
 not yet come. Certainly it was a lonely place, 
 and as rector of the parish he held a position 
 which could not be ignored ; Mr. Baring and Sir 
 William Lawson, who were parochial nominators, 
 and had had most to say to his election, had 
 called, and in the summer Mr. Duffin had been 
 once or twice invited to tennis parties, but the 
 acquaintance had not grown more intimate. 
 
 Mr. Duffin had done his best ; in the seclusion 
 of the rectory he had rehearsed easy speeches 
 and dignified but pleasing manners. But when
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 29 
 
 the time came he found it impossible to look or 
 seem at ease. The Lawsons and the Barings did 
 not think about him at all unless he forced him- 
 self upon them, when they found the attempted 
 familiarity of some of his moods even more in- 
 tolerable than his occasional relapses into agonis- 
 ing embarrassment. 
 
 He might have had a cheerful life enough if he 
 had been content to associate with the farmers 
 round, but this he would not do. He was not 
 going to relinquish his object so lightly; there 
 was a dogged obstinacy about the man which 
 would not let him confess defeat even to himself. 
 
 It was quite within his power to have been 
 popular in the parish had he set the right way 
 about it. He was in many ways fitted to please 
 a Northern congregation. He believed devoutly 
 in hell and the devil, and preached about them, 
 and he hated Eoman Catholics and Presbyterians 
 with great heartiness. He was also absolutely 
 clear from any ritualistic tendencies, and had no 
 desire to progress in any way. To counterbalance 
 these advantages, he was not a gentleman, and the 
 peasants in the North of Ireland dearly love a 
 gentleman ; they were also quick enough to see 
 that he gave them only half his mind and had no 
 real liking for them ; he talked to them always as 
 a clergyman and never as a man, and was haunted 
 by a fear of letting down his dignity. 
 
 So it came about that he lived apart from all 
 classes, and the life was a terribly lonely one. 
 
 In a dim way some of these things passed 
 through his head as the carriages rolled out of 
 sight and he turned to walk towards home. 
 
 Such a dreary home as it was for one lonely 
 man! The house was a fair one, but it looked
 
 30 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 dreary and depressing, with its four square walls 
 and ill-kept avenue and steps. The church and 
 meeting-house were almost opposite, and vied 
 with each other in hideousness, and from the 
 top windows of the rectory there was a glimpse 
 of the chapel graveyard. Methodists, Plymouth 
 Brethren, and a kind of mixture of the two called 
 " dippers," carried on their seances at the other 
 end of the one straggling street, which also boasted 
 of eight public-houses. There was no lack of op- 
 portunity for quenching both spiritual and tem- 
 poral thirst in Bally turbet. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. M'Cune lived at the Manse. As 
 politics now were, Mr. M'Cune and Mr. Duffin 
 were constrained to meet frequently at the 
 Unionist Club, and at Orange and other political 
 meetings. They were ceremoniously polite to 
 each other, and united in condemnation of Eoman 
 Catholics, but in their secret hearts they hated 
 each other worse still. 
 
 A dozen years earlier the sharp class distinction 
 between Church and Presbyterian clergy had 
 made everything simple; now the jealousy was 
 of the bitterest, and cropped up in little things 
 every day. 
 
 As Mr. Duffin turned up what he called the 
 "avenue," and what an Englishman would have 
 called the " drive," to his house, he exchanged 
 a ceremonious bow with Mr. M'Cune, who was 
 coming out of the Manse. 
 
 They met unavoidably almost every day, and 
 jealously noted all each other's doings. 
 
 Mr. Duffin opened his hall-door with his latch- 
 key and went in noisily, tramping down the little 
 passage that did duty as a hall. 
 
 It was a most uninteresting little passage, with
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 31 
 
 a door to the right and left, and in front the stairs 
 and another door which led to the kitchen. There 
 were no possibilities for adornment, even had Mr. 
 Duffin been a man capable of adornment. 
 
 An old woman's head was poked out of the 
 dining-room to greet him a dishevelled head of 
 untidy hair over a queer, red old face. 
 
 She gave him a wavering smile, showing the 
 absence of teeth so common in Irishwomen of her 
 class. 
 
 " I have just been putting out the dinner for 
 your reverence," she began effusively. 
 
 He cut her short impatiently ; he was exceed- 
 ingly tired of old women, and this old woman was 
 to him particularly tiresome, because from her he 
 could not escape. 
 
 " I see you've been at the whisky again, Betty. 
 I tell you I'll get a decent lock put on the side- 
 board " 
 
 The old woman waved a deprecating hand. 
 
 " Well now, I'll insense you into the reason of 
 that, dear," she said, with unruffled amiability ; 
 " it's this terrible stuffing I have had ever since 
 the brown katies last winter. When I have a 
 wake turn I know it's not you would grudge me 
 a taste of the only thing to relieve it." 
 
 Mr. Duffin pushed roughly past her. 
 
 " You'll have to go, that's all," he said. He 
 had said it so often that the meaning had gone 
 out of the words. 
 
 Betty Pollock was a legacy left him by the 
 last rector, or at least she so considered herself, 
 and a very troublesome legacy she had proved. 
 Mr. Duffin had made several attempts to get rid 
 of her, but in vain. She had been there all her 
 life, and her mother before her, and she considered
 
 32 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 the rectory a great deal more hers than his. 
 Kectors might come and rectors might go, but 
 she went on for ever. As she told Mr. Duffin 
 once, the rectory had never been without the 
 blood of the Pollocks, and as long as she lived 
 never should be. He had in some sort given in; 
 and had tried to get girls under her to secure 
 a certainty of having his bed made and getting 
 something to eat with a fair amount of regularity ; 
 but this had not proved a success ; Betty was 
 bitterly jealous of the girls, and would not allow 
 them to do anything, and it always ended in their 
 departure in floods of tears. 
 
 He had become more or less used to Betty, but 
 it was very dreary. 
 
 Mr. Duffin was a man who liked good food and 
 comfort and cheerful faces. 
 
 The fire had gone out in the dining-room, and 
 Betty had made an erratic attempt to lay the 
 table. He knelt down on the hearth-rug and 
 tried to light the turf with benumbed fingers. 
 Betty staggered after him, and wept when she 
 was not allowed to help. When a blue flame 
 sprang up at last, he went to fetch his cold 
 mutton and forage for potatoes for himself, and 
 found her asleep in his chair when he came 
 back. 
 
 That such a man endured it without turning 
 her out of the house was a proof that Betty was 
 the one person in the world he was afraid of.
 
 CHAPTEK IV 
 
 " WOULD your reverence be wanting any 
 chickens? Wee Matty Bruce is at the door 
 with a basketful." 
 
 " No, I don't want any." 
 
 " But there are but two pair left in the yard, 
 and I'll hould you these are good ones 
 
 " I don't want any." 
 
 " But you mightn't get a chanst of such fine 
 ones again " 
 
 " I don't care if I never see a chicken again ; 
 I won't have them." 
 
 Mr. Duffin was sitting over the dining-room 
 fire with a pipe in his mouth ; he kept his back 
 turned upon Betty, and drummed impatiently 
 on his knee with a broad flat hand which was 
 not so clean as it might have been. 
 
 It was a dreary day, a day on which Betty, 
 and the fact that he could not be secure of the 
 room to himself for five consecutive minutes, 
 seemed particularly unbearable. A drizzling rain 
 was falling every now and then, enough to make 
 the prospect of an objectless walk untempting, 
 and Mr. Duffin had been dragging out the after- 
 noon dismally enough. 
 
 The room had a stale smell of ale and mutton ; 
 Betty had made several only half - successful 
 attempts to take away the dinner-things. She
 
 34 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 had left the cover of the potato-dish and Mr. 
 Duffin's plate on the sideboard, and had made no 
 attempt to remove a cloth which was none too 
 clean. What was the use, she would have said, 
 when she would only have to put it back again 
 for tea ? 
 
 Perhaps with a similar idea, she had not 
 troubled to dust the room for the last few days ; 
 when Mr. Duffin put up his hand on the mantel- 
 piece to look for matches, he brought it back 
 coated. 
 
 " Matty says that sooner than take them 
 on, she'll give you the chickens for shillin's 
 apiece " 
 
 The reappearance of Betty's smiling, dishevelled 
 head was too much for him. He walked to the 
 door, pushed her out, and slammed it hopelessly, 
 for he had long ago learned that a struggle with 
 Betty was hopeless. 
 
 When he was alone his thoughts were not too 
 pleasant. He had spent a year in this place 
 in this hole and how had he advanced himself ? 
 That morning he had come upon a selection of 
 Lawsons and Barings in eager conclave near the 
 Barings' gate, and he had not failed to see the 
 change the sudden stiffening in the group 
 as he came up. What they said and thought 
 mattered to him only because they were a means 
 towards an end, but in this way it mattered 
 very much. 
 
 It was impossible for a man to exist in the 
 society of old Betty alone. 
 
 Mr. Duffin was not imaginative, but as he sat 
 looking into the fire a face seemed to grow out of 
 the coals the face of a girl with dark blue eyes 
 and fair hair and a ready smile a face which
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 35 
 
 flushed and brightened when he was near. There 
 was one person at least to whom he was the most 
 wonderful, awe-inspiring, gracious person in the 
 world. 
 
 But 
 
 " Ould Mrs. Eooney's at the door." 
 
 He had not noticed Betty come in; now she 
 had propped herself comfortably against the side- 
 board, and was smiling upon him benevolently. 
 
 " Ould Mrs. Eooney wants to see your rever- 
 ence." 
 
 " What for ? " 
 
 " She'll be wanting help. She says she's had a 
 sore brash or she'd have been here sooner; and 
 she says she'll never be back again, for she'll not 
 see many more weeks." 
 
 Mr. Uufnn tossed Betty a penny impatiently, 
 with an intimation that he wished to see no more 
 of her ; but she was back with him in about two 
 minutes, still smiling and amiable. 
 
 " She wouldn't take the penny at all, your 
 reverence. She says she is down in the books, 
 and she never got less than a sixpence. And 
 indeed it's not much " 
 
 Mr. Duffin got up and turned on Betty with an 
 expression in his eyes which was by no means 
 pleasant. 
 
 "And she'll be going to the Manse, and I 
 wouldn't like them to say " 
 
 " She may go where she likes and you too. 
 Didn't I tell you I wouldn't have you in here in 
 this condition ? You ought to be ashamed of 
 yourself ! " 
 
 Betty waved her hands in reproachful denial, 
 an action which was fraught with danger to her 
 balance ; she turned deprecating, watery eyes
 
 36 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 upon her master, and showed her wrinkled, empty 
 gums in a smile which was not a pretty one. 
 
 " Is it me ? The Lord forgive you, dear ! Me, 
 that have never rested since your dinner except 
 to sit down for a niinit and read my Bible ! Me, 
 that can't thole the taste of whisky not even 
 when I had the brown katies and the doctor 
 ordered it to me. If it wasn't for the wake turns 
 and the toothache, never a drop would pass my 
 lips " 
 
 " Get out of this, you drunken old beast ! " 
 
 Betty began to weep profusely, with many sniffs 
 and sobs, applying her apron impartially to eyes 
 and nose. It may be she had found tears useful 
 to soften her former master, but on a man like 
 Mr. Duffin they were wasted. 
 
 " And sooner than have them say ill words I 
 would give a sixpence myself for the honour of 
 the house; and me been here these forty years 
 and never a complaint ! But it's well said, the 
 way of the righteous is thorny. Now I'm an old 
 woman, I'll have to make place for some impitent 
 cutty ! But you'll be sorry for it ; for all you 
 miscall me you'll be sorry for it, and you'll miss 
 me sorely. The Lord will provide ; even if I ani 
 cast forth in my old age, I can trust in Him " 
 
 Mr. Duffin turned upon her with a set under- 
 jaw and an angry flush in his coarse face. 
 
 " Hold your tongue ! " he said. " If you are 
 not out of this in extra quick time you'll be sorry 
 for it ye ould divil ! " 
 
 There was nobody but old Betty to notice how 
 strongly the Southern accent came out in his 
 words, and she was a great deal too full of her' 
 own concerns. She was sufficiently herself to 
 realise that her master looked dangerous, and
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 37 
 
 she lost no time in getting herself out of the 
 room, staggering and muttering to herself. 
 
 Mr. Duffin relapsed into a gloomy contempla- 
 tion of the fire. 
 
 It was an unbearable life ; it was ivicked to 
 condemn a man to it. 
 
 But he would not be beaten ; all these years 
 should not be wasted, and some day he would 
 make his own place in the world. 
 
 Was he to let one mistake, one temptation, 
 yielded to after so many had been resisted was 
 he to let this ruin him ? A thousand times no ! 
 Let the fault rest with those who had condemned 
 him to this life of isolation. But what a fool he 
 had been what a fool ! to run any risks. 
 
 The opening of the door did not even make 
 him turn round. He only said roughly, " Get 
 away, Betty ! How often have I to tell you not 
 to come in ? " 
 
 "But there's a man " Betty began in her 
 
 cracked voice. 
 
 " I don't care who is there ; I won't see any 
 one at this hour." 
 
 " It's well for you I know better than to take 
 you at your word, dear. I've no fancy to let your 
 reverence sit and glower at the fire for want of 
 company, and Dr. Morton wanting to see you, 
 and he such a quare, good gentleman." 
 
 Mr. Duffin got hastily to his feet. Dr. Morton 
 was rector of a neighbouring parish, a man in 
 whose eyes he particularly wished to seem well, 
 who was on intimate terms with the Lawsons and 
 the Barings, and well thought of by all who knew 
 him. 
 
 " Show him in at once," Mr. Duffin said. 
 
 He looked round the room uncomfortably, con-
 
 38 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 scious that all was not as it ought to be, without 
 knowing how to set it right. Had he known it, 
 Dr. Morton was the last person to remark any 
 deficiencies, or to heed them if he had. 
 
 He came in like a breath of fresh air, a tall, 
 broad-shouldered man, with a cheery voice and 
 the pleasantest manner in the world. It is to be 
 supposed that Dr. Morton had troubles like the 
 rest of the world ; but if so, they sat upon him 
 lightly, and by instinct it was the brightest side 
 of everything and everybody that he saw. His 
 laugh was most infectious^ 
 
 He came into the room shaking raindrops from 
 his coat, and Mr. Dumn went forward to greet 
 him, nervously anxious to seem completely at his 
 ease. He thought of addressing his visitor as 
 " Morton," but was unequal to the effort. Cer- 
 tainly Dr. Morton was a very much older man, 
 but as rectors their position was an equal one, 
 he told himself, but he found it impossible to act 
 on this assumption. 
 
 " It's a shame to come in upon you in this wet 
 condition, Dumn. It's a disagreeable drizzle, and 
 I am afraid it will interfere with the flax-pulling. 
 I have got mine all in, I am glad to say." 
 
 " This is a great pleasure," Dr. Morton. 
 . Mr. Duffin's manner of speaking was very deli- 
 berate, with hesitations and words carefully chosen 
 and pronounced. He gave the impression, which 
 was possibly a true one, of considering every word 
 before he said it, to see if it was safe and suitable. 
 
 Betty was more hearty and less guarded. She 
 insisted on being allowed to shake Dr. Morton's 
 hand warmly, and burst into voluble speech. 
 
 " It warms my heart to see your reverence ! 
 I've been thinking you'd forgotten us altogether.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 39 
 
 And how's the mistress ? and Miss Katie and 
 Master James ? " 
 
 "All flourishing, thank you, Betty." 
 
 " It's aye a heartsome thing to have a lock of 
 weans about a house. I can't but say I find it 
 lonesome here with no stir about. Your reverence 
 should come over oftener, for sure I am you're 
 more than welcome. I'm still telling the master 
 he should visit more. When Mr. Dawson was wi' 
 me, he was for ever going down to the Castle to 
 play games of tennis and such-like, or they were 
 up here, and it kept a stir. But now there's never 
 one coming or going." 
 
 " That is sufficient, Betty. You may go," said 
 Mr. Duffin hopelessly. 
 
 "There's no rank of life," said Betty, leaning 
 against the sideboard and waving her hands, "but 
 needs divarsions at times. The like of me the 
 commonality, as one might say has their trips 
 and their treats, and the quality has their own 
 ways of amusing themselves. It's yourself that 
 likes a bit of sport as well as any one, for all your 
 black coat, Dr. Morton ! " 
 
 " Oh, you and I are one in objecting to all work 
 and no play." 
 
 " 'Deed your reverence and I for ever think 
 alike. I'm that uplifted to see you again, 
 dear " 
 
 Betty was seized with a. further affectionate im- 
 pulse ; she staggered forward with outstretched 
 hand. 
 
 Mr. Duffin came to the rescue in despair. 
 
 "Look here, Betty. Dr. Morton and I want 
 to talk, and you must leave us in peace. You 
 see what a disagreeable day it is, and how it is 
 raining. Well, if you won't go away, Dr. Morton
 
 40 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 and I will have to go out, and you surely don't 
 want to drive us to that ? " 
 
 It may be that this pathetic appeal touched 
 Betty ; at any rate, a little later Mr. Duffin did 
 contrive to get the door shut with her on the 
 wrong side of it. He felt bitterly foolish and 
 ashamed. 
 
 Dr. Morton turned to him with his hearty 
 laugh. 
 
 " Your Caleb Balderstone is rather troublesome, 
 I am afraid," he said. 
 
 Mr. Duffin had not the remotest idea who Caleb 
 Balderstone might be. He said, " Yes, certainly," 
 and smiled uneasily. 
 
 " I suppose you do find it a bit lonely ? " 
 
 " Well, the parish is a small one ; my time isn't 
 half filled." 
 
 " And run over with old women, isn't it ? I 
 know Dawson used to complain that they never 
 died." 
 
 Mr. Duffin smiled responsively ; his idea of 
 extreme politeness was to smile frequently. 
 
 " The people are all so poor," he said, " espe- 
 cially now that the weaving has practically 
 stopped. All the richer farmers and shopkeepers 
 are Presbyterians. There's a fair Sunday-school 
 attendance in the morning, but Mrs. M'Cune 
 works a good deal among the girls, and some of 
 our girls will go to her in the afternoon. I think 
 I shall be obliged to start an afternoon Sunday- 
 school, and I am afraid the attendance will be 
 very poor." 
 
 " I dare say Mrs. M'Cune won't hurt them. We 
 Northerns are pretty stiff in our convictions," 
 said Dr. Morton, with a laugh. "Well, I must 
 get to business. I called to-day chiefly to ask if
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 41 
 
 you are going up to the Protestant Orphan meet- 
 ing next week, and also about the Sustentation 
 Fund. The Archdeacon has asked me to suggest 
 that at your next vestry meeting " 
 
 Dr. Morton leaned back in his chair, with his 
 elbow on the dirty table-cloth, and plunged into 
 Church matters. It was difficult not tp be at 
 ease with him, he was so entirely at ease him- 
 self ; and he grew so hot and eager over every- 
 thing, that Mr. Duffin unconsciously found himself 
 growing interested too. Dr. Morton got vehe- 
 mently angry in discussing the encroachments of 
 Presbyterians and the misdoings of troublesome 
 vestrymen ; but in the middle of his anger the 
 comic side always struck him, and he laughed. 
 
 Towards the end, during a hot description of 
 the woes of a rash curate, who had put up an 
 altar-cloth with I.H.S. worked on it, and had 
 found the letters cut off time after time at the 
 most exciting point of this tale Mr. Duffin's atten- 
 tion began to wander. 
 
 There were certain signs of departure about 
 the other man ; he had picked his stick from the 
 floor and his hat from the table, and was sitting 
 upright on his chair, instead of leaning back com- 
 fortably. 
 
 Ought he to be asked to stay for a meal of 
 some kind ? If so, what should the meal be, and 
 how would Betty serve it ? Was there anything 
 presentable in the house in the way of eatables ? 
 Would it seem very inhospitable if he let his 
 visitor start upon his eight miles' drive without 
 any offer ? 
 
 In the midst of his hesitation Dr. Morton got 
 up to go, and Southern instincts got the better of 
 doubts.
 
 42 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 " Won't you stay to tea ? " Mr. Duffin said. 
 
 "No, thanks; 1 am going to drop in on the 
 Barings and see if I can find somebody for a 
 game of billiards." 
 
 How easily it was said ! and yet surely the 
 clergyman of the parish had as good a right to 
 " drop in " on the Barings as any one else. 
 
 " I have half a mind to go with you," said Mr. 
 Duffin, in a tone which he flattered himself was 
 both natural and easy. At the same time he 
 knew he was talking nonsense ; that even under 
 Dr. Morton's wing his courage was sure to fail at 
 the last. 
 
 They had been sitting almost in the dark for 
 the last half-hour, Mr. Duffin being unwilling to 
 give Betty an excuse for returning by ringing for 
 lights, and it was very dusky when they went out 
 and walked down the street together. 
 
 Dr. Morton did not find his companion inter- 
 esting, but he was given to take men as he found 
 them ; still, the other's obvious want of attention 
 as they walked down the street made conversation 
 difficult. 
 
 Mr. Duffin was hoping against hope that they 
 would meet one of the Barings on their way, or, 
 failing that, that he would have courage to follow 
 his companion into the house as if it was the 
 most natural thing in the world. 
 
 But neither of these things happened. As they 
 came up the avenue he began to remember more 
 and more keenly the many discouragements he 
 had met with from the Barings, and he felt that 
 before Dr. Morton they would be still more un- 
 bearable. 
 
 He answered on a sudden impulse when Dr. 
 Morton asked if he was coming in
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER DOG 43 
 
 " I don't think I will this evening ; I have 
 several things to do, and there's a Unionist Club 
 meeting to-night." 
 
 Dr. Morton did not press him. "Well, then, 
 good-bye, Duffin," he said. "Will you drive over 
 to lunch one of these days ? Mrs. Morton will be 
 delighted to see you. And, you don't sing by any 
 chance ? We are trying to get up a concert for 
 the schools, and musical talent is scarce." 
 
 Mr. Duffin said he did not sing, and they shook 
 hands on the hall-door steps. 
 
 Inside, the lamps were all lighted, but the shut- 
 ters had not yet been closed, and through an open 
 window a hum of voices with breaks of laughter 
 came to Mr. Duffin ; he could hear the momentary 
 pause, and then the welcoming greeting which 
 followed Dr. Morton's entrance. 
 
 Above them all came Nelly's clear, loud voice : 
 ' : We won't let Dr. Morton go till after dinner, 
 will we, mamma ? " 
 
 It occurred to Mr. Duffin that any one who saw 
 him standing there in the dusk and the rain might 
 think it odd, and he turned away abruptly. To 
 be outside seemed his place always out of all 
 cheerfulness and companionship solitary always. 
 
 It did not occur to him to wonder if it was in 
 part his own fault. 
 
 " Curse it ! " he said between his teeth.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IT was a day to make any one feel inclined to be 
 idle, a wonderful day for September, with soft, 
 warm breezes, and sunshine which made the lake 
 look like silver. 
 
 Ellen and the puppy had felt they could stay 
 indoors no longer, and had come out to join the 
 father and Eccles in the flax-field. 
 
 Now that the lint-pullings of larger people 
 were over, the Lindsays had got a day off to 
 attend to their own little bit of cut-out bog. It 
 was only a strip where the turf had been all cut 
 away sooner than in other places, but it was their 
 very own, and they thought a great deal of it. 
 
 Ellen lay lazily among the flax, half watching 
 the others, half inattentive, her water-cans and 
 wooden hoop bearing witness that she had not 
 come out entirely in idleness. The path to the 
 well went right through the field " along the 
 cash, and through the slap and out by the shough," 
 as Mrs. Mawhinney had once directed a bewil- 
 dered Englishman. 
 
 Ellen had found herself a very comfortable 
 corner; she lay with her arm across her eyes to 
 keep off the sunshine, which fell warmly on her 
 hair and her bare feet. It was only of late that 
 she had begun to feel the loneliness of her life. 
 To-day she had a sense of satisfaction in knowing
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 45 
 
 that her father and brother were so near ; it helped 
 her not to think, and to lie there and enjoy the 
 sunshine like an animal 
 
 If she had seen her grandmother coming she 
 would probably have beaten a hasty retreat, but 
 her eyes were hidden by her arm, and if she 
 moved it she only caught a dazzled glimpse of 
 blue sky straight above her. Mrs. Mawhinney's 
 harsh voice in her ear was the first announcement 
 she got that her dreamy contentment was over. 
 
 As usual, Mrs. Mawhinney was anxious and 
 troubled about many things. She began with a 
 very favourite topic of hers the ill-doings of the 
 M'Faddens, who would persist in using a right- 
 of-way they had past her cottage to the well. 
 This was the injury which of all injuries seemed 
 to Mrs. Mawhinney the most unbearable, and 
 be the conversation what it might, she always 
 managed to bring in a reference to it. 
 
 Lindsay and Eccles came up before she had 
 half finished and changed the current of her 
 thoughts. 
 
 Eccles was a tall, stout young man, with an 
 unkempt appearance and no manners. He was 
 kindly and good-natured enough, and much more 
 popular in the neighbourhood than his brother 
 " Black Wully," as he was called, partly owing to 
 his dark hair, and partly to his terrible temper. 
 " Black Wully " was a furious Orangeman and 
 remarkably strong, and had got into trouble more 
 than once or twice ; he was an excellent Church- 
 man as far as hating all other denominations 
 went, though he seldom or never went to church. 
 Eccles, on the contrary, was liked by everybody, 
 and was quite content so long as he was able to 
 take life fairly easily, and to get a bit of amuse-
 
 46 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 merit now and again which cost nothing ; for he 
 was very careful of his money. 
 
 He was glad now to throw himself down on 
 the flax beside Ellen, wiping his hot face and 
 taking out his pipe. 
 
 Old Lindsay was in a cheerful frame of mind. 
 
 " We've a tine crop the year," he said ; " I don't 
 mind when it was as good. And if the potatoes 
 turn out as well and I've no reason to think 
 they won't we'll do rightly." 
 
 " Ay ; but the better the crop the cheaper it is 
 to sell," said Mrs. Mawhinney, shaking her head ; 
 " and them that knows tells me there'll be next 
 to no weaving the year, and that'll come hard." 
 
 " There's still something turns up," said Lindsay, 
 undismayed. " Did you hear we'd a letter from 
 Philadelphy last night, and Mary and Andy sent 
 two pounds to me and as much to Ellen ? And 
 they'll send something more by Christmas. And 
 what with that and the crop I'm gey uplifted." 
 
 " You needn't count on help from them for 
 long. It's all very well at the first, but wait till 
 they've begun to forget and got married maybe. 
 That'll be another story." 
 
 Lindsay gave a good-humoured laugh. 
 
 " Hark till her ! I never put up a feather that 
 she doesn't pluck it out of me ! You're aye set- 
 ting off in a coach-and-four to meet your troubles, 
 grandma." 
 
 " I've small need to do that, then," said Mrs. 
 Mawhinney dolefully ; " they're not far to seek. 
 If I saw my own following in the Lord's path, 
 it's little I'd think of this world's troubles. But 
 when I see them stubborn and onreasonable, 
 neglectful of their duties to their God in attend- 
 ing the church and the Sabbath-school, not con-
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 47 
 
 tent with the home He has given them, and 
 wanting to leave all behind them and go to ser- 
 vice The Lord knows, Jamie, if you've been 
 
 too easy with the authority He has put in your 
 hands, I have done my best." 
 
 The words fell on silence. Ellen moved im- 
 patiently, and Eccles began to fill his pipe stolidly. 
 Mrs. Mawhinney's harsh voice seemed to destroy 
 the peace of the day ; but for her it was so still 
 that they could hear the soft splash of oars on 
 the lake, and the cry of the "peewits" that flew 
 over it. The whistle of a train three miles away 
 sounded shrilly. 
 
 " What call has Ellen to go to service ? I don't 
 say that many as good or better than her don't 
 go and no disgrace about it, but while her father 
 can keep her at home she's better there. If her 
 head wasn't full of foolishness she would never 
 have thought of it. But there she goes, ready 
 for any amusement, and in for an hour yesterday 
 colloguing with those M'Faddens just as if they 
 were her own sort. She'll be turning next." 
 
 Eccles gave a grunt of disapprobation. " You 
 needn't even the like to Ellen," he said. " You 
 might as well say Miss Nelly would be turning 
 many's the time she's in to M'Fadden's." 
 
 " It's very different for the quality from it is 
 for the like of us," said Mrs. Mawhinney. She 
 was fairly started on one of her subjects, and 
 was in her glory. " Times and again I tell Ellen 
 never to trust a Catholic, but it's little she minds 
 what I say. They are deceitful to the heart's 
 core. Wasn't it James Dougherty, a friend of 
 my own married on my father's sister that 
 took up greatly with a Catholic boy when he was 
 a lad ? They were always together and as great
 
 48 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 as could be. And you'd have thought James was 
 clean out of his mind when the other boy took 
 sick and was given over by the doctor. He was 
 for setting up with him night and day. And the 
 night the Catholic boy died, he called James to 
 him, and says he, ' James, are we alone ? ' and 
 James says, 'Yes.' Then says he, 'Bend down 
 your head, James, till I whisper.' And says he, 
 ' Never trust a Catholic.' And James was all 
 surprised, and says he, ' Haven't we been great 
 enough ? ' And the Catholic boy says, ' Ay, 
 James, you've thought so ; but many's the time, 
 when we were out together, I had a knife under 
 my coat ready to murder you.' And that's gospel 
 truth, and you know it, Jamie Lindsay." 
 
 If he did not, it was not for want of hearing 
 it, for the story was by no means new to him. 
 Ellen breathed more freely now that the conver- 
 sation had turned from her delinquencies. 
 
 But Mrs. Mawhinney had not nearly finished. 
 
 " And only the other day Burnside Overend 
 was walking twelve miles to some fair looking 
 for a cow, and he was overtook by a Catholic in 
 his cart. And he offers him a lift, and Burnside 
 was thankful enough to get it. And they hadn't 
 gone very far, and were just down along the 
 Lough shore, where they're all the wrong sort, 
 when the Catholic began to shout, ' To hell with 
 the Pope ! ' and ' No Home Rule ! ' and every 
 Protestant cry h& could think of. You see, he 
 knew that, if any Catholics heard it, they'd come 
 running out and take it to be Burnside that was 
 calling, and him sitting quite. By luck nobody 
 heard him, or Burnside would hardly have seen 
 his home again, and you may be sure he was 
 out of the cart pretty quick. But that's the
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 49 
 
 sort they are, Jamie. There's a bad drop in 
 them all." 
 
 Lindsay nodded his head assentingly. In the 
 main he agreed with his mother-in-law, and was 
 as bitter against the Catholics in a body as she 
 could wish, though he was too good-natured to 
 share her animosity to individuals. 
 
 " You'll never tind a Catholic to be trusted," 
 Mrs. Mawhinney reiterated ; " if I had my will, 
 never one of them should cross my step. I was 
 just saying to the minister yesterday, 'Your 
 reverence,' says I, 'if it's not making too free, 
 I've been thinking a soft hat would be more be- 
 coming to you.' And says he, ' Why's that, Mrs, 
 Mawhinney ? ' He's a pleasant-spoken gentle- 
 man enough. And says I, ' Sure it used to give 
 me pleasure to see you walking down the road, 
 but now in the distance I can hardly tell whether 
 it's you or the priest.' " 
 
 " The minister and you seem very great. He's 
 aye dropping in for a kaly with you," said Lindsay, 
 laughing. 
 
 " He's a religious man and a good preacher^a 
 very serious speaker, and preaches the true gospel. 
 It would do Ellen a wheen of good if she would 
 go to hear him constant. I bid him speak to her 
 the very last time I saw him about her neglect of 
 the school of a Sabbath and her wanting to go to 
 service. And I hope you'll mind what he says 
 to you, Ellen." 
 
 Ellen's head was bent over the puppy; she 
 murmured something indistinct, and did not 
 raise it. 
 
 " Ellen's well enough," her father said shortly. 
 
 " It's ill done of her to go again' the minister, 
 and him so good to her at the first."
 
 50 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 "I wouldn't like that. I hope the minister's 
 not ill-pleased with you, daughter ? " 
 
 There was a short pause, a pause just long 
 enough to be perceptible. 
 
 " Don't trouble yourself about that," said Ellen 
 in a rough voice. 
 
 " For he's been very good about Wully, and I'd 
 like you to do your best to please him." 
 
 Ellen jumped suddenly to her feet with an 
 abruptness of movement which was quite unusual 
 to her. 
 
 " I'm just wearied with having you all at me ! " 
 she said passionately. " You'd think I was that 
 ill-mannered that nobody could put up with me ! 
 I'm I'm fit enough to mind myself ! " 
 
 She turned from them sharply with a move- 
 ment of uncontrollable nervous irritation, and 
 hurried across the field with quick, uncertain 
 steps, leaving astonishment behind her; Ellen, 
 as they knew her, was so sweet-tempered, so little 
 inclined to be touchy. 
 ' Eccles gazed after her with wide eyes. 
 
 " Keep us ! what ails our Ellen ? " he said. 
 
 " Heth ! she's in a quare pucker," said her father. 
 " I'm ignorant what has come over her these last 
 weeks. She was finely set up at the first with 
 the minister thinking well of her in the choir." 
 
 " And Ellen was aye one that liked to be taken 
 notice to," the old grandmother said. " I mind 
 well, when she was a wee wean, she came home 
 from the school roarin' and cryin' fit to break her 
 heart, and for long enough we couldn't get out of 
 her what ailed her. At last says she, ' Sure, 
 grandma, Mr. Wilson ' him that was the minister 
 then 'he come into the school when we were 
 readin', and he wrote something in Annie Gregg's
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 51 
 
 copy-book, and he pulled Eva Jackson's ear, and 
 he took no notice to me though I was right for- 
 nenst him.' And with that she to the roarin' and 
 cryin'." 
 
 During this thrilling anecdote Eccles' attention 
 had wandered ; he had his own troubles to think 
 of, and they drove Ellen out of his head as he sat 
 and puffed at his pipe. Only her father's eyes 
 followed her into the cottage. 
 
 Ellen went in hastily, slamming the door after 
 her, and narrowly avoiding making an end of the 
 puppy, which had found some difficulty in keeping 
 up with her rapid movements. 
 
 But with this her energy seemed to go. She 
 sat down on a stool by the fire, heedless of the 
 puppy, which had had its foot pinched, and was 
 very sorry for itself, and making a great fuss in 
 consequence. 
 
 She sat with her hands clasped together till 
 they hurt, and her soft lips set. Eor the first 
 time in her life she was facing a trouble which 
 seemed unbearable, and realising that it had conie 
 to her with the surprise and rebellion of all young 
 creatures against their first pain. She knew 
 there was suffering plenty of it in the world ; 
 but that it should come to her ! 
 
 The puppy, in a small way, was going through 
 the same experience.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 "WELL, bring them as soon as they are fit to 
 kill. You haven't done well with your chickens 
 this year." 
 
 " The early ones throve rightly ; you'll mind I 
 brought Mrs. Baring some fine birds in the spring, 
 Miss Nelly. But 1 don't know what come over 
 these two last clatchings." 
 
 " Your ducks are better than ours, I see. We 
 must get a setting from you next year. And 
 now, Ellen, what has happened to you lately ? 
 You haven't been to Sunday-school or church for 
 weeks, and you missed the last girls' friendly 
 meeting." 
 
 Miss Baring stood in front of Ellen, a brisk, 
 decided little figure, with short petticoats and 
 thick boots, and a dog-whip and whistle, which 
 were supposed to keep in order a couple of 
 lawless setters, at present poking with eager 
 curiosity through the Lindsays' yard. She took 
 Ellen to task in a clear, rather hard voice. 
 
 Ellen had been filling her basket from the turf- 
 stack; she leant against the brown background 
 drawing lines in the mud with her bare feet ; a 
 dull red crept gradually into her round, childish 
 face. 
 
 She said nothing till Nelly Baring repeated her 
 question rather sharply.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 53 
 
 " Now what has kept you away, Ellen ? " 
 
 " The work's been very throng.". The girl's 
 answer came almost under her breath. 
 
 "Not on Sundays, surely? Ellen, it is good, 
 steady girls like you that we want particularly to 
 stick to Sunday-school and classes, not only for 
 your own sake, but to influence others." 
 
 Ellen's head sank lower. 
 
 " You will soon be a woman," Miss Baring, who 
 was four years older, began with much confidence. 
 
 Ellen, with her face turned away, listened to 
 an essay upon womanhood according to the brisk 
 little girl in front of her, who had only touched 
 the outside of life, and so was able to express 
 herself after the gloriously trenchant fashion of 
 ignorance. 
 
 The cottage lay between them and the lane, 
 and shut them out from passers-by ; if it had not 
 been for this, Mr. Duffin would certainly not have 
 come upon them round the turf-stack with a 
 suddenness which made them both start. Ellen 
 confronted him with a look of positive terror in 
 her blue eyes. 
 
 Miss Baring made a wonderful effort to be 
 civil ; instead of making her escape at once, she 
 actually stayed, choosing subjects she considered 
 suitable, and trying to draw the other two into 
 harmony. The possibility that she might not be 
 producing general gratification never entered her 
 head. 
 
 " Maybe," Ellen broke in in a low voice, " I had 
 as well go in and see that the cats are out of the 
 road, for fear the dogs would hunt them." 
 
 She went without waiting for an answer. Miss 
 Baring, a little surprised at her abruptness, turned 
 graciously to Mr. Duffin.
 
 54 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 " Nice girl, isn't she ? " 
 
 He assented shortly. 
 
 " But such a baby still. I have seen her play- 
 ing with that little red-headed M'Gloughlan as if 
 they were both the same age, and certainly Ellen 
 doesn't look sixteen. One would have thought 
 having to keep house for her father would make 
 her into a woman, but I am sure I don't know 
 what will." 
 
 Mr. Duffin said nothing. Perhaps he did. 
 
 " Well, I suppose I mustn't keep you if you are 
 parish visiting," said Nelly, still with much con- 
 descension. " I am going to see poor M'Fadden, 
 but he belongs to Father Dymond. Good morn- 
 ing; wonderful weather for this time of year, 
 isn't it ? " 
 
 Miss Baring wondered why she had found him 
 so much more speechless and less objectionable 
 than usual ; in truth, Mr. Duffin had not had time 
 to collect himself or bring himself from the mood 
 in which he had made his way to the Lindsays." 
 
 When Ellen had been called out to say good- 
 bye, and Miss Baring had whistled to her setters 
 and disappeared down the lane, a long pause fell 
 between the other two. 
 
 Mr. Duffin played with his stick as if his chief 
 object in life was to make it draw an exact circle 
 in the mud ; from time to time he gave rapid, 
 half-stealthy glances at the girl. 
 
 " Ellen," he said softly. 
 
 Ellen drew her breath sharply. 
 
 " I'm skeared at your coming." 
 
 "Nonsense; it's safe enough there's no fear." 
 
 " I've black fear at my heart. There's no call 
 for you to come; it's a foolishness." There was 
 a hurry in Ellen's soft voice ; she looked round
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 55 
 
 her nervously, and the colour came and went in 
 her face. 
 
 Mr. Duffin went closer to her, and laid his 
 hand roughly on her arm. 
 
 " Meet me this evening, then," he said, and she 
 interrupted with a sharp cry of pain. 
 
 " No, no, no ! Didn't you give me your solemn 
 word " 
 
 " I can't keep it." 
 
 The two stood looking into each other's faces 
 in a moment of silence ; then Ellen drew back, 
 quivering and hiding her face from what she saw 
 in his eyes. 
 
 " I don't care what I promised you must come." 
 
 Ellen's words came in hurried, passionate ap- 
 peal, with sudden pauses where her breath failed 
 her. 
 
 " I couldn't do it, sir ! For God's sake don't 
 ask me till I try to be a good girl but I can't 
 be never, never again." 
 
 " Don't be a little fool," said Mr. Duffin hoarsely. 
 " I tell you I can't stand much of this. Ellen " 
 
 The girl recoiled in sharp terror. 
 
 " Don't come near me. I wish I was dead, 
 God forgive me ! For your own sake and mine, 
 go away. sir. There'd be murder done if my 
 father or the boys " 
 
 " I'll go if you'll meet me this evening " 
 
 " I can't, I can't, I can'f God help me ! " 
 
 Ellen broke into bitter sobbing, but she would 
 not yield ; Mr. Duffin tried passionately, with 
 rough words, to beat down her resistance. He 
 was excited beyond his own control, and almost 
 forgot his fear of observation almost, but not 
 entirely. 
 
 Ellen had always given in in the end ; perhaps
 
 56 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 she would have given in now had not a sudderi 
 remembrance that when Miss Baring left the 
 M'Faddens' cottage she must see them made Mr. 
 Duffin's patience break down suddenly. He let 
 go his hold of her arm and pushed her from him 
 roughly, with a coarse word of anger. 
 
 " You little devil, do you want to drive me 
 mad ? " he said. " You are setting up to be par- 
 ticular a trifle late." 
 
 Ellen watched him, as he made his way hastily 
 down the lane, with vague, almost indifferent, 
 eyes. It was impossible that it was to her, Ellen 
 Lindsay, that this thing had happened, that her 
 life was spoilt just as she was coming to a full 
 enjoyment of it. 
 
 She felt in a strange way outside herself, as if 
 it was another person she pitied another poor 
 girl for whom she was so sorry, that sharp, painful 
 tears sprang to her eyes ; it could not be herself. 
 
 It was time to bring in the goats. Ellen, by 
 force of habit, shut the house-door to keep out 
 the chickens, and picked up a stick in case the 
 grey goat should be troublesome. 
 
 She had a little way to walk across the bog to 
 the green patch where they were tethered, and 
 she surprised herself actually singing softly as she 
 went, picking her way round bogholes and soft 
 places. 
 
 Yet it was true it was real it had happened 
 to her. 
 
 She had tried, tried so hard to forget, to put 
 away all thought from her and just live in the 
 present. She was so very young she had re- 
 mained such a child that sometimes she had 
 succeeded. 
 
 But Miss Nelly. Ellen had been very fond of
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 57 
 
 Miss Nelly, after whom she had been named, and 
 whom she had known all her life. But never, 
 never again would she go to Sunday class or to 
 Miss Nelly's meetings. 
 
 Ellen was only just beginning to realise her 
 misery that evening as she walked over the bog ; 
 at first the overmastering excitement which had 
 been brought into her life had driven out other 
 thoughts. 
 
 She had grown up so quietly and drably. She 
 had never been free like other children, though 
 her father had done his best for her ; but she had 
 had to " mind the house " almost before she could 
 reach up to lift the pot off the fire. 
 
 And she had been very strictly brought up to 
 believe almost everything in the shape of amuse- 
 ment was wrong. The greatest excitements of 
 her life next always to " the twelfth " had 
 been occasional Methodist or Plymouth Brethren 
 meetings, as a variation of the usual round of 
 week-day work and Sunday-school and church. 
 
 Then this had come into her life, upsetting and 
 bewildering all her ideas of right and wrong, and 
 throwing her among problems neither her age nor 
 her education fitted her to face. 
 
 Protestants who went regularly to church were 
 good and were saved ; others were bad, and cer- 
 tainly not among the elect. Clergymen were 
 to be reverenced, and at the same time to be 
 sharply watched lest they should fall into High 
 Church errors, but in nowise to be regarded as 
 on the plane with the rest of mankind. 
 
 This easy classification was upset. 
 
 Ellen was exceedingly capable of taking care 
 of herself with young men of her own class ; she 
 held her head high and kept them at a distance.,
 
 58 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 But when the minister the minister who 
 preached to her in church and taught her in 
 Sunday-school who sometimes went to have his 
 dinner at " the Castle," and talked to Miss Nelly 
 on terms of equality when he began to notice 
 Ellen a little more than the rest, she was pleased 
 and nattered. 
 
 Never for an instant did she think of herself 
 and him as woman and man till he absolutely 
 forced her to think. Then, in a whirl of vanity 
 and bewilderment, it seemed to her now she had 
 for the time lost her senses, and lived without 
 thought, in a mad, hidden excitement. 
 
 She had been proud yes, proud of her con- 
 quest of this demi-god, who left Miss Nelly to 
 come to her. To Ellen he was the handsomest, 
 most fascinating, most irresistible person in the 
 world, and she was a girl to feel the full influence 
 of difference of rank. 
 
 Only lately the shame had broken upon her, 
 and begun to crush her down ; she had not been 
 ashamed at first. 
 
 Necessarily in Ellen's class everything was 
 understood. She had often heard the neighbours 
 talk of girls such as she was. 
 
 She knew exactly what they would say, and 
 the tone in which they would say it their con- 
 temptuous interest and pity, their untiring dis- 
 cussion of this choice bit of scandal. 
 
 Her grandmother Ellen knew how bitter, how 
 unforgetting her tongue could be ; and her father ? 
 she liked to think of him least of all it would 
 just break his heart. 
 
 She did not distinctly blame any one. In her 
 class no question of equal morality for men and 
 women had ever been raised. A girl who did
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 59 
 
 not know how to take care of herself was a fool, 
 and worse. 
 
 Men were as God made them. 
 
 The white goat came the length of her tether 
 to meet Ellen. She was surprised to find how 
 long her mistress took to unfasten the rope, and 
 came to poke her nose in curiously and see what 
 the difficulty could be. Ellen got to her feet and 
 walked slowly back, very slowly, though the white 
 goat tugged at the tether to hasten her. 
 
 It was unbearable, unbearable. She was a 
 wicked girl, and God punished the wicked ; but she 
 would be good so very good if she could have 
 another chance just one more chance ; she had 
 been such a child, and so foolish before. Was it 
 just to let her spoil her whole life before she 
 understood what she was doing ? Was it just 
 to leave her hopeless at sixteen ? And all she 
 wanted must be such a little thing to God just 
 one more chance. 
 
 From how many poor souls this prayer of 
 Ellen's has gone as an exceeding bitter cry the 
 useless prayer for one more chance.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE M'Faddens' cottage lay close to the bog road. 
 Barclay M'Fadden's bed was drawn up to a win- 
 dow in the kitchen which looked out upon it, and 
 from which he could see passers-by when there 
 were any. 
 
 Sometimes a neighbour stopped his turf-cart 
 in answer to the patient face by the window, and 
 left his old horse to stand with hanging head and 
 quivering legs while he went in to chat with Bar- 
 clay. Often enough one of the Lindsays would 
 drop over to smoke a pipe by the fire. 
 
 Ellen never forgot to give him a nod and smile 
 as she passed, and whenever she gathered a bunch 
 of golden gilgowans, or primroses, or sweet white 
 violets, half at least went to stand in a blue jug 
 by his bed. 
 
 It was four years ago now since Barclay had 
 had his back injured by a fall of iron from a cart 
 he was loading. He had only kept to his bed for 
 a fortnight at the time, and had then gone back 
 to his work, with intervals and irregularities, for 
 nearly a year. Then gradually the days on which, 
 with the best will in the world, he could drag 
 himself out grew fewer, and at last ceased alto- 
 gether, and he was reduced to spending his' time 
 in a chair by the fire. 
 
 A month or two later even this had become an
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 6 1 
 
 effort, and it was more than a year now since he 
 hud left his bed. 
 
 His sister was a dressmaker, and also kept a 
 shop in the other kitchen window. Her stock 
 was displayed on three shelves decorated with 
 very elaborately cut and very dirty pink paper, 
 and consisted of various wooden boxes, filled in- 
 discriminately with sweets in an advanced stage 
 of stickiness, gingerbread figures, salt herrings, 
 and reels of thread. Miss M'Fadden described 
 herself as being fond of having things pretty, and 
 the kitchen walls were adorned with little brackets 
 in coloured paper, artificial flowers out of old hats, 
 coloured prints with shell or straw frames, and 
 similar things of beauty. Unfortunately she 
 was not equally fond of having things clean, 
 and all her decorations were coated inch-deep 
 in dust. 
 
 They lived on what she earned, with the addi- 
 tion of three shillings a week, which was allowed 
 them by a well-to-do nephew. This nephew was 
 the pride of the family, and never failed to enter 
 into his aunt's conversation, and he had certainly 
 done well. He had begun by keeping a successful 
 public-house, and now represented his county very 
 noisily and vehemently in Parliament. And he 
 neither forgot nor neglected his family ; in addi- 
 tion to his weekly allowance, he very often sent 
 them presents. 
 
 There had been something of a fuss made over 
 Barclay at the beginning of his illness ; he had 
 been active and hard-working, and everybody 
 had a good word to say for him. He had plenty 
 of visitors, and all were on the look-out for the 
 chance of doing him a kindness. 
 
 The Lawsons and the Barings brought jellies
 
 62 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 and soup, and linen for his back, and produced 
 an occasional unasked half-crown. 
 
 That was three years ago. 
 
 But the illness had gone on so long months 
 and years had passed with so little change. 
 
 Even Nelly Baring was ashamed to find herself 
 often forgetting him for weeks together, though 
 she liked to walk over the bogs, and knew that 
 the books she brought him were all the help he 
 had to pass the days. 
 
 When she had said good-bye to Mr. Duffin she 
 discovered that the setters had preceded her into 
 the cottage ; and as they were animals of restless 
 disposition, with lax notions of honesty, the first 
 thing to be done was to turn them out. 
 
 Miss M'Fadden said, " Sure, never you mind, 
 Miss Nelly dear ; if they do take a drop out of 
 the hens' bucket there's no great harm." 
 
 But her protest was obviously made only for 
 politeness' sake. 
 
 "You. are looking bravely, Miss Nelly," said 
 Barclay from the bed. " It's heartsome enough 
 while this weather lasts." 
 
 " No rheumatism now, I hope ? " 
 
 " Heth ! he's just dwining away. You'd think 
 he'd been blinked. He'll never see another lint- 
 pulling." 
 
 Miss M'Fadden spoke as if she was making a 
 joke ; she was handicapped by nature with a fat, 
 irremediably cheerful face. She was an exceed- 
 ingly stout person, with a soul above toilet cares. 
 Her hair was partly encased in plaits, partly 
 hanging down her back, and partly standing up 
 on end, but entirely unkempt. Her red bodice 
 had been enlarged by insertions of a different 
 cloth under the arms, and even with this assist-
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 63 
 
 ance burst away from the buttons and pins which 
 held it across her ample breast. Beneath it the 
 brown skirt gaped open at the side with a vista 
 of petticoats, ending abruptly half-way down a 
 pair of stout legs encased in wrinkled black 
 stockings. 
 
 When Miss M'Fadden got up to bring Nelly a 
 chair she had an air of holding on her clothes 
 during the effort. 
 
 " I was badly taken yesterday with pains under 
 the oxter saving your presence," said Barclay ; 
 " but it's aye up and down, and we must be con- 
 tent with what the Lord sends us. That last 
 book was very interesting reading, Miss Nelly. 
 They were right and quarrelsome in them days." 
 
 " Barclay was finely taken up with it," said 
 Miss M'Fadden; "he read out a good wheen to 
 Eccles Lindsay last evening." 
 
 " And talking of Eccles Lindsay, isn't he going 
 to be married ? " said Nelly Baring. 
 
 Miss M'Fadden's fat face broke into smiles. 
 
 " Heth ! he may or he may not. The sough 
 of the country says that he has three of them 
 coorted up to the axing. Sure, he's so terrible 
 hard to please, I believe I'll have to take him 
 myself ! " 
 
 Miss M'Fadden laughed at her own joke 
 heartily, shaking all over and bursting an in- 
 secure button. 
 
 " Eccles is smart enough," she said, " but it's 
 Ellen is the white-headed boy of that family. 
 Barclay, there, can't think enough of her, an' 
 I'm aye telling him that as soon as he's fit to rise 
 he will be leaving the priest and going off to Mr. 
 Duffin for a weddin'." 
 
 When his sister's laugh had subsided and he
 
 64 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 could hear himself speak, Barclay supported 
 Ellen's praise. 
 
 " She's a good, religious wee girl," he said, " and 
 she might be fifty she couldn't mind her father 
 better, and I couldn't tell you the times she's 
 been in with a nosegay of flowers or an extry 
 baked cake. There's not one she ever forgets. 
 What did she do but come in yesterday with a 
 frame for Sarah Jane's picture of the Queen that 
 Johnny sent till us, and the straws all cut beauti- 
 ful and tied with blue ribbon, too. She's a ter- 
 rible thoughtful wee girl." 
 
 " Johnny " was the Home Eule member. Nelly 
 Baring always welcomed the appearance of his 
 name in the conversation, and held it there now 
 by a prolonged inspection of the picture. 
 
 The Queen, with very red cheeks and a gold 
 brooch, smiled placidly out of a surrounding of 
 straw and ribbons, and Miss M'Fadden said she 
 was "beautiful." 
 
 " No doubt Johnny has many opportunities for 
 seeing her. I'm thinking of going up to London 
 myself and bidding him get me to tea with her. 
 Id look fine among the quality." 
 
 Miss M'Fadden's laugh broke out again with 
 hearty energy. 
 
 "You might go and speak for Home Eule," 
 Nelly Baring suggested. 
 
 " 'Deed and what would hinder me ? There 
 wouldn't be another word out of Lord Salisbury 
 and the rest of them if a fine sonsy young lady 
 the like of me got up to show them the rights 
 of it." 
 
 " Hear till her ! " Barclay commented, his sister 
 being too much overcome with her own wit to 
 proceed.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 65 
 
 " Well," said Nelly, " when you get back to 
 Ireland afterwards, I hope you will often come to 
 the workhouse to see us." 
 
 " Heth now ! maybe it won't do you so much 
 harm as you think " 
 
 " More harm than it will do you good, I fancy. 
 Now, what do you expect Home Kule to do for 
 you ? " 
 
 Miss M'Fadden had got back to the blue serge 
 skirt she was getting ready for machining. She 
 looked up and laughed. 
 
 " I couldn't rightly tell you, Miss Nelly, but 
 them that's wiser than me says it will do good." 
 
 " It will hardly leave us worse than it finds us," 
 said Barclay. 
 
 " But how will it make you better ? " 
 
 " Sure, they say every one will have their rights. 
 And there's the gold-mines " 
 
 " Oh, the gold-mines ! " said Nelly. " Do you 
 really think that if there were gold-mines worth 
 working they would have been neglected all these 
 years?" 
 
 " I'm not scholard enough to understand," Miss 
 M'Fadden said, settling her work in the machine, 
 " but them that's wiser than me " 
 
 "Well, if that's all you can say in your speech, 
 I am afraid you won't convince Lord Salisbury," 
 said Nelly in her most trenchant tones. 
 
 But the M'Faddens only laughed with much 
 good-humour.
 
 CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 "I NEVER do a good action that I don't sorely 
 repent it." 
 
 "My dear Nelly, I can only say that I am 
 horribly scandalised." 
 
 A selection of Barings and Lawsons was estab- 
 lished under the trees in the Barings' garden, con- 
 tentedly eating unripe cooking apples. 
 
 Nelly, always the leading spirit, had established 
 herself on a low branch, and with her tennis- 
 racquet for a table, was busily fashioning a pro- 
 cession of cows and pigs from particularly hard 
 windfalls. 
 
 i " It's true enough," she said, shaking her head ; 
 " Dr. Morton gave me a long lecture last time he 
 was here about being nicer to Mr. Duffin, and 
 trying to talk to him sometimes." 
 
 " I know. I heard him saying much the same 
 to Katie and the mother," said a young Lawson, 
 " about his lonely life and efforts to do his best, 
 and that one ought to sow seeds of kindness." 
 
 " All very well if one did not reap a harvest of 
 calls three hours long ! As sure as I speak civilly 
 to Mr. Duffin one day, he comes and spends the 
 next afternoon here. There, Jack, you can have 
 my racquet if you are going to play any more 
 tennis. And see if you can get that last cow to 
 stand up; I was making it when I heard that
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 67 
 
 Mr. Duffin was here, and cut its leg too short in 
 my disgust." 
 
 " Why, there's no need for you to go in. Mrs. 
 Baring is there, and Adela." 
 
 "Oh, it's my fault; I must take the conse- 
 quences," said Nelly recklessly. 
 
 In truth, Miss Baring had no confidence in the 
 capability of her family to receive an afternoon 
 call or do anything else without her. 
 
 She ruled them very firmly, if kindly and for 
 their good. 
 
 Mr. Duffin had indeed come full of the remem- 
 brance of her civility of the day before, of which 
 he felt himself to have taken too little advantage. 
 Was he beginning to break down the vague barrier, 
 and would it do to accept Betty's often-repeated 
 suggestion, and ask them over for tennis at the 
 rectory ? 
 
 He sat on the edge of his chair, and spoke in 
 careful sentences, till his want of ease flashed upon 
 him, when he went to the other extreme, lounging 
 and being elaborately careless. 
 
 He made two attempts to get to the subject of 
 his invitation. 
 
 Once he asked Nelly if she was " addicted to 
 the game of lawn-tennis ; " and, failing to make 
 the most of this opportunity, he inquired from 
 Adela later on where the best lawn- tennis bats 
 were to be obtained. 
 
 But Nelly held the conversation, and turned it 
 decidedly to parish matters ; she considered it her 
 duty to keep him up to the mark. 
 
 Had he been to see Lavinia Bruce, and had he 
 spoken to Eccles Lindsay about taking the pledge ? 
 Did he know that when the Pattersons' cow died 
 they actually believed it was " blinked," and gave
 
 68 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 "the wise man" a pound to come and cure it ? 
 Had he heard that poor old Mary Ann Brennan 
 was to have her dogs taken away because she 
 could not pay for licenses ? 
 
 Then came long pauses, but by this time Mr. 
 Duffin's courage had ebbed. 
 
 He could not find words now to give his invita- 
 tion in terms of easy equality. It occurred to 
 him that it might be best after all to write, and 
 certainly easiest. 
 
 When he came away he could not feel that he 
 had much advanced himself. 
 
 It was fair-day in the village. Mr. Duffin made 
 his way back to the rectory through cows and 
 pigs and goats innumerable. 
 
 The pigs made a noisy corner ; they were never 
 still, and were constantly being pursued with 
 shouts, and at a touch of the stick they squealed 
 lustily. The cows for the most part stood patiently, 
 with drooping heads and an absent, far-away look 
 in their soft brown eyes. Sometimes a young 
 heifer lowered her horns to dunch pettishly when 
 she found herself too closely pressed upon. 
 
 Outside the nearest public-house a family party 
 were getting into their cart ; the bright red shawl 
 of the old woman caught Mr. Duffin's eye as she 
 climbed into the cart and settled herself down 
 beside a couple of discontented pigs, evidently 
 new purchases, and shrieking in agony at being 
 borne off from the friends of their youth. 
 
 Mr. Duffin recognised the man who made his 
 way to the horse's head none too steadily, and 
 realised that they had good cause to lament, in 
 that their hours were numbered. 
 
 Just beyond the cart a man was vehemently 
 vaunting the milking powers of a melancholy old
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 6g 
 
 cow with projecting bones to an indifferent group 
 of possible purchasers. 
 
 " Four pounds ; not a penny less, barring a 
 shilling or two for luck. Would you have me 
 lose by her? and she such a good milker, and 
 worth every penny of six. Just look at her; I 
 axe you to look at her ! " 
 
 Mr. Duffin brushed past the group unheeding. 
 
 There had been a sprinkling of rain in the early 
 morning, and the trampling of cattle had worked 
 the dust into mud. Every here and there a little 
 island of egg-shells marked the door of a house of 
 entertainment. 
 
 Mr. Duffin had to walk in the road, as the 
 pathway on each side was lined with stalls stalls 
 for meat, for cheap jewellery, for "dulse" and 
 " yellow man," and round these the school children 
 and their elder sisters gathered. 
 
 It was at one of these stalls, on a day just like 
 this, that he had first noticed Ellen Lindsay yes, 
 just opposite to where that man was auctioning 
 old clothes with immense rapidity and much wit, 
 to judge by the laughter round him. 
 
 Mr. Duffin pushed on, gathering whiffs of bad 
 tobacco and whisky and ether as he went. Here 
 and there people touched their hats to him as he 
 passed. One man, who was exceedingly drunk, 
 was full of a desire to "have a crack with his 
 reverence," and to impart to him his views upon 
 the Book of Daniel. 
 
 When he had shaken him off, and had got far- 
 ther on to where the cries of the old clothesman 
 merged in the thin quaver of a flute, Eccles Lindsay, 
 flushed and staggering, was in the midst of a hot 
 dispute with some men from the mountains 
 queer, shaggy little creatures, with tempers as hot
 
 jo ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 as fire. A plain, showily dressed young woman 
 hung on Eccles' arm, and made an occasional re- 
 monstrance. Mr. Duffin caught himself noticing 
 the young man's broad shoulders and strong 
 build. 
 
 Before he reached his own gate the crowd 
 thinned and dwindled to an occasional passer-by 
 who had made his purchases early and was taking 
 them home. 
 
 Old Mary Ann, sitting in the ditch with her 
 dogs round her, and singing away cheerfully, rose 
 to greet him with her old-fashioned curtsey. 
 
 He threw her a careless good morning. 
 
 Old Mary Ann responded in her cheerful, shrill 
 tones. 
 
 "Och, then, dear, sure it's morning for your 
 reverence and evening for me the Lord be praised. 
 I was just calling up with your reverence, and 
 ould Betty bid me wait till you would be in." 
 
 " You mustn't come so often." 
 
 " Troth, I'm sorry it's too often for your rever- 
 ence. I'd be blithe to come and see your bonny 
 face if I never got a ha'porth. It's not much an 
 old body the like of me needs, and you'd wonder 
 how sensible the childer are, and how they can 
 take the good with the bad. And Charlie's that 
 ould- fashioned he can aye make out something 
 for himself." 
 
 Mr. Duffin restrained himself from saying that 
 when her dogs were gone she would find it easier 
 to live. He could not find it in his heart to break 
 the unconscious content of the gay old woman. 
 
 In return for a sixpence she called down showers 
 of blessings upon his head, and gave a promise of 
 "stirabout to their supper" to Charlie and the 
 rest.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 71 
 
 Mr. Duffin could hear her singing " The Bogie 
 Man " to them as he walked away. 
 
 He went into his house quietly, anxious to avoid 
 Betty's society, and sat himself down to the ser- 
 mon he had left in despair that morning. But 
 again words failed him. This was Saturday, and 
 it must be written ; but how could he write when 
 always between him and the paper came Ellen's 
 fair little face and sad blue eyes ? 
 
 What a merry little thing she had been when 
 he first knew her ! 
 
 Why, even at Sunday-school, the least thing 
 would touch Ellen's risible faculties, and at treats 
 and festivals she kept all the rest amused. 
 
 And what a hero what a great, glorious being 
 he was in her eyes ! How differently he appeared 
 to her and Miss Baring ! But Miss Baring was a 
 lady and Ellen was a labourer's daughter. 
 
 He tried to draw himself back to his sermon, 
 but he could not find a text to please him ; those 
 he came upon seemed too glaringly apposite. 
 
 Mr. Dufnn had an instinct of considering every- 
 thing with regard to his own personality. When 
 he had preached of the equality of mankind, 
 it had been with a distinct recollection of the 
 Barings and himself ; when of repentance, with a 
 comfortable feeling that his sins were less glaring 
 than those of most men ; when he drew vivid 
 pictures of death and the judgment, painting a 
 very fiery, substantial hell, it had been with the 
 conviction that a well-conducted, decorous man 
 like himself was assuredly "saved." 
 
 His was distinctly the religion of fear. If he 
 could have put thought behind him his conscience 
 could have been deadened, and his wrong to Ellen 
 have soon been forgotten. But when he had to
 
 72 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 sit there alone, hour after hour, concentrating his 
 mind in finding words to warn others to turn 
 from sin, his own sermons terrified him in the 
 loneliness. 
 
 The temptation had been so strong; Ellen 
 had been so pretty, so sweet, so admiring. 
 
 Her yesterday's resistance had roused some of 
 the freshness of his feeling for her, and he could 
 not put her misery out of his head. He had not 
 thought she would take it so hard ; lie had not, 
 in fact, thought about her at all 
 
 He was uneasy, too. What a fool he had been ! 
 Discovery spelt ruin to him ; and though she had 
 made no complaint, would she keep silence later 
 on ? And when her brothers found out ? 
 
 Mr. Duffin was not a physical coward, but as 
 he sat there with his sermon Ellen's terror of her 
 brothers began to infect him. 
 
 Betty's entrance just then and her words for a 
 moment totally unnerved him. 
 
 "Your reverence, Eccles and Wully Lindsay 
 are wanting to see you." 
 
 In a pause of silence Mr. Duffin believed that 
 what he dreaded had come, and stared at Betty 
 with white, stricken face. 
 
 " I am thinking Eccles and Nancy Jane 
 Dougherty have come to give in their names," 
 the unconscious Betty ended with a giggle.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 IT had been a long, dreary day a regular 
 October day, with the sky hidden in thick grey 
 clouds, and an oppression in the air which meant 
 rain in the future. The lake lay dull and leaden 
 behind the poplars, and there were no bright 
 colours in the bog. 
 
 Ellen felt herself weighed down and depressed 
 almost beyond endurance. For a time she sat 
 over the fire doing nothing, not thinking definitely 
 of anything. Every now and then she raised her 
 hand to wipe away a slow tear without disturbing 
 her attitude of depressed patience. 
 
 When the necessity of feeding the pigs had 
 roused her she wandered listlessly down to her 
 grandmother's cottage, where she found Mrs. 
 Mawhinney and Miss M'Eadden in hot dispute, a 
 circumstance by no means uncommon. 
 
 It had begun in the usual way, with Miss 
 M'Fadden's insistence on her right-of-way to the 
 well past her neighbour's door, and perhaps the 
 weather had lent a little extra acerbity to Mrs. 
 Mawhinney's never very sweet temper. 
 
 Miss M'Fadden had put down her cans, and 
 stood, her arms akimbo, a provokingly good- 
 natured smile on her fat face. In contrast to the 
 neatness of her enemy, she was, as usual, burst-
 
 74 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 ing out of her clothes in all directions ; a hastily 
 arranged and very dirty shawl was supposed to 
 conceal the deficiencies of her bodice, but could 
 not hide the gaping interval before her skirt 
 began, nor the long rent which framed a too 
 brief flannel petticoat. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney was much excited, and de- 
 claimed in fury : 
 
 "I look for no better from the like of you! 
 To try and desthroy her character to put your 
 dirty lying insults on her name may the curse 
 of Heaven light on them that bring themselves 
 to say the like " 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney broke down into the breath- 
 less sobbing of an old woman, and Ellen came 
 forward with a white face. 
 
 " What is it, grandma ? " 
 
 " I'm that put about I hardly know what I'm 
 saying," Mrs. Mawhinney wailed. "To think of 
 the lies I've had to stand " 
 
 " It's the truth I'm telling you," said Miss 
 MTadden, still good-humoured. " Sure, we all 
 have our wee failings they're lifeless that's 
 faultless and if she did make a slip in her 
 day " 
 
 " I won't listen to it ! " Mrs. Mawhinney sobbed. 
 " The like of you, Jane MTadden, to dar' to take 
 away the character of a Eoyal Queen to dar' to 
 say that Queen Elizabeth would go to meet her 
 lovers in the moonlight " 
 
 "Well, well, well," said Miss MTadden leni- 
 ently, " she was one of them sperity ones " 
 
 Neither of the two would allow her opponent 
 time to finish a sentence. Mrs. Mawhinney broke 
 in indignantly 
 
 "She was one knew how to conduct herself
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 75 
 
 proper. You may well speak, Jane MTadden, 
 when that black divil Parnell -" 
 
 Miss MTadden in her turn flamed up. 
 
 " You're ready enough to cast a stone at a dead 
 man. He's gone to be judged by higher than you 
 or I. He's in the Lord's hands, and it may be 
 that the tears of Ireland will be fit to wash away 
 his sin." 
 
 Ellen stood silently, regaining her colour in the 
 relief of finding that it was Queen Elizabeth who 
 was attacked. 
 
 The faintest beginning of a breeze rustled the 
 poplars and came to blow about her fair hair, 
 bringing in its train a strong whiff of flax- 
 water. 
 
 Her grandmother turned upon her sharply, and 
 asked her what she was standing there glowering 
 for, and Ellen put in her usual plea of "a sore 
 head," which stood for a sore heart. 
 
 "She could not thole the pain," she said, 
 imagining that Miss M'Fadden's eyes studied her 
 curiously, and with a word or two she wandered 
 away again restlessly. 
 
 "It passes me what ails the wean," Mrs. 
 Mawhinney said, looking after her. 
 
 Miss M'Fadden took up her cans in silence; 
 she had her ideas. 
 
 All the neighbours had ; a wave of gossip had 
 reached all except her own people, and Ellen 
 herself was dimly suspicious that this was so. 
 
 In the long, slow-passing days, when the turf 
 was in and there was not much to do, she began 
 to avoid people as well as she could. 
 
 She tried her hardest to be like herself, never 
 venturing to look ahead, but fighting desperately 
 from day to day to keep her secret. She felt
 
 76 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 her father watched her with anxiety ; he asked 
 her what ailed her once or twice, and once 
 she heard him say to Eccles, " The wean's not 
 herself." 
 
 To cheer her up they tried to devise little 
 pleasures and outings for her, which cut her 
 to the heart. Even Willy clisturbed himself 
 about her, and took some trouble to get her 
 a canary, which, he said, would "keep her in 
 company." 
 
 A faint rumour of a rumour reached her grand- 
 mother at last, and she spoke to Ellen about it 
 one evening. 
 
 " Ellen, I've been hearing some unpleasant talk, 
 but I don't doubt it's all lies." 
 
 Ellen, with a quick start, braced herself for 
 denial 
 
 " Just that there's a sough that you're not as 
 careful as you might be." 
 
 " It's a black lie," said Ellen breathlessly. 
 
 " I'm glad of it. A young woman can't mind 
 herself too well. There's nothing of it ? There's 
 no one after you ? " 
 
 " No one," said Ellen ; " it's a wicked lie." 
 
 Why had she denied it? What was the 
 use? she thought to herself as she walked 
 up the lane. It only meant that she could 
 hold up her head as an honest girl such a little 
 time longer. But that was worth much ; it was 
 worth everything to her, for it was all she 
 had left. 
 
 The hunted, defiant look in her eyes made her 
 father say at once what had been in his mind for 
 some time. 
 
 " I'm afeared you're fretting about not getting 
 to service is that it, daughter ? "
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 77 
 
 Ellen drew a long, sobbing breath. 
 
 " Why, what ails you this minute ? " said her 
 father quickly. 
 
 " I came too hard up the loanan," said Ellen 
 softly.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 ON Eccles Lindsay's wedding-day the church was 
 crowded. Not his friends only but the whole 
 village had turned out for the occasion, and gossip 
 ran furious. 
 
 His life had been a reproduction in another 
 class of that of "a man about town," with the 
 reputation among mothers of being dangerous 
 and not likely to marry. If a girl began to 
 "walk" with Eccles her neighbours predicted 
 misfortune. 
 
 Consequently his marriage excited general in- 
 terest, increased by the knowledge that he had 
 made several efforts to escape it. 
 
 Miss M'Fadden sat on a hillock in the church- 
 yard, and as she was known to' have all the 
 gossip of the country-side in her head, a group 
 had collected round her. She was gracefully 
 attired in a grey serge skirt, on which she had 
 hastily arranged a flounce with black pins, an 
 old blue satin tea-jacket of Mrs. Baring's, with 
 its glories half concealed by a black velvet cape 
 trimmed with cream lace, and a white straw hat 
 adorned with black satin ribbon and very dilapi- 
 dated ostrich feathers. 
 
 She had all the confidence of feeling herself 
 dressed suitably and well. 
 
 " Keep us, J ane i are you going to turn, that
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 79 
 
 you're coming to a Protestant wedding ? " said a 
 jocund neighbour. 
 
 "Ne'er a bit of me," said Miss M'Fadden 
 cheerfully; "but I was up at the manor-house 
 with a blouse of Miss Nelly's, and I thought I'd 
 look in and see what sport was going, and show 
 my fine clothes." Here Miss M'Fadden laughed 
 so heartily that she was unable for some minutes 
 to go on. " I'll be on the safe side and not go 
 into the church, but maybe I'm old enough to 
 risk going as far as the porch." 
 
 " Would you be surprised, now, to find there was 
 no wedden and Eccles was away to America ? " 
 
 " Ay, that I would. She has a better hoult of 
 him than that." 
 
 The reference was to Nancy Jane Dougherty, 
 who was popularly supposed to have done more 
 than her share to bring about the marriage. 
 
 Mr. Johnston, the shoemaker, shook his head 
 wisely. 
 
 " He's a slippery one ; sure, he'd never have 
 had her if she had not taken a chance when he'd 
 had a glass." 
 
 " And maybe you've heard that next week he 
 went to see and get their names off he and 
 Wully." 
 
 " He didn't ! " in a tone of much astonishment 
 and interest. 
 
 " Sure enough. And Mr. Duffin says if he'd 
 changed his mind, of coorse he couldn't hinder 
 it, and he'd take the names off. And then he 
 sees Eccles and Wully look at one another, and 
 says he, ' What is it now ? ' And says Eccles, 
 ' But what about the shilling I give in ? ' ' Sure, 
 I can't give that back,' says Mr. Duffin. And 
 then Eccles looks at Wully, and looks back at
 
 So ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 Mr. Duffin, and says he, ' Well, maybe, if that's 
 the way of it, the names had as well stand.' " 
 
 " Well, she's getting a careful man any way," 
 said the jocund neighbour. 
 
 "But he was off to leave the country after 
 that," said Mr. Johnston. 
 
 Miss M'Fadden looked wise. 
 
 " No one knows the rights of that," she said, 
 implying that she knew much, did she choose to 
 tell. 
 
 "He was clean gone for two days anyhow," 
 said the sexton's wife ; " and one day, when we 
 were all saying he be to have gone to New 
 York, Nancy Jane druv off on a car to Bally- 
 magra, and fetched him back dead drunk after 
 daily-goin'. That's the truth, I know, for I saw 
 them getting him into her sister's." 
 
 Everybody gave a word of assent. It was well 
 known that Nancy Jane had come to stay with 
 her sister and arranged to have the wedding in 
 Eccles' parish instead of hers by way of making 
 things secure. 
 
 "Nancy Jane's not easy daunted," said some 
 one else, and there was a general laugh. 
 
 "I don't envy her an unwilling man," said 
 Essie Dawson, who was popularly supposed to 
 have looked on Eccles with eyes of favour. 
 
 " Willing or unwilling, they're none so easy to 
 get," said Johnston. 
 
 A beginning of stir outside the graveyard 
 broke up the group, not unwillingly, as there 
 was a decided chilliness in the air. For short in- 
 tervals gleams of cold sunshine burst their way 
 between the clouds, but brought brightness and 
 not heat with them. 
 
 Ellen Lindsay came up, separating from her
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 8r 
 
 father at the gate, and gravitating naturally to 
 the women. 
 
 She had come out in reckless mood, determined 
 for this last time to throw thought and care to 
 the winds. She would forget and enjoy herself. 
 
 " Well, daughter, is that you ? " said Miss 
 MTadden. " Why didn't you put on your 
 jacket ? You're that happed up ; let me fix the 
 shawl for you." 
 
 Ellen drew back. 
 
 " I'll do well enough," she said ; " I'm cold- 
 rife these days.-" 
 
 "Maybe you're wise," said Miss M'Fadden. 
 "Is there any word of the bride yet? Is it to 
 Ballymagra you're going ? " 
 
 " It's out that way, and across by Ballysilly," 
 said Ellen. 
 
 "Eccles is the boy to choose a road with 
 plenty of publics," said Johnston. 
 
 "And Mr. Duffin aye at him to take the 
 
 [e wouldn't till after the wedden; he was 
 keeping himself for that," said Ellen. It was so 
 much a matter of course that every man should 
 get drunk on his wedding-day; to refrain would 
 have been looked on as the evidence of rather a 
 mean spirit. 
 
 A distant cheer announced the approach of the 
 wedding party. 
 
 Eccles had had " a drop " already, perhaps to 
 screw his courage to the sticking-point. His 
 bride conducted him along firmly, heedless of the 
 ironical cheers with which they were greeted. 
 
 Eccles kept glancing suspiciously from side to 
 side, quite aware that he was likely to get a warm 
 reception ; but the time had not come yet.
 
 82 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 The women were rather impressed with the 
 bridal party. 
 
 " I can see there's two cars waiting at the 
 least," said the sexton's wife. 
 
 "There's no stint, any way. Look at Nancy 
 Jane's dress with that deep of satin on it, and 
 good satin, too," said Miss MTadden ; " and the 
 flowers in her bonnet and a tulle veil, no less ! And 
 the sash on her sister wasn't got for nothing." 
 
 These details naturally appealed to a dress- 
 maker's soul. She was distressed that Ellen did 
 not represent their side of the lake equally gor- 
 geously. 
 
 " I wouldn't like them foreigners to have the 
 crow." 
 
 Ellen laughed uncertainly. 
 
 " You'll set my face before Nancy Jane's at the 
 least," she said. 
 
 Nancy Jane was indeed peculiarly plain, but 
 the remark was not like Ellen. 
 
 The people crowded into church, anxious to 
 miss nothing. Ellen went with the rest, and 
 whispered and laughed more than any one. 
 Only she carefully kept her eyes from wander- 
 ing in the direction of the Communion table, 
 where Mr. Duffin stood in his surplice. She had 
 never seen him in church since 
 
 Ellen had no very romantic ideas in connection 
 with matrimony ; in her class girls seldom mar- 
 ried young, and marriages were for the most part 
 decidedly mercenary, taking " fortune " into first 
 consideration, and next the man's capability of 
 earning, and the woman's strength and house- 
 keeping powers. And this was a particularly 
 unromantic wedding. 
 
 Nevertheless she felt it necessary to distract
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 83 
 
 her mind from the service, which she told herself 
 she would never hear in Nancy Jane's place. 
 
 Mr. Duffin, for his part, kept his eyes fastened 
 on his prayer-book, and read hastily and mecha- 
 nically. Once he had to pause to rebuke the 
 unusual tittering and whispering. 
 
 Just before the end of the service his eyes and 
 Ellen's met. They had carefully avoided this, 
 and it was as if a common impulse made their 
 resolution break down at the same moment. 
 
 Mr. Duffin saw a sweet little flushed face, with 
 strange, shining eyes. Ellen saw God knows 
 what sublimated vision of the real man. 
 
 She looked down again at once, colouring 
 vividly. She had a curious momentary flash of 
 pride in the knowledge of the link between her 
 and him. But with the look all her false gaiety 
 died out, and left her dazed and troubled. 
 
 A few minutes later everything was over. Eccles' 
 head had been gradually clearing during the cere- 
 mony. After a pause, to make sure that the last 
 word had been said, he turned abruptly on his 
 heel and made for the church door, leaving his 
 bride to follow as she could. 
 
 He had hoped with the suddenness of his retreat 
 to cut his way through the group of his contem- 
 poraries at the door, from which he knew what to 
 expect, and he almost succeeded. One storm of 
 rice and flour did reach him before he was out 
 of the church ; the rest he escaped. A slipper, 
 which Miss MTadden had been carefully pre- 
 serving, caught the best man on the side of the 
 head, and the bride and best maid had their 
 dresses whitened with flour. 
 
 Eccles waited for nothing; by the time the 
 rest of the party were out of church he was to
 
 84 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 be seen making his way at racing speed over 
 the fields. 
 
 The bride took the matter with commendable 
 calmness. She remarked that Eccles " be to have 
 disremembered about setting down their names, 
 but maybe it wouldn't make much odds," and that 
 " they'd better be starting, and they'd likely meet 
 him a piece down the road." She seemed much 
 more disturbed about the damage to her dress 
 than about her bridegroom's behaviour and the 
 excitement round her. 
 
 There was a confusion over the start. Ellen 
 had only to hold back a little and allow a younger 
 Dougherty girl, in high delight, to take her place 
 on the second car. There was no time for dis- 
 cussion, and the horses were cold and frightened 
 by the noise, and would not stand. 
 
 The cars went off at a hand-gallop amidst 
 deafening cheers and not a little hooting, and 
 the whole party swept down the road after 
 them. 
 
 Ellen was left in the graveyard alone. More 
 and more in the distance she could hear cries 
 of " A wedden ! a wedden ! " in the shrill voices 
 of children who were just out of school She 
 shivered in the cold wind, which was stripping 
 the trees in gusts and making little heaps of the 
 dead leaves which fell every now and then with 
 a swish at her feet. 
 
 Mr. Duffin came hastily out of the vestry. 
 
 " I was afraid you wouldn't wait," he said. He 
 faced Ellen with quivering lips and passionate 
 eyes. 
 
 She made no answer in words ; her whole ex- 
 pression and attitude answered. What did it 
 matter ? What difference could it make now ?
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 85 
 
 " Ellen, is there anything I can do ? Can't I 
 help you ? " 
 
 She shook her head indifferently. 
 
 " If if you see that there's no good no good 
 at all in my speaking out " 
 
 Mr. Duffin, crimson, stammered and paused. 
 He was trying to compromise and convince his 
 own conscience, while at the same time to put 
 into words a difficult request for Ellen's silence. 
 It was a promise which he found it very hard to 
 ask for, and yet it was so necessary, so very neces- 
 sary that he should get it. 
 
 Ellen looked at him uncomprehendingly. 
 
 " What I mean is " In the difficulty of 
 
 expressing his meaning he caught eagerly at any 
 excuse for postponing it. " Why, child," he said, 
 "you are shaking." 
 
 " It's with the cold," said Ellen. 
 
 The wind was coming in increasing gusts 
 round the corner of the church, bearing with it 
 a sprinkling of ice-cold rain. In the distance 
 they could still hear a vague sound of cheering 
 and catch a last glimpse of the two cars at a hill 
 on the road. 
 
 " Come come into the vestry," said Mr. Duffin 
 in an impulse. 
 
 He drew her into the warmth with him. The 
 little room looked cosy ; there was a good fire in 
 the grate, and a crimson cloth on the table that 
 held his prayer-book and a glass and bottle of 
 water. 
 
 Ellen stood where he left her with the warmth 
 gradually creeping into her chilled little figure. 
 
 He looked at her for a moment. 
 
 "Don't look so wretched," he said. "Do you 
 think I've no feeling ? You make me miserable."
 
 86 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 " I'm very sorry, sir. You'd better let me go 
 home." 
 
 " But there's this if you're wanting 
 money " 
 
 "Money's little use when you're heart-broke," 
 said Ellen in a hard voice. 
 
 Her quiet apathy disturbed him more than 
 tears or protestations. 
 
 He shifted his feet uncomfortably and tapped 
 on the table. 
 
 Ellen had not lost her prettiness ; her face 
 had even gained in a delicacy which Mr. Duffin, 
 curiously, found particularly attractive. 
 
 All morning he had had burning in his mind 
 the fact that the Barings were having a party, 
 and had not asked him, and the remembrance of 
 his embarrassing out-of-placeness at the Lawsons' 
 the afternoon before. 
 
 A thought that had already come into his mind 
 once or twice flashed back again. Why not ease 
 his conscience end this lonely life make him- 
 self safe ? Ellen was as sweet and dainty as any 
 lady, and in another parish 
 
 They two were together, completely alone, shut 
 in to a warmth and comfort which went to his 
 head like intoxication. The rain drove sharply 
 against the window, bringing with it a stray leaf 
 which tapped so humanly against the glass that 
 he started. 
 
 Ellen stood looking into the fire with the face 
 of one who expected nothing more of life. The 
 temptation to bring the old sparkle to her eyes 
 and the old smile to her lips overcame him. 
 
 He filled a glass of water and drained it. Then 
 he drew close to her and let his hand fall warmly 
 on hers.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 87 
 
 " Ellen," he said hoarsely. His voice, breaking 
 the silence, sounded strange to himself. " Ellen 
 shall we be married ? " 
 
 The words were said half against his own will 
 and intention they were said. 
 
 Ellen turned on him in a flash. 
 
 " Oh ! " she said breathlessly, "oh " 
 
 " I mean it I swear to you " 
 
 She caught him up passionately. 
 
 " Mind what you say mind what you say ! 
 I'm I'm not sure that I rightly understand " 
 
 "I am going to marry you." As Mr. Duffin 
 repeated the words they seemed all at once 
 unbearably compromising and. ruinous and un- 
 necessary. 
 
 Ellen's whole face was drawn together in an 
 effort to be quite sure. 
 
 " Say it again slow ? I've maybe took you up 
 wrong. Did you say you would be willin' to 
 marry me ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 She turned such a ghastly white that for a 
 moment he thought she was going to faint ; but 
 instead she burst into a very storm of weeping.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 INDEPENDENT HEROES' L.O.L., No. 177. 
 M'CANCE'S TRUE-BLUES, L.O.L., No. 320. 
 
 A Soiree and Ball in Connection with above Lodges 
 
 will be held in 
 
 BALLYTURBET ORANGE HALL, 
 ON THURSDAY EVENING, STH DECEMBER. 
 
 Tea on the Table'at 7 o'clock. 
 
 Wreaths of Orange, Blue, and Purple 
 Our most glorious ball do grace ; 
 
 Maids so spotless as the turtle, 
 Hail your welcome to our place. 
 
 Dear brethren, we you invite 
 
 While our golden lamp doth shine ; 
 
 Spreading lustre all around, 
 
 With beams of light almost divine. 
 
 And ladies, too, we call on you 
 
 Our joys and pleasures for to share, 
 
 And Ballyturbet boys, who fear no noise, 
 Will rejoice to meet you there. 
 
 Admission (Gentlemen) ONE SHILLING. 
 
 This legend engraved on a bright orange card, 
 and with the addition of a list of stewards and a 
 picture of King William on a prancing steed was
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 89 
 
 presented to Miss MTadden across her open half- 
 door as an excellent joke, and by her received 
 with much amusement. 
 
 It was not often that " Black Wully " con- 
 descended to any lightness in his dealing with 
 "Papists," and marked a state of great good- 
 humour on his part. But his jokes were always 
 of a somewhat grim kind and not to be trifled 
 with. Had Barclay not been crippled the present 
 one might not improbably have ended in rough 
 words at the best. 
 
 But Miss M'Fadden, who was doing her hair 
 after a perfunctory fashion at a glass by the bed, 
 received him with hearty laughter. 
 
 " Get away with you, Wully ; you might have 
 more sense." 
 
 " Sense, indade ! when I'm after inviting you 
 to take the flure with me. Sure, don't I show 
 my sense in choosing the likeliest young woman 
 hereabout ? " 
 
 Willy Lindsay stood lounging in the doorway 
 after a half-stooped, slouching fashion which hid 
 his real height, but could not hide his broad 
 shoulders and strongly knit form. His coarse, 
 black hair framed a large face with prominent 
 cheek-bones, small, deep-set eyes, and small, very 
 white teeth an ignorant, cruel face, the face of 
 a low type of Irish Celt. 
 
 " You ought to have seen me a while ago," said 
 Miss M'Fadden jovially, " painting away for dear 
 life at a flag for the seventeenth, and setting be- 
 tween a window open at the one side and the dure 
 at the other to make the paint dry quick, with 
 Barclay grumbling at the draught." 
 
 " Heth ! I didn't know you were a painter," 
 said Willy.
 
 90 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 "Sure, she'd make an offer at anything," 
 Barclay commented from his bed. 
 
 "And why not? Who knows what they can 
 do till they try? And when I heard the boys 
 talking in trouble over the expense of a new flag, 
 I up and says I could maybe get a bit of white 
 satin from an old ball-dress of Miss Nelly's, and 
 if they'd give me a pot of paint and a pictur' of 
 Emmet they should have the best flag they iver 
 had." 
 
 "She's not easy beat," Barclay said, after his 
 usual fashion of indulgent approval. 
 
 " I'll hould you'd like a sight of it, Wully ? 
 The white satin, with Emmet's blue coat and his 
 cheeks like roses, is just the purtiest thing you 
 ever seen. And there's not many would have done 
 it as well at the first set off, forby having to pull 
 out the hairs of my head to make a brush with." 
 
 Miss M'Fadden made no attempt to conceal 
 her pride, and Willy did not fail to make some 
 approving comments. 
 
 " You'll maybe paint us a flag for the twelfth ? " 
 he said. 
 
 "Maybe I will," said Miss M'Fadden. "I'm 
 thinking, if I get time, I'll paint a few pictur's to 
 lighten up the wall while my hand's in. But 
 I've that blouse of Miss Nelly's to finish first. 
 Where did I lay it, Barclay ? You had it to 
 cover you last night, and I haven't seen it since." 
 
 It was perhaps as well for Miss Baring's peace 
 of mind that she did not know all the vicissitudes 
 through which her clothes passed. 
 
 This particular blouse was in due time unearthed 
 from under the bed, and Miss M'Fadden set to 
 work with her machine to use up the remains 
 of daylight.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 91 
 
 " Miss Nelly is set on having it by Tuesday," 
 she explained to Willy, " and she's a fancy to 
 have made it in some way of her own, and nothing 
 else will do her. To my eye all them colours 
 look just washed out, but the quality have their 
 queer fancies ; and indeed, as I told Miss Nelly 
 when she showed me the stuff, it's that odd you 
 might say it was pretty through ugliness." 
 
 Willy took himself off with a curt nod before 
 the whizz of the machine began. Two of the 
 M'Cances were going to America, he said, and he 
 was going to the "convoy" to-night, but he had 
 to be in Ballyturbet, to an Orange meeting, first. 
 
 "And I'll hould there'll be plenty of whisky 
 going at the ' convoy,' and Wully won't come off 
 with less than his share," Miss M'Fadden stopped 
 her machine for a moment to say. 
 
 " And him only just getting to his work again 
 after Eccles' wedden," said Barclay. 
 
 " Heth ! there wasn't a boy fit to walk home 
 that evening," said Miss M'Fadden, with a laugh ; 
 "and the sough says Nancy Jane had had as 
 much as was good for her. But since then she 
 has made Eccles take the pledge, and I'm tould 
 she says she'll tache him with a stick if he ever 
 comes home to her in drink." 
 
 "I'm not envying Eccles, fortune and all," said 
 Barclay. 
 
 Then came a silence, in which nothing but the 
 whirr of the machine was to be heard. 
 
 Barclay lay still, his eyes dreamily wandering 
 about the cottage. 
 
 The noise of the machine sometimes drove him 
 beyond endurance, and then his sister had to stop 
 it for a time, but he always bore as long as he 
 could. It meant meat and drink to them both.
 
 92 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 He lay, as he had lain so many evenings, watch- 
 ing the dusk gradually creeping over the bog ; he 
 liked to see the crimson band of sunset growing 
 narrower, while the bright colours scattered over 
 the turf merged by degrees into a misty brown. 
 
 When the Lindsays' cottage ceased to be dis- 
 tinct he called to his sister. 
 
 " It's time for you to leave working and wet 
 the tea," he said ; " sure, you can't see what 
 you're at." 
 
 " It's early dark this evening." 
 
 " No earlier than usual. I can tell by the time 
 Ellen Lindsay goes for the goats ; she's just gone 
 by this minute." 
 
 " I never see Ellen go out till daily-goin' these 
 days," said Miss M'Fadden. " I hope all's right 
 with the wean ; I'd be loath for anything to ail 
 her. But she's been aye left too much her 
 lone." 
 
 Barclay made no answer, and his sister began 
 obediently to get ready tea. Then she crossed 
 the kitchen to close the half-door, and paused, 
 looking out into the dusk. 
 
 Ellen came up the lane, leading the grey goat 
 by its tether, and singing softly to herself as she 
 came. She stopped when she saw Miss M'Fadden 
 at her door, turning to her with a sudden smile. 
 
 Miss M'Fadden greeted her favourite cheerily. 
 
 " Is that you, daughter ? Heth ! it's a long 
 time since I heard you singing. You're light- 
 hearted this evening." 
 
 " I am that," said Ellen, with a quiver in her 
 voice. 
 
 " You're mended quarely this last while, but 
 you're not back to yourself." 
 
 " Oh, I'm rightly."
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 93 
 
 Ellen paused still, and the grey goat began to 
 crop grass by the side of the lane. She did not 
 know exactly what she was waiting for, nor try 
 to analyse why it was a comfort to be near fat, 
 good - natured Miss MTadden. The girl had 
 missed her mother in a thousand practical ways all 
 her life, but never as she did now. It seemed so 
 forlornly lonely that all should go on as usual, 
 everybody remain placid and unmoved, while she 
 was living every hour in intense excitement. 
 She would have died rather than speak out one 
 of the thousand hopes and fears bursting through 
 her mind, but she wanted another woman to un- 
 derstand and sympathise by instinct. 
 
 Yet she shrank at once into herself at some- 
 thing more than usually kind in Miss M'Fadden's 
 voice when she asked her to " corne in and lain 
 down a while." 
 
 "What! with the goat?" said Ellen, with a 
 laugh. " She nearly has the arms pulled out of me 
 as it is. Dear ! but these dark evenings make 
 the time from daily-goin' ill to pass. I just keep 
 wishing for the next morning, the days are that 
 long." 
 
 There was a world of restlessness in her voice. 
 
 " I'm going to Ballymagra the morrow morn," 
 she said. She could not help saying it ; though 
 how was Miss M'Fadden to know what going to 
 Ballymagra meant to Ellen ? 
 
 " Are you, indade ? That's a long road, and 
 you none that strong." 
 
 " Oh, I'm strong enough. You're fit to do a 
 deal when your heart's light," said Ellen, with a 
 sigh cut short. 
 
 Was her heart so very light ? 
 
 As she began to shorten the goat's tether with
 
 94 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 a view to moving on, a little bent figure drew out 
 of the dusk, coining towards the cottage in a line 
 which was by no means of the straightest. 
 
 "Sure, it's old Mary," said Miss M'Fadden. 
 " You're just in time for a drop of tea why, what 
 ails you, woman ? " 
 
 Old Mary Ann crawled into the cottage and let 
 herself drop wearily on a stool by the tire. She 
 seemed to have shrunk into herself and grown 
 smaller and browner than ever, and she volun- 
 teered neither word nor blessing. 
 
 " What ails you ? " Miss MTadden repeated. 
 
 "They've took them away." 
 
 " What is it they've took, dear ? Would it be 
 your childer ? Is that what you're maning ? Did 
 anything happen them ? " 
 
 "Ay, they took them away. They drownded 
 the puppies and took the rest. They were harm- 
 ing nobody, but there wasn't one to speak for 
 me." 
 
 Miss M'Fadden flamed up indignantly. 
 
 " It's a dirty, mean shame ! The divil fly away 
 with them that done it ! We'll make them give 
 them back, darlint, never fear. Wait till I give 
 the fire a stir ; you're just bate out with the cold. 
 Sure, we'll spake to his honour or Mr. Duffin." 
 
 " Yes, I'll warrant they'll help you," said Ellen 
 eagerly. 
 
 " It's no use," said old Mary Ann wearily ; " the 
 puppies are drownded. I followed after, and I 
 could hear them squealin' as they felt the water. 
 And you wouldn't believe how petted they were 
 on me and how knowing they'd got. I've took a 
 drop since, that I don't deny ; I couldn't thole to 
 mind it." 
 
 Ellen suddenly covered her face with her hands,
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 95 
 
 " Oh," she said, " it's dreadful to see any one 
 unhappy ! " 
 
 Miss M'Fadden had gone to the dresser for a 
 candle. When she turned round again the girl 
 had disappeared into the darkness. 
 
 Miss M'Fadden shook her head dubiously. 
 
 " I hope all's right with the wean," she said 
 again.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 ELLEN was up long before daybreak the next 
 morning. She dressed herself by the light of a 
 candle, and though she moved as softly as she 
 could, her father woke, and grumbled at being 
 roused so early these dark days. What did Ellen 
 want in Bally magra at all, and why need she be 
 there so early ? 
 
 She could hardly concentrate her attention 
 sufficiently to give intelligible answers. 
 
 She was to meet Mr. Duffin at the registry 
 office at ten o'clock, and she must leave herself 
 two good hours for the walk. 
 
 But she was quite ready soon after half-past 
 seven ; she had fed the chickens and milked the 
 goats, and given her father his breakfast, though 
 she had scarcely tasted her own. Just as well to 
 be on the safe side and start a little early ; she 
 would then be sure to get away before the neigh- 
 bours were about, and she felt as if all who saw 
 her must guess her errand. Besides, who knew 
 what delays she might meet with ? 
 
 When she opened the door the cold morning 
 air rushed in, and she paused a moment on the 
 threshold, looking back at her unconscious father, 
 who was lighting his pipe. 
 
 "Have you everything to your hand, da?
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 97 
 
 You'll find a piece of bacon on the second shelf 
 of the dresser, and if I'm not in to milk the goats 
 by evening " 
 
 Lindsay stared at her. 
 
 " Keep us ! Sure, you'll be in by then if you're 
 ever coming ! " 
 
 Ellen still made a wistful pause. When she 
 saw her father knock the ashes out of his pipe 
 and prepare to go out she turned away slowly. 
 
 There was a red line of faintest coming sunrise 
 across the lake as she started, and her feet went 
 over the grass, damp with heavy dew, with a 
 squelching sound. When her shawl brushed the 
 hedge it brought back a sprinkling of tiny dew- 
 drops. 
 
 She got her hands wet and scratched gather- 
 ing a spray of yellow whin blossom to pin in her 
 shawl. 
 
 The damp morning air exhilarated her. She 
 was painfully excited now that the culminating 
 moment had almost come. She had not realised 
 before how the anxiety of the last few weeks had 
 weighed upon her nerves. Now, she told herself, 
 all must be well. 
 
 Marriage would make all right. " A slip " was 
 not regarded severely if the man " made an honest 
 woman " of the girl he had betrayed. 
 
 These were the sentiments and opinions of her 
 neighbours, and Ellen was not beyond them. 
 She felt that the approaching ceremony in the 
 registry office would lift the largest portion of 
 shame from her shoulders and make her very 
 happy. 
 
 Who would dare to say a word against the 
 minister's wife, who would live at the rectory and 
 have a servant to do her bidding ? How proud
 
 98 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 her father would be ! He need never do another 
 hand's turn unless he chose. Ellen had very 
 happy, wonderful dreams, into which Mr. Duffin's 
 figure came with a kind of awed worship. Was 
 it within the limits of possibility that some day 
 she would be asked " to her dinner " at the manor- 
 house ? Nothing seemed impossible in this mar- 
 vellous new world which was before her a 
 glorious prospect to Ellen. 
 
 But it never occurred to her that Mr. Duffin 
 might wish to take her away from Ballyturbet. 
 
 The future after ten o'clock that day was vague 
 and dream-like. 
 
 She had only seen Mr. Duffin once since the 
 day of Eccles' marriage, and he had told her 
 nothing but the time and place where she was 
 to meet him. 
 
 The light grew every moment clearer as she 
 walked. She scarcely felt the five long Irish 
 miles. Her mind was so far away that once 
 an early bread-cart nearly ran her down. 
 
 As she drew near Ballymagra she became seized 
 with a fear that she might be late, and hurried 
 on feverishly till her breath went. The clock at 
 home might be wrong, or she might have been 
 slower than she had thought. 
 
 She only slackened her pace when she came in 
 sight of the church clock at Ballymagra, which 
 told her it was half-past nine. 
 
 She was too early after all, and she might 
 have known it, as Mr. Duffin had not overtaken 
 her. 
 
 She sat down by the roadside to wait, but the 
 grass was damp still, and she felt as if all eyes 
 were upon her. It was as if her story was written 
 in her face for passers-by to read.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 99 
 
 Meeting the curious glance of a girl driving 
 three skinny cows, Ellen got up and wandered 
 a little way down the road. But the clock drew 
 her back. 
 
 A quarter, ten minutes to ten. Perhaps she 
 had better go on to the registry office and wait 
 about there. 
 
 It was a neat little box of a house, with a 
 scrap of avenue and a garden. 
 
 Ellen lingered outside the gate, wondering if 
 by any chance she could have missed Mr. Duffin. 
 
 She could not bring herself to ask any ques- 
 tions ; it seemed to her as if to do so would 
 be to betray all. She became self-conscious to 
 agony, crimsoning under the careless glance of 
 passers-by. 
 
 When the clock struck ten she gained courage 
 to stop a small boy and ask him if there was any 
 other road from Bally turbet. The boy stared at 
 her and said he did not know. He was late for 
 school and would not wait to think. 
 
 Ellen was discouraged, and made no attempt 
 to stop any one else. 
 
 Once a woman paused and asked if aught ailed 
 her, but Ellen's answer was so abrupt in her alarm 
 that she turned away offended. 
 
 What could have happened ? 
 
 Half-an-hour later an idea occurred to her: 
 perhaps Mr. Duffin had been before her, and 
 was waiting for her all this time in the registry 
 office. 
 
 This possibility gave her courage to make her 
 way very slowly, and with much hesitation, to the 
 little house. 
 
 A red-haired boy came to answer her knock. 
 Ellen could hardly find breath or words.
 
 ioo ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 She said, " There isn't a gentleman waiting here, 
 sir?" 
 
 And when the boy said there was no one, she 
 asked desperately for Mr. Duffin by name. 
 
 " There's nobody called yet," said the boy con- 
 solingly, "but likely he'll be in later." 
 
 Ellen turned away and walked slowly down 
 the avenue. 
 
 " It's naught but that he's been kept," she said 
 to herself resolutely ; " it's not easy for the like 
 of him to get away." 
 
 She did not like to wait near the house lest she 
 should be noticed, but she could not bring herself 
 to go far away. Besides, she was beginning to 
 feel very tired, and ill and weak from want of 
 food. 
 
 Every now and then she walked a little way 
 up the road, sitting down to rest occasionally. 
 It was a cold, grey day, with thick clouds, and 
 Ellen found her shawl scarcely enough pro- 
 tection. 
 
 She resolutely kept her mind a blank, not 
 allowing distinct form to an awful fear that hung 
 over her. 
 
 About twelve o'clock she again ventured to the 
 registry office, on the wild chance that Mr. Duffin 
 might have passed in unnoticed by her. 
 
 The boy was fairly sympathetic too sympa- 
 thetic for Ellen's comfort. She knew he was look- 
 ing after her as she went down the path. 
 
 By this time she was too worn-out and feeling 
 too ill to walk any more. She went to a little 
 distance from the office and sat down drearily by 
 the hedge. The grey clouds were resolving them- 
 selves into rain, which came first in a few slow 
 drops, and increased to a steady downpour.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 101 
 
 Ellen's light shawl was soon wet through, but 
 she never thought of seeking shelter. Her mind 
 could not get beyond the one fixed idea of wait- 
 ing there for Mr. Duffin. He had been detained, 
 but he must come ; it was impossible that he 
 would not come. 
 
 A good-natured postman paused on his round 
 to advise the girl to seek shelter. Ellen felt a 
 difficulty in keeping her voice from breaking into 
 a scream as she sought for words to answer him. 
 When he saw she was obstinate he went on and 
 left her. 
 
 She could feel little streams of water running 
 down her neck, and her feet rested in a puddle ; 
 but she was apathetically indifferent, and hardly 
 noticed discomfort or hunger. 
 
 Every time she heard wheels, or even footfalls, 
 she was on her feet with strained eyes. When 
 the early dusk of a December day began to creep 
 on she was still waiting. 
 
 There had been very few passers-by for the last 
 hour or so. It was some time since Ellen had 
 even had a chance of hoping, when she suddenly 
 caught sight of the dark figure of a man in the 
 distance. 
 
 He was coming along the wet road after the 
 fashion of one who was tired, splashing through 
 the mud without choosing his steps and stooping 
 in his walk. She had been disappointed so many 
 times that she refused to let herself spring to her 
 feet, and sat still, trembling and waiting. 
 
 This time the man did not pass the registrar's 
 gate ; he turned into it, and under his umbrella 
 Ellen told herself she recognised Mr. Duffin's 
 figure. 
 
 At last !
 
 102 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 She forgot wet, weariness, hunger, as she made 
 her way oiice more to the house. 
 
 She could see his footprints up the path ; 
 already a tiny puddle was forming where each 
 heel had been. 
 
 Her fingers were almost too numb to raise 
 the knocker, and it slipped from her and fell 
 with a bang which resounded through the little 
 house. 
 
 This time a woman came to the door a middle- 
 aged, sharp-faced woman, who looked Ellen sus- 
 piciously up and down. But she was past 
 caring. 
 
 " I want to see Mr. Duffin," she said. 
 
 " You're the young woman my boy was telling 
 me about. There's no Mr. Duffin here that I 
 know of." 
 
 "But I saw him go in just now," said Ellen 
 impatiently. 
 
 "You saw nothing of the kind. You saw my 
 husband; he's just in to his tea, and if you've 
 nothing more to say I had as lieve go back to 
 mine." 
 
 Ellen persisted desperately. 
 
 "You must be making a mistake oh, you 
 must ! " 
 
 The woman's voice was kinder as she answered. 
 Terhaps she was touched by the youth of the 
 girl's strained white face, weary with hope 
 deferred. 
 
 " Were you expecting to meet this Mr. Duffin ? " 
 she said. 
 
 " Oh yes," said Ellen ; " he promised faithful. 
 He will have been in to speak about it ; we were 
 to be married to-day." 
 
 " Duffin I'm pretty sure there's no one of the
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 103 
 
 name of Duffin. But I'll ask my husband. Step 
 into the hall, young woman." 
 
 Ellen thanked her stupidly. There was a strong 
 whiff of bacon and eggs in the house, and the 
 registrar a stout man with a red beard was 
 munching when he came out. He had had a 
 long day, and was tired and so impatient of the 
 interruption. 
 
 " What's all this about, my girl ? I've no one 
 of the name of Duffin." 
 
 " Maybe he only put my name Ellen Lindsay. 
 There must be some mistake." 
 
 " There's no mistake about it. There's no licence 
 for any such marriage been asked for, and in any 
 case it's long after canonical hours. You'd just 
 better go home as fast as you can." 
 
 Ellen stood looking at him stupidly, till he 
 repeated his words. 
 
 He did so rather impatiently, anxious to go 
 back to his tea. Three or four children were 
 peering out of the open door of the dining-room, 
 with a background of fire and lamplight. 
 
 Ellen turned away in silence. There was nothing 
 to be said. She gathered her shawl about her and 
 went out into the rain. 
 
 The registrar and the registrar's wife looked at 
 each other, and he shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " She's put off the marriage a trifle too long and 
 he's given her the slip," he said ; " some young 
 scamp probably." 
 
 "But I am sure she said the Reverend Mr. 
 Duffin," said the boy who had answered the 
 door. 
 
 " Nonsense ! Reverend indeed ! A pretty reve- 
 rend !" 
 
 " She looked so ill I half felt I ought to ask her
 
 104 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 to rest," said the registrar's wife ; " but I'm afraid 
 she's a bad character." 
 
 "There's the workhouse near baud. Shut the 
 door, Bob ; it's an awful night ; and come in to 
 tea everything will be half cold." 
 
 Ellen began mechanically to walk towards home. 
 The rain drove in her face, but she scarcely felt 
 it. She went on hopelessly, with a miserable ache 
 at her heart which caught her breath. 
 
 In her greatest unhappiness before she had had 
 the comfort of extreme youth, the comfort of 
 self-pity, but now her despair was too crushing. 
 
 One or two people passed her, indistinct figures 
 in the dusk, and she replied, without thinking 
 what she was saying, to their greeting of " A saf D 
 evening." 
 
 She was dreadfully tired; so tired that every 
 step was a painful effort, and physical suffering 
 began to take possession of her. 
 
 The road, so short in the hopeful morning, 
 seemed endless now. The terrible thought of 
 facing her father made her steps slow at first, 
 but after a time all distinct ideas faded into d 
 longing to get where she could rest. 
 
 The possibility of not going home did not occur 
 to her ; she was too dazed to think out a plan for 
 herself. 
 
 Once or twice she sat down by the roadside, but 
 always gathered herself up again, in the haunting 
 fear that she might find herself unable to get on. 
 A thought that she might die there alone she 
 found unbearable. 
 
 Her wet clothes hung on her and weighed her 
 down; her shawl had half slipped from her shoulders
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 105 
 
 and dragged unheeded in the mud. Very soon 
 she found herself staggering from side to side 
 of the road like a drunken woman ; once or twice 
 she stumbled and fell, but always dragged herself 
 up again, pursued by her great terror. 
 
 She had got beyond caring for anything except 
 to get to the end of this endless road. 
 
 On and on and on. 
 
 The darkness grew. Ellen was usually afraid 
 of the dark ; this evening she scarcely noticed it. 
 
 Her feet ached as she dragged them along, and 
 tears, of which she was quite unconscious, were 
 streaming down her face and mingling with the 
 rain. 
 
 She seemed to have been walking for years 
 before the freer air told her she had reached the 
 bog. She was nearly home now ; she could even 
 see the light from her father's cottage. 
 
 The rain fell in a steady sheet into the holes 
 of bog-water, and made running streams down 
 the cart-tracks on the road, through which Ellen 
 splashed drearily. Every step was more difficult, 
 and she stumbled and slipped in the mud. 
 
 At last her legs failed her altogether, and she 
 fell in a heap at the side of the road, with her 
 face in a tuft of heather. She tried to rise to 
 her feet, but her knees gave way, and a sharp, 
 terrible pain shook her from head to foot. So 
 near home ; it would be dreadful to die out there, 
 all alone, when she was so near. 
 
 She gathered all her strength and began to 
 crawl forward on her hands and knees. 
 
 Suddenly she sank down with a shrill cry of 
 mortal fear.
 
 io6 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 Lindsay and his eldest son were sitting over 
 the fire in their cottage smoking diligently. 
 
 " I wonder Ellen is not back," said the father ; 
 " she'll be fairly drookit, and I don't like her 
 being out to this hour." 
 
 " Maybe there was some one in from Bally- 
 turbet with a cart, and she waited to get a sail 
 home," Willy suggested. 
 
 "The walk's naught to her, but it's terrible 
 dark." 
 
 Maybe I had as well go to the head of the 
 loanan and see if there is a sight of her," said the 
 son, not too eagerly. 
 
 As he said it he stooped to pick up a turf to 
 light his pipe, and the door burst open, letting in 
 a gust of rain. 
 
 Miss MTadden stood on the threshold with a 
 white face. 
 
 " Wully ! go for the doctor ! " 
 
 She had run up the lane, and her words came 
 in gasps. 
 
 Willy sprang up and reached for his hat. 
 
 " What is it ? Is Barclay bad ? " he said. 
 
 " It's not him ; it's your Ellen." 
 
 Both men faced her in a flash. 
 
 " Our Ellen ? What's happened her ? " 
 
 " She's tarrable bad. I'm clean out of my wits 
 since I found her. Run, Wully ; there's no time 
 to lose." 
 
 Willy waited for no more ; he turned and sped 
 out into the darkness. 
 
 " Found her ? " Lindsay repeated. 
 
 "She'd dropped down by the bog. By the 
 goodness of God she let a scraigh out of her as 
 she fell, and I heard it." 
 
 " What ails her ? "
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 107 
 
 Lindsay faced Miss MTadden sternly, and found 
 his answer in her eyes. 
 
 He staggered back, with a grey colour creeping 
 into his face. 
 
 "My God!"
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 " DEAR MR. DUFFIN, Sir William and I will be 
 glad if you will give us the pleasure of your com- 
 pany to dinner on Saturday next at 7.30. Yours 
 very truly, EMILY LAWSON." 
 
 The writer of this formal note would have been 
 very much surprised if she had known all it was 
 responsible for. 
 
 When Mr. Duffin had parted with Ellen Lind- 
 say at the vestry- door more than three weeks 
 before, it had been with no other intention than 
 that of keeping his promise, though he had already 
 begun to have doubts about the advisability of 
 having promised. His idea had been to marry 
 Ellen privately at the registry office at Bally- 
 rnagra, and then send her away for a time, to be 
 brought in some sort to his conception of a lady, 
 while he made arrangements to transfer himself 
 to another parish. 
 
 A remembrance of Ellen's soft blue eyes and a 
 sense of his own surpassing virtue kept him at 
 first from too decided repentance. 
 
 He had honestly believed at the time what he 
 told her, that marriage at a registry office necessi- 
 tated a delay of twenty-one days. 
 
 When he discovered that it could be arranged 
 in two he did not feel himself called upon to 
 announce this fact.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 109 
 
 But it gave him an excuse for delay ; there was 
 plenty of time, and no occasion for haste. There 
 would be sure to be difficulties and complications. 
 His own name was a common one, and he could 
 probably give it as that of one of his parishioners 
 without arousing suspicion, but other awkward- 
 nesses might arise not to be so easily dealt with. 
 In the end he must, of course, put himself in the 
 power of the registrar. 
 
 Then he began to wish he had left things alone. 
 He told himself that very likely Ellen had taken 
 matters easily enough, and a present of a new 
 dress and some money would have completely 
 consoled her. Was it his fault that the little fool 
 had not been able to take care of herself ? If it 
 had not been him, it would have been some other 
 man. The girl had only drawn back because she 
 wanted to make the best bargain she could, and 
 probably her father knew about it all the time, 
 and was playing his own game. And he, in his 
 kind-heartedness, had allowed himself to be 
 taken in. 
 
 Mr. Duffin actually roused himself to indig- 
 nation against Ellen, while all the time he knew 
 that he was lying to himself. 
 
 The one time he and Ellen had met, he had 
 gone with a half intention of telling her she must 
 give up all idea of this ridiculous marriage ; but 
 they had parted with the words unsaid. 
 
 He could not say them, and even the wish to 
 say them vanished when he was with her. 
 
 Every day almost every hour he vacillated 
 backwards and forwards without ever definitely 
 telling himself that it would be possible to break 
 his word. 
 
 In truth, the man suffered. Perhaps it cost
 
 I io ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 him as much to face giving up the sordid and 
 trivial ambition for which he had borne so long 
 and struggled so hard, as if he had been a nobler 
 man abandoning an infinitely nobler life's desire. 
 
 When the house was particularly uncomfort- 
 able and Betty extra drunk, he would sink to 
 depths of depression and tell himself that fate 
 was against his ever raising himself, and he might 
 as well marry Ellen and end his unendurable 
 loneliness. But often he thought differently. 
 
 On Thursday morning, when he must go to 
 the registry office or be too late, Lady Lawson's 
 note came, and gave him some miserable hours. 
 
 He had never been asked to dinner before ; it 
 meant what might it not mean ? From how 
 many possibilities was he not about to shut him- 
 self out by his quixotism ? 
 
 He turned upon Betty as she was taking away 
 the breakfast things, and ordered his horse and 
 trap in his " dourest " voice. 
 
 But when he was almost ready to start, there 
 came a sick call from the very extremity of his 
 parish a sick call which he welcomed as a 
 rescue. 
 
 He went, and remained a long time, extending 
 his visit to one or two other parishioners in the 
 neighbourhood, and telling himself that duty had 
 made him too late for that day, even had his 
 horse been fit for a further drive. 
 
 He could meet Ellen at Ballymagra on Satur- 
 day and explain to her the necessity for postpone- 
 ment. She must remember that he was not of her 
 class, and not always free at his own pleasure. 
 
 But each hour as it went by left him more 
 unwilling to fulfil his rash promise. The Law- 
 sons' invitation came between him and his rest.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG in 
 
 On Saturday morning he woke with the begin- 
 ning of a heavy cold, which made him still more 
 unwilling for exertion, and was met when he 
 came downstairs with the information that his 
 horse had gone lame. 
 
 Betty, who brought him the news, was startled 
 at the grim way he received it. 
 
 " He was just travelling up and down the room 
 when I come in and told him," she said to M'Gra, 
 a stout, bandy-legged man, who was coachman, 
 gardener, and general factotum at the rectory, 
 "and he turns on me sharp, and says he, 'Are 
 you maning the horse isn't fit to drive ? ' And 
 says I, 'Troth, dear, I'm afeard so; but indeed 
 you are as well in, for I'm thinking you have a 
 brash of cold on you.' And he looks at his watch, 
 and says he, ' It's nine o'clock. You might have 
 telt me sooner ; ' and he mutters something to 
 himself about its being no fault of his. And then, 
 in the middle of my putting him in mind that the 
 Almighty sends such things, he comes at me to 
 ' lave him in pace.' In pace, indade ! and he 
 never ceasing to travel up and down like a dog 
 on a chain." 
 
 No fault of his. Mr. Dufnn might say so to 
 himself and to Betty, but he could not feel it. 
 He spent most of the morning pacing his room, 
 occasionally sitting down and trying to concen- 
 trate himself on a book ; he changed his mind a 
 dozen times an hour. 
 
 What was Ellen doing ? Of course it would 
 be all right ; if she went at all she would soon 
 find he was not there, and turn back, and no 
 harm done. Was it his fault that his horse had 
 gone lame ? 
 
 He had more time for thought than he desired,
 
 112 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 as he could not bring himself to go out, though 
 his sense told him that he was more than un- 
 likely to meet Ellen. He sat over the fire and 
 nursed his cold miserably, almost driven wild by 
 Betty's anxious inquiries for his health every 
 time she entered the room. 
 
 In the afternoon he sat with a sheet of sermon- 
 paper in front of him, absolutely idealess. When 
 the rain began to fall he could not keep his eyes 
 from the window. Surely Ellen was at home 
 before this ? Of course she would have been 
 told at the registry office that it was too late now 
 for a marriage to take place. 
 
 In any case it was not his fault. 
 
 But it was his misfortune that he felt himself 
 the meanest cur in creation. 
 
 He could not even manage to take the com- 
 fort he had hoped for out of the prospect of the 
 Lawsons' dinner. 
 
 In the evening, after a severe tussle with Betty, 
 who was inclined to refuse him permission to go 
 out in the wet with his cold, he went to the 
 Lawsons', and found himself face to face with 
 Mr. and Mrs. M'Cune, in whose presence his 
 sense of gratification vanished. 
 
 It was entirely a parish entertainment. Sir 
 William Lawson had been for a long time mem- 
 ber for his county in the old days when things 
 were very different and there was no ballot, and 
 he had kept up the habit of conciliation long 
 after the rest of the world. And having come of 
 a Presbyterian stock, like all the Northern gentry, 
 he never forgot it. Besides, he personally liked 
 Mr. M'Cune, who was well read and clever, and 
 knew his own place quite as well as Sir William 
 knew his.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 113 
 
 All Mr. Duffin's efforts to place himself on a 
 different level from the M'Cunes were wasted ; 
 all the condescension in his manner of addressing 
 them was lost upon the Lawsons. It was hard 
 indeed that his evening should be spoilt by the 
 presence of the man of whom in all the world he 
 was most bitterly jealous. 
 
 Mr. Duffin ended by subsiding into a disgusted 
 silence; he sat and sniffed till he drove Lady 
 Lawson nearly frantic. 
 
 He was a miserably unromantic object as he 
 sat there with his eyes bleared and his nose red 
 with cold, and the suggestion of a sneer on his 
 thick lips whenever Mr. M'Cune spoke. 
 
 But, unromantic as he looked, wherever he 
 turned his eyes he had a vision of Ellen Lindsay's 
 white, reproachful face. 
 
 The next morning Betty was eager with news ; 
 she watched on the stairs for her master to come 
 down to breakfast, and followed him into the 
 dining-room, settling herself in her favourite 
 attitude by the sideboard. 
 
 "Ye'll be surprised to hear the news I have 
 this Sabbath morn," she said. "Ellen Lindsay 
 has come to trouble." 
 
 Mr. Duffin was pouring out his tea ; he started 
 and splashed on the cloth. Then he laid down 
 the tea-pot with his cup half full, and a dull red 
 creeping into his face. 
 
 Betty was for the moment diverted to distress 
 about the cloth. 
 
 "Just look to it now! And a clean cloth!" 
 she said reproachfully ; " and it to do you, the 
 Lord knows how long. Well, I'm aye telling you 
 a man's not fit to live his lane, and it's time you 
 were getting a mistress to see to you, for the
 
 Ii4 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 Lord knows it's more than I'm equal to. But, as 
 I was telling you, I still said that Ellen would 
 come to no good too many galli van tings. Not 
 but what her father was aye a good, releegious, 
 wee man. But I mind " 
 
 " What about the girl ? " * 
 
 " I mind," Betty went on undisturbed, " there 
 was a far-out friend of hers Tilly Johnston 
 had a misfortune and went clean silly. They're 
 saying Ellen tried to drownd herself last night. 
 Her father'll be badly put out ; he thought such 
 a dale of her. They say the baby is not the size 
 of a kittling them bye-blows are mostly wee. 
 It's tarrable, dear, the like of such wickedness; 
 but this is a sinful world, and the original 
 sin " 
 
 " That'll do," said Mr. Duffin hoarsely. 
 
 " Even the best outsides," Betty moralised, wav- 
 ing her arm, " are not to be trusted. They're 
 saying the father of the child is that young 
 Archie Kennedy, that's so constant at Sabbath- 
 school, and I suppose they'll be processing him ; 
 but if Eccles or Wully get a hoult of him there 
 won't be much call for processing." 
 
 "Hold your tongue! You sicken me!" said 
 Mr. Duffin, writhing in his seat. 
 
 "And they say Ellen will hardly last through 
 the day," Betty went on, gloating ghoul-like over 
 her scandal, " so they'll likely be sending for your 
 reverence " 
 
 " Great God ! " 
 
 " And I'm studying to think who they'll have 
 to lay her out. Ellen '11 make a beautiful corpse 
 there's been no time for her to fail any. Sure 
 your reverence isn't ating any breakfast ; it's the 
 heavy cold that's on you. Heth, dear ! I've a
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 115 
 
 good mind to send a message to the church that 
 you're not fit to go." 
 
 Mr. Duffin pushed his untouched plate away, 
 with but one thought in his mind to escape 
 from the, martyrdom of Betty's tongue. 
 
 He allowed her to provide him with a thick 
 muffler and overwhelm him with advice, scarcely 
 conscious of what he was doing. 
 
 " And keep this tight up round your throat, 
 dear, and mind to keep your mouth shut when 
 you're in the air," Betty gave her parting instruc- 
 tions, bringing a whiff of whisky whenever she 
 moved. 
 
 Mr. Duffin left himself in her hands like a man 
 in a dream. 
 
 In church that day, in default of new ideas, he 
 preached an old sermon of his on God's anger 
 with sinners ; while, not a mile away, Ellen Lind- 
 say lay fighting for her life.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 " WHAT I say I hold to," said Willy Lindsay in 
 his most ugly tone ; " if I have to stan' here to 
 hinder it, Ellen never crosses the dure she's dis- 
 
 "If she does, with rny will neither Nancy Jane 
 nor I ever do," said Eccles, the milder spirit. 
 
 The two sons stood together, facing their 
 father, who was sitting by the table, his head 
 leaning on his hand. 
 
 "And what is to come of her, then ?" he said. 
 
 " She may go to the House or drownd for all 
 I care," said Willy roughly ; " if I'd been listened 
 to she'd have gone at once, and if it killed her, 
 no great matter. Instead of which she's been a 
 burden on the M'Faddens, dacent people." 
 
 " The House is the right place for the like of 
 her," said Eccles. 
 
 Willy gave his sister a very coarse word. 
 
 The father rose to his feet suddenly. 
 
 " Shame on you, boys ! " he said passionately. 
 
 He paused, moistening his dry lips and pulling 
 at the scarf round his neck as if it choked him. 
 But when he went on his words came more 
 easily. 
 
 " Shame on you for cowards ! " he said. "Is it 
 when trouble comes that you turn from them 
 that you couldn't make enough of in their joy ?
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 117 
 
 Is it you, Wully, the worst drunkard through the 
 place, or you, Eccles, with more than one poor lass's 
 ruin on your shoulders is it you that set your- 
 selves up to judge ? The Book tells us to be mar- 
 ciful as we hope for marcy ; and would ye crush 
 one that's heart-broke enough without that a 
 weak wee lass, little beyond a wean, with no 
 mother to see to her God help her!" He 
 caught his breath, and turned upon his sons with 
 fierce anger " And may His curse light upon you 
 if you don't draw from your wickedness ! " 
 
 Lindsay brought his hand down on the table 
 violently and sank back into his seat. 
 
 There was an uncomfortable pause. Willy and 
 Eccles looked at each other, awed and silenced. 
 
 Presently their father again spoke in a changed, 
 dull voice. 
 
 " I'm maybe wrong to speak like that, boys. 
 You've been good sons to me, and sure you're 
 young and it's natural you should be angered. 
 But my lass must come home. As long as I'm 
 fit to do a hand's turn as long as I've the 
 strength for a day's labour, and a roof to cover 
 me, she will aye have a welcome by her father's 
 fireside ; let them that's naught to her give ill 
 words if they will." 
 
 "Then," said Willy, "it's no home to me." 
 
 " That's as you will, lad. You're fit to fend 
 for yourself; but they're little use that doesn't 
 stand by their own in trouble," said Lindsay 
 quietly. 
 
 Eccles said nothing. 
 
 Both young men were sore and injured, and 
 bitterly wounded in their pride, but he was the 
 softer. 
 
 When the elder brother turned on his heel
 
 ii8 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 and walked out of the cottage Eccles fidgeted 
 about uncomfortably, going to the door once or 
 twice, but always returning. Finally he kicked 
 the fire into a blaze, and spoke to his father with 
 hesitation. 
 
 " Will I straight things up a bit, father ? 
 You'll maybe want the bed up the room put 
 to rights." 
 
 Lindsay looked up, and the eyes of the two 
 men met. 
 
 " Ay, I'll be blithe o' your help, lad," he said. 
 
 That evening Ellen came home. She crawled 
 up the lane with her father's support, finding 
 every step an exhausting effort, and, luckily for 
 herself, was still beyond feeling much except 
 utter weakness and thankfulness for relief from 
 pain. 
 
 She went to bed as soon as she arrived, but 
 she could not sleep, for all through the long 
 night the baby wailed. 
 
 The next day she dragged herself up, but only 
 to sit before the tire with the child on her knee ; 
 she was too weak to be able for anything else, 
 and too utterly dispirited. She was weighed 
 down with shame; she would not meet her 
 father's eyes nor answer him above her breath. 
 
 The baby was a poor, puny thing, with great eyes 
 full of sorrow, and hands and feet like claws. It 
 gave little sign of life beyond its feeble, fretful 
 wail, and looked as if the troubles of the world 
 in which it had appeared so inopportunely were 
 too much for it. Mrs. Mawhinney's first words, 
 when she came into the cottage in the afternoon, 
 were, as usual, a prophecy of its immediate 
 
 Ellen scarcely listened; her grandmother's
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG. iig 
 
 rasping voice was such a familiar sound in her 
 ears. 
 
 She sat there, bent over her baby, and endured, 
 while the monologue of reproof went on and on. 
 
 " It's a sorry heart I have this day because of 
 you. You've brought trouble and shame on your 
 own, and made an honest name a by-word. The 
 Lord tells us that if we forsake Him He will 
 turn and do us hurt and consume us, and it's 
 His will that the innocent should suffer with the 
 guilty. When them that should be Christians 
 neglects the Lord's House the devil has an easy 
 prey. Many's the night I've prayed on my 
 knees for your conversion and the softening of 
 your hard heart, and this is the end of it ! " 
 
 Ellen sat, with the words scarcely penetrating 
 to her brain. She was indeed a disgraced crea- 
 ture, at whom every one was privileged to cast a 
 stone. She knew girls to whom the same thing 
 had happened, and who had hardened not to care, 
 and she wondered vaguely would she ever be like 
 them. 
 
 She roused sharply to the consciousness that 
 her grandmother was asking insistently for the 
 name of the child's father. 
 
 " It's your duty to speak out the truth. It 
 may be there are them could take the wean" 
 Ellen started" or at the least help towards its 
 keep. Who is the father ? " 
 
 Ellen shook her head. 
 
 " There's been a talk of Archie Kennedy " 
 
 " It's not him," said Ellen. 
 
 " There's no forgiveness for them that keeps a 
 hard heart, and yours is hard. I am thankful 
 your mother has been taken. Speak out, Ellen ; 
 who has brought you to shame ? "
 
 120 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 The girl was silent ; she had heard the same 
 thing so often, had had the same question asked 
 so many times. 
 
 " At the least, he be to have spoke of marrying 
 you, and maybe he would be willing to make an 
 honest woman of you yet." 
 
 "There was no word of marriage," said Ellen 
 steadily. 
 
 " And you're not ashamed to face me and say 
 it, you bold-faced jade ? " 
 
 " I am ashamed," said Ellen, very low. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney's voice was trembling with 
 anger. 
 
 " If I was your father it's a good bating I'd 
 give you. What has he said to you ? " 
 
 "He's never said a word he never spoke 
 of it." 
 
 " He's just an omadhawn ! It's useless wasting 
 words on you or him ; there's no shame in you ! " 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney's departure was always in hot 
 anger, in that her words of wisdom seemed to 
 have fallen on empty air. 
 
 Half way down the lane she met Lindsay 
 coming back from his work, and was tempted to 
 urge upon him a different method of treating his 
 daughter, but his stern face checked her words. 
 No one had dared to speak to him of the trouble 
 that had come upon Ellen, and he had spoken to 
 no one.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 FOR a long fortnight Mr. Duffin avoided the lake- 
 shore avoided anything that could remind him 
 of Ellen, and tried to put away all thought of 
 her. It was too late now, and useless to reproach 
 himself with what might have been. So far he 
 had escaped scot-free ; Ellen must have kept the 
 secret, and when she had kept it so long, why not 
 for ever ? 
 
 But he never went out without a dread of 
 meeting the Lindsays in possession of the truth. 
 
 Surely, he told himself, in such a case his. 
 denial would be excusable, and would be believed. 
 Confession would be of no use, and do harm to 
 the parish, and even to the Church. And his sin 
 was no great one. 
 
 He busied himself with the Unionist Club, the 
 parish library, Orange meetings, and a service of 
 song which was being got up in aid of the schools. 
 There was always his rivalry with Mr. M'Cune to 
 keep his interest awake. 
 
 And he tried to forget that the lake-shore was, 
 included in his parish. 
 
 But things could not go on like this always. 
 
 One day he was sent for to go and see old Mary 
 Ann. She had come into the M'Faddens' cottage 
 one day, and said she was " wore out and dwamish," 
 and would be glad if they would let her rest.,
 
 T22 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 Whereupon she had lain down in the little bed 
 " up the room," and had never got up again. 
 
 There was nothing particular wrong with her ; 
 simply with the loss of her dogs her vitality 
 seemed to have gone too. 
 
 She had not sent for Mr. Duffin herself, but 
 some sound Churchman, having discovered in 
 what dangerous company she was, had come to 
 the rescue. 
 
 Mr. Duffin could not refuse, though he would 
 have given worlds to be able to do so. All he 
 could do was to wait till after dusk and hope for 
 the best. 
 
 He found old Mary Ann in the little apart- 
 ment, separated by a wooden partition from the 
 kitchen, which was all the M'Faddens had by 
 way of "a room." She was established in a very 
 small child's bed, that stood on three legs with 
 the assistance of a chair, and she had not dis- 
 carded any of her many garments. 
 
 "It's all we can do for her, your reverence," 
 Miss M'Fadden explained ; " and it's little matter, 
 for she'll soon be taken, poor old body. You'll 
 likely be wanting to say a prayer or read a piece, 
 so I'll lave you." 
 
 " If she is capable of understanding." 
 
 " Oh, I can understand rightly," said old Mary 
 Ann fretfully, "and I suppose you may as well 
 go on as usual now you're here ; but I'm not 
 overly fond of readin' and prayin'." 
 
 She listened to him more or less all the same, 
 with her eyes following his movements, out of her 
 mountain of head-covering. 
 
 Mr. Duffin was so nervous that he hardly knew 
 what he was about. He was straining his ears 
 all the time to catch every movement in the next
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 123 
 
 room. He breathed a sigh of relief when he came 
 out again to find only the M'Faddens. 
 
 " Old Mary ought to be in the workhouse," he 
 said, " instead of burdening you." 
 
 " Indeed she ought," said Miss M'Fadden in her 
 most happy-go-lucky voice ; " but she's not willin' 
 to go, and maybe, in her place, I wouldn't be 
 either. It's not much she takes, poor old body, 
 and there's plenty willin' to help. It was to that 
 very room I tuk poor Ellen Lindsay not three 
 weeks ago." 
 
 Mr. DufBn picked up his hat hastily and opened 
 his mouth to say good-bye, but Miss M'i'adden 
 was beforehand. 
 
 " It's a tarrable thing, such a decent, quiet wee 
 girl. He must be an ill-doing rascal that brought 
 the trouble upon them. The father will never 
 hold up his head again." 
 
 " It's very sad," said Mr. Duffin. 
 
 " And to think of the rascal that done it getting 
 off with nothin', and doubtless laughing in his 
 sleeve. If I had my wull I'd hang the like of 
 him like a dog; or, if I couldn't, at the laste 
 I'd imprison him for nine months, with as good a 
 Hogging as ever he got at the end, and maybe he 
 wouldn't be in such a hurry next time, the dirty, 
 mane coward and she no more than a wean." 
 
 It was the first time Mr. Duffin had heard the 
 blame given to any one but Ellen herself. The 
 other people who had spoken to him and they 
 had been many had always, after a casual word 
 of pity, pressed the weight of condemnation on 
 the girl, and hardly seemed to remember that she 
 was not alone in her guilt. 
 
 Some had raked up old stories against the" 
 Lindsay family, and asserted that there was "a
 
 124 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 bad drop " in them all ; others had gone so far as 
 to blacken what remained of poor Ellen's charac- 
 ter, and hint that, for all they knew, this might 
 not be the first time, and would certainly not be 
 the last. 
 
 And Mr. Duffin had listened to the cruel words, 
 and tried to convince himself that they might be 
 true. 
 
 This other side of the question, which he had 
 tried to ignore, disturbed him horribly. It de- 
 livered him helpless into the hands of Mrs. 
 Mawhinney, who was on the watch for him by 
 her door, and seized upon him resolutely. 
 
 "I have been looking out for your reverence. 
 I have set my heart on a word with you, and if I 
 hadn't heard you would be down this evening I 
 would have made bold to go to the rectory." 
 
 Mr. Duffin was not grateful; at the same time 
 he yielded to fate, but tried to stave off the evil 
 moment by inquiries for the old husband, who 
 was much as usual. 
 
 But after a few preliminary moments Mrs. 
 Mawhinney spoke of Ellen. 
 
 " Your reverence has likely heard of our trouble. 
 The Lord's hand has been heavy on us. I have 
 never ceased prophesying to Ellen what would 
 come of her running after sport and amusement 
 to the neglect of her immortal soul. But it was 
 then in her pride as it is now in her humiliation 
 naught I can say moves her hard heart. It's 
 for that I made bold to stop your reverence. I 
 have good behopes that if her minister spoke to 
 her her heart might be changed." 
 
 Mr. Duffin, scarcely knowing what he was say- 
 ing, began a confused suggestion of the possible 
 effects of time; but Mrs. Mawhinney, after a
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 125 
 
 pause for breath, broke through his words un- 
 heedingly 
 
 " So I am about to ask your reverence if you 
 would be so kind as to come up and spake to her. 
 If you could get the man's name from her, maybe,, 
 if the Lord so allows, he could be brought to 
 marry her." 
 
 In her eagerness the old woman laid a skinny 
 claw upon Mr. Duffin's arm, to be sure that he 
 was near in the darkness, and pushed her face so 
 close to his that he could feel her breath. 
 
 He stood in great perturbation, frowning and 
 muttering to himself and pulling at his moustache. 
 
 " I am afraid it would be useless." 
 
 "You won't refuse me? Ellen may be ill to 
 move, but she could hardly withstand the autho- 
 rity of the Church," said the grandmother. 
 
 Mr. Duffin had excellent reasons for doubting 
 Ellen's being impressed by the authority of the 
 Church as vested in his person, but he could not 
 say so. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney continued her speech, still 
 putting forward her curious mixture of religious 
 and worldly reasons for desiring his influence with 
 Ellen. He only offered a passive resistance, and 
 in the end he yielded. 
 
 Perhaps something was due to a desire to escape 
 from the eerie grasp of the old woman's fingers in 
 the darkness; but he yielded chiefly because of 
 the absurd fear of a guilty man that if he did not 
 his reason for refusing might be suspected. 
 
 But the situation seemed horribly grotesque. 
 
 As he groped his way up the lane, with Mrs. 
 Mawhinney's hard-breathing and whining voice 
 in his ears, he would have given worlds to escape. 
 All sorts of horrible thoughts came to him. Once
 
 126 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 he started with the ridiculous idea that the Lind- 
 says might have learned all, and that he was being 
 led into a trap. When he had realised the absur- 
 dity of this he was consumed with another fear : 
 if Ellen saw him before her now, would she still 
 keep silence ? And if she did not ? And what 
 possible thing could he say to her ? If he was 
 brought to her and forced to words of reproof, 
 could she resist the temptation to say, " Thou art 
 the man " ? 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney's voice droned on 
 
 " The dure's just round to the left ; keep clear 
 o' the midden, sir, and mind the step." 
 
 Then, with her last words, she raised the latch 
 of the door, and light from within carne flooding 
 out, dazzling Mr. Duffin's eyes for a moment. 
 
 Perhaps he had vaguely expected to find Ellen 
 weeping and her father pacing the cottage in 
 deepest despair; at any rate what he did see 
 came upon him with a shock of surprise. 
 
 It was such a peaceful interior that it was hard 
 to believe that the heaviest of troubles lay on the 
 house. Ellen was sitting by the table, where she 
 could get light from the candle, and was stitching 
 busily Mr. Duffin instinctively knew for whom. 
 Her father sat a little farther back ; he was 
 smoking, and with his right foot he rocked a 
 wooden cradle. There were rough, bright-coloured 
 curtains pinned up over the windows, and the fire 
 burnt cosily. 
 
 A flickering light from the candle fell on Ellen's 
 pale face as she bent over her work. 
 
 The next moment she sprang to her feet with 
 a sharp exclamation. 
 
 Mrs. Ma whinney advanced into the room, amiably 
 introducing Mr. Duffin.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 127 
 
 " It's his reverence," she said ; " I asked him to 
 coine up and see if his words would have more 
 weight than mine with Ellen." 
 
 She had never before made even such an in- 
 direct attack on her granddaughter before Lind- 
 say, but Mr Duffin's presence encouraged her. 
 
 " I'm sure his reverence is aye welcome," said 
 Lindsay stiffly. 
 
 " Ii's a late visit," said Mr. Duffin, trying to get 
 the words carelessly from between his dry lips. 
 
 His eyes seemed drawn in spite of himself to 
 Ellen and the cradle, from which came a faint 
 intermittent cry. 
 
 Ellen's eyes were on the ground ; she stood 
 between her baby and him like a guard. 
 
 Lindsay got him a chair, and there was an 
 awkward silence. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney, seeing the initiative left to 
 her, was quite equal to it. 
 
 " His reverence is come to spake a word of 
 seasonable reproof, and to say that you've a right 
 to spake out, Ellen. He is about to tell you that 
 it's your duty to fasten the sin where it belongs. 
 Isn't that so, sir ? " 
 
 Mr. Duffin sought for words to qualify the 
 statement. 
 
 " I hardly feel I have a right " 
 
 " And who would have a better right than the 
 minister of God in her own parish ? Maybe, if she 
 gave his name, words from one who is an example 
 to all the young of his parish might move the 
 sinner to do all that's left in his power and marry 
 her. Spake out, sir ; she will hearken to you." 
 
 Mr. Uuffin's words came in a stutter. 
 
 "What Mrs. Mawhinney says is doubtless 
 rk'ht "
 
 -128 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 . Ellen raised her eyes very slowly and faced 
 him. Such a look of reproach and scorn that 
 he shivered before it. 
 
 - Lindsay broke in while he tried to regain the 
 thread of his words 
 
 " I hope your reverence will take it as it's 
 meant, but I should wish things let alone. The 
 harm's done, and I 'm overly willing to see to her 
 and the child. I wouldn't have help from a 
 rascal like thon if he went on his bended knees 
 and prayed me to. So if your reverence would 
 kindly talk of aught else." 
 
 But Ellen spoke in a strange voice. 
 
 " I would ask, does he want me to say the man's 
 name ? " she said. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney broke in gladly at this sign 
 of relenting. 
 
 " Av coorse ; isn't that what he's come for ? 
 And you'll be a wise girl " 
 
 " He can spake himself, grandma," Ellen inter- 
 rupted, with blazing eyes fixed on Mr. Duffm's 
 face. 
 
 Mr. Duffin pulled his moustache, looking from 
 right to left for escape. 
 
 "As Lindsay says, I fear I have no right to 
 interfere," he said. 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney was disgusted with her advo- 
 cate's supineness. 
 
 It was her belief that a little more energy on 
 his part would have won the victory, instead of 
 which, after her one surprising outburst, Ellen 
 fell back into her usual silent endurance. 
 
 Only once did she show any feeling again, and 
 that was just before Mr. Duffin had succeeded in 
 making his escape. 
 
 Her grandmother turned to her.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 129 
 
 " Ellen," she said, " take up the wean. I'd like 
 to show it to you, sir; you never saw such a 
 misfortunate wee crowl in your life, and it just 
 laments on without ceasing. It's not long for 
 this world, and just as well, too." 
 
 But, with a swift movement, Ellen placed 
 herself between her grandmother and the cradle. 
 There was no mistaking her attitude, either by 
 the two who did not understand, or by the one 
 who did. 
 
 " She thinks shame," said the grandmother. 
 
 But it was not because she " thought shame " 
 that Ellen stood between father and child with 
 her young face set like a flint.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE long, monotonous days of winter crept on. 
 
 When the turf was in there was not much to 
 do, and no work to be had. The weaving had 
 fallen so low and was so hard to get that there 
 were many idle looms and much dire poverty. 
 
 Lindsay was an old man, and could only work 
 slowly ; it took him nearly three weeks to finish 
 a web and earn his eight shillings, and for the 
 first time he and Ellen felt the pinch of real 
 poverty. 
 
 The money which came from America was 
 irregular times were not too good there either ; 
 and Eccles, who was in regular work, had now 
 his own home to provide for, while Willy had got 
 drunk once too often, and been turned off and 
 thrown for his livelihood upon odd jobs. 
 
 To Ellen this extra trouble seemed only part of 
 the prolonged evil dream in which she was living. 
 Somehow the days passed ; she had the house to 
 attend to and the baby ; when her father was 
 weaving she had the bobbins to wind for him, and 
 there were always the goats and the hens. Except 
 to go to the well she never crossed the threshold, 
 and even that she put off till the early dusk of 
 the evening, when there was no fear that she 
 would have to face curious eyes. If people came 
 into the cottage and she could not escape in
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 131 
 
 time, she sat still and quiet in her corner, acutely 
 self-conscious. 
 
 She never looked forward; probably had she 
 done so she would have believed herself des- 
 tined always to spend her days in the same 
 way, with neither heart nor spirit to face the 
 world again. 
 
 The baby was fretful and delicate, and held on 
 to its life by a thread. Ellen was indifferent; 
 she was too much of a child herself to care much 
 about it, but Lindsay got used to it quickly, and 
 then adored it. 
 
 Eccles and Eccles' wife often came in. Nancy 
 Jane treated Ellen very scornfully the more so, 
 perhaps, that she was about to present her hus- 
 band with an heir somewhat prematurely. But 
 she was married, if a little late ; and Ellen quite 
 realised and accepted the vast distinction. 
 
 Willy stuck to his announced intention till he 
 was thrown out of work, when he came home, 
 having nowhere else to go. He consoled himself 
 for thus deviating from his principles by scowling 
 at Ellen, and never speaking to her unless it was 
 absolutely necessary, and he was blind and deaf 
 to the baby. 
 
 Ellen's most frequent visitor was her grand- 
 mother. Mrs. Mawhinney considered it her duty 
 to come up constantly and give the girl long 
 semi-religious lectures, interspersed freely with 
 texts, chiefly from Isaiah and Revelation. She 
 did her best to get Ellen to church, or to Ply- 
 mouth Brethren or Methodist meetings, which 
 were secretly more to her taste. 
 
 As an inducement she regaled her almost every 
 afternoon with the story of three hard-hearted 
 young men who had gone to a Methodist meeting
 
 132 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 in a tent one wet day. Their intention had been 
 to mock and throw stones, but instead they had 
 listened, been converted, and fallen face down- 
 ward in the mud, crying out that they were saved. 
 After which they had become thoroughly estim- 
 able members of society, and lived happily ever 
 after. This tale was the only hopeful one in Mrs. 
 Mawhinney's collection ; the others all culminated 
 in sudden death, " unsaved," or a lurid deathbed 
 scene. 
 
 Ellen listened with her usual half attention. 
 She was not saved, and she would go and burn in 
 hell no doubt of it ; but with so many years of 
 life before her she hardly felt as if she much 
 cared. There was only one thing she did rouse 
 herself to care about, and that caused her grand- 
 mother much displeasure ; she insisted, and stuck 
 firmly to it, that Mr. Duffin should not baptize 
 her baby. 
 
 Her grandmother hotly opposed this queer 
 fancy of Ellen's. Why should she go to another 
 parish when a good and religious man, with no 
 nonsensical High Church notions about him, was 
 minister of her own ? For her part she did not 
 hold with Dr. Morton ; she did not think it very 
 decorus to see a minister of the gospel flying about 
 the country on a cold iron wheel ; and, what was 
 more, they said he had to be watched pretty sharp 
 in a baptism or he'd be making a cross on the 
 water as well as on the child. And if Ellen would 
 abide by her advice which she never would 
 though maybe it would have been better for her 
 if she had 
 
 But Lindsay broke in, and said that Ellen 
 should do as she liked. 
 
 The girl had sat silent, and to all appearance
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 133 
 
 unmoved, during the discussion ; she drew a long 
 sigh of relief when her father spoke. 
 
 Kather, almost rather, should her baby die 
 unbaptized, and so burn in hell with her, than 
 should Mr. Duffin touch it. 
 
 In all these long months he and she had never 
 met ; the desire for avoidance was equally sincere 
 on both sides. 
 
 Mr. Duffin had almost managed to forget, but 
 in forgetting he had hardened and become a worse 
 man. He was morally more affected than Ellen. 
 He had almost managed to put her out of his 
 mind, and almost ceased to fear discovery ; he 
 could write his sermons without seeing a glaring 
 application to himself spring up at every turn. 
 When he succeeded in getting another parish he 
 would be able to wipe this mistake entirely out 
 of his life. 
 
 Till then, his occasional visits to the lake- 
 shore to see old Mary Ann had a tendency to 
 recall unpleasantly what he told himself was 
 entirely past and done with. 
 
 Old Mary Ann was taking an unconscionable 
 time to die. The M'Faddens would gladly have 
 sent her to the workhouse now, but it was too 
 late ; she could not be moved. They were allowed 
 a very few shillings to look after her, but Miss 
 M'Fadden was worn out with day and night work 
 all through the winter. Ellen Lindsay some- 
 times came in to help ; Miss M'Fadden's kindly 
 scrutiny hurt less than that of other people, and 
 Ellen was a favourite of old Mary Ann's. 
 
 The old woman did not want to die ; she 
 fought hard for her life all through the winter, 
 and pleaded passionately with the doctor for 
 hope. All through the cold days of January
 
 134 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 and February it seemed as though she kept vita- 
 lity in her shrivelled old body simply by her 
 determination to live. 
 
 But when the March winds changed to the 
 milder air of April, and everybody was busy 
 putting in the crop, old Mary Ann all at once 
 gave up the struggle.
 
 CHAPTEE XVII 
 
 " SHE'S just a-waiting on, Miss Nelly." 
 
 The M'Faddens' cottage was full to overflowing. 
 Behind Miss M'Fadden's stalwart, dishevelled 
 figure Nelly Baring could catch a glimpse of men 
 smoking over the fire, women sitting in cheerful 
 groups, children who had come in pursuit of their 
 mothers, and now hung curiously about the door 
 of " the room." 
 
 A strange, ghastly attraction had brought all 
 these people together to see an old woman die. 
 
 Nelly Baring drew back, and tried to subdue 
 her clear voice to a decorous pitch. 
 
 " Poor old creature," she said, " I heard she was 
 better yesterday, and I thought she might be able 
 to take some soup." 
 
 " I am much beholden to you, Miss Nelly. 
 But she's taken a scunner against everything, 
 saving a drop of whisky the doctor allows her 
 now and again. Ay, she was greatly set up by 
 feeling so well yesterday, but I knew rightly it 
 was nothing but a frolic before death. Won't 
 you step inside, Miss Nelly ? " 
 
 " No, thanks ; there are so many there." 
 
 " A death still throws a stir. But you're as 
 welcome as flowers in May, Miss Nelly, and 
 maybe old Mary Ann would be fit to know you. 
 If she does, she'll be quarely uplifted at seeing
 
 136 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 you. But she doesn't seem to know one, ex- 
 cept" (here Miss Miss MTadden dropped her 
 voice to a whisper) " except Ellen Lindsay." 
 
 Miss Baring paused irresolutely. 
 
 " Is she here ? I don't want to see Ellen. I 
 shouldn't know what to say to her. I am dread- 
 fully disappointed about her." 
 
 " She's quarely failed," Miss MTadden whis- 
 pered. " Have you never seen her since ? And 
 haven't you seen the lamenter ? " 
 
 This was Miss M'Fadden's name for the baby, 
 and needed some explanation. 
 
 Miss Baring allowed herself to be brought into 
 the house somewhat unwillingly. 
 
 Most of the neighbours were congregated in 
 " the room." Miss Baring, with a word to 
 Barclay, was following her hostess when Mrs. 
 Mawhinney, who was sitting in the shop win- 
 dow, stopped her to whisper an explanation of 
 her presence. 
 
 " I never thought to see myself as long as I 
 have been under a Catholic roof ; but that poor, 
 godless old body needs some one to see to her. 
 It's tarrable for her to come to her latter end 
 among Catholics. They are just watching to get 
 the priest in to her, but if they do it will be across 
 my body." 
 
 Mrs. Mawhinney looked exceedingly resolute. 
 Nelly thought that Father Dymond, who was a 
 small, delicate man, would have decidedly the 
 worst of it in a struggle. 
 
 " Up the room " the laughing and talking had 
 subsided into more decorous whispers on Miss 
 Baring's entrance, and the groups drew a little 
 apart. 
 
 Old Mary Ann lay very quietly, breathing
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 137 
 
 faintly and muttering to herself. Possibly the 
 atmosphere of the tiny room, with all the win- 
 dows not only shut but nailed down, no fireplace, 
 and more than a dozen occupants, was no assist- 
 ance to the drawing of difficult breath. But then, 
 as Miss M'Fadden said, "it was quite time that 
 she took a notion of dyin'." 
 
 They had expected her to die long ago. They 
 had smoothed down her hands and tied a cloth 
 round her withered jaws the evening before, and 
 it had not seemed worth the trouble of removing 
 it. But she was not dead ; out of her small, 
 shrunken face her eyes moved restlessly, follow- 
 ing every speaker's words. 
 
 A stout matron, with a baby in her arms, re- 
 lated the deaths that had come under her personal 
 observation, by way of making cheerful conver- 
 sation. 
 
 " And he wasn't the man to spare expense. It 
 would have done you good to see the beautiful 
 lace and the flowers, and her hair all smoothed 
 and curled as if for a wedden." 
 
 " It was the wasting sickness tuk her, if I'm 
 not mistaken," said a friend, chiefly remarkable 
 for a bright check shawl and very large, bare red 
 feet, " and when that once takes a hoult there's 
 naught to be done. Do you mind how the 
 M'Guckins were taken seven of them as fine 
 lads and lasses as you'd wish to see ? But first 
 the mother went, and then one after the other, as 
 they came to grow up, they sickened and died." 
 
 Mrs. M'Gloughlan, the first speaker, hastened 
 to put in her word : 
 
 "There was everything done for them. The 
 father sent them to the salt water times and 
 again, even with the last ones, when he knew
 
 138 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 he was wasting his money. They say he's quare 
 and lonesome now he's none but himself." 
 
 " I am afraid that's the way with our Jenny," 
 said another woman, pointing out a thin, stooped 
 girl leaning against the bed. " I was in two 
 minds about marrying her father, and I would 
 better have left it alone. He hardly ever was 
 fit for a day's turn till he died. And now there's 
 Jenny what will she ever do for me ? and she'll 
 hardly be here come Holiday." 
 
 Everybody looked at Jenny, who flushed with 
 a gratified sense of importance. If her mother's 
 struggle for life, with a dying husband and deli- 
 cate children, had hardened her into such words, 
 she had nursed them, and nursed Jenny now, with 
 passionate devotion. The girl had always known 
 herself to be doomed, and took a curious pride 
 in it. 
 
 A man, who had taken his pipe out of his mouth 
 in deference to Miss Baring, now joined in 
 
 " Do you mind Hughie Thompson's old mother ? 
 She died in the House, and as soon as he heard it 
 he ups and takes a coffin and a car and had her 
 well buried too, and no stint about it." 
 
 " The only dacent thing he did was to take her 
 out," said Mrs. M'Gloughlan, shaking her head. 
 " They all like to be buried at home. There was 
 Patrick Kennedy ; them that he was with in 
 America set great store by him, and offered to 
 see to him the best, and have him buried in their 
 own grave when he was giv' up by the doctor. 
 But no, he must get home somehow ; and home 
 he got, and as soon as he saw the lake-shore he 
 tuk to his bed quite content, and the breath left 
 him before morning." 
 
 " One likes to be with one's own at the last,"
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 139 
 
 said somebody else. " Sure, if her niece," indi- 
 cating the shrivelled form on the bed with her 
 thumb, "had any dacency, she'd bury her at the 
 laste." 
 
 "She'll not need to be beholden to her," said 
 Miss M'Fadden ; " sure, his honour gave me what 
 will bury her comfortable." 
 
 There was something like a flash of intelligence 
 and satisfaction in old Mary Ann's eyes. 
 
 "It's lonesome to be left like that," said the 
 check-shawled neighbour ; " there's where them 
 that has childer has the best of it." 
 
 " I've childer enough, if they look to me," said 
 Mrs. M'Gloughlan. " Annie there is coming on 
 ten or eleven, I don't rightly mind which, and 
 there are six behind her. I would sooner have 
 had boys, but there's them says that if you get 
 daughters well placed they'll maybe do as much 
 for you." 
 
 "And likely enough more. Look at Hughie 
 Thompson letting his old mother go to the House, 
 and he a warm man. That old body looks dwamish, 
 Jane ; she'd be the better of a drop of whisky to 
 wet her lips." 
 
 " It's little use troubling," said Miss M'Fadden ; 
 " indeed it's near wore out I am minding her. It's 
 time the poor old body tuk a notion of dyin'. I 
 am not lit to stand another night of it." 
 
 Miss Baring had found the conversation very 
 ghastly ; most ghastly of all it seemed to her now 
 that old Mary Ann's eyes, as she turned them 
 from one to another, were pleading for a little 
 more time." 
 
 Ellen Lindsay rose from a seat in the back- 
 ground, raised the old woman's head, and gave 
 her a spoonful of whisky.
 
 140 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 It seemed to revive her, and she spoke for the 
 first time, in a thin thread of a voice 
 
 " Is it you, darlint ? Heaven's blessings on you 
 for your goodness. It's a fine swaddy you are. 
 I'm quarely mended. It's dancin' I'll be at your 
 wedden before long." 
 
 Ellen, with a crimson face and lips trembling 
 piteously, tried to disengage herself. 
 
 " Dancin' at your wedden," old Mary Ann re- 
 peated, while Ellen was conscious that a smile 
 went round the cottage. 
 
 "Don't you see Miss Nelly?" said Miss 
 M'Fadden. 
 
 The old woman was propped up in bed to help 
 her breathing; the white linen round her face 
 made it look particularly shrunken and yellow ; 
 she had the appearance of a mummy only half 
 revivified. 
 
 Nelly found it an effort not to shrink when the 
 skinny hand made a feeble effort to reach hers. 
 
 "Heth, dear! is that Miss Nelly? Did you 
 hear that they'd took away the dogs and drownded 
 the puppies ? Maybe if you would spake to his 
 honour or her ladyship I would get back Charlie, 
 against I'm tit to be going about ? Sorra one o' 
 them was equal to Charlie." 
 
 " It's tarrable to see one so near her end think- 
 ing of the like of that," said Mrs. M'Gloughlan, 
 shaking her head. 
 
 The faint voice went on 
 
 " Come forward then, dear, till I see you proper. 
 I'm quarely mended. Would you like me to lilt 
 you a song ? " 
 
 " Just lie still, dear, and don't be wastin' your 
 breath," said Miss M'Fadden sensibly, but old 
 Mary Ann would not heed her.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 141 
 
 With Nelly's hand in hers she began a long, 
 long song, chiefly unintelligible, about a young 
 woman who went to a fair, and had various 
 strange and not very edifying adventures. There 
 was a breathless silence in the room ; nobody had 
 ever heard the old woman sing before, except to 
 her dogs when she believed herself to be alone 
 with them. 
 
 On and on the weak voice quavered, and no 
 one knew exactly when it ceased. Nelly took a 
 moment or two to realise the silence, then she 
 softly drew away her hand and left the room 
 with relief. 
 
 Miss M'Fadden had taken Ellen's baby from 
 little Annie M'Gloughlan. Ellen laid old Mary 
 back on the bed, amidst a murmur of horrified 
 comment. 
 
 " If she was singing hymns it would be more 
 fitting her than them godless songs." 
 
 " Miss Nelly might have said a word of 
 prayer." 
 
 "I don't know that Miss Nelly's overly good 
 at the prayin'," said Mrs. M'Gloughlan ; " but 
 she's pleasant- spoken, and that plain and free 
 it might be you or me. She's maybe right to 
 leave the prayin' to his reverence, and if the 
 sough's true she'll never be far pairted from 
 him." 
 
 Ellen raised her head. 
 
 Miss M'Fadden gave an exclamation of denial. 
 
 " Heth, not likely ! Sure, he's good enough, I 
 dare say ; but it's not the like of him, rared on 
 potatoes and buttermilk, that will even himself 
 to Miss Nelly. Are you away, Mrs. M'Glough- 
 lan ? I jaloused you would wait and help me to 
 lay her out. It won't be long. From the look
 
 142 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 of her I'm thinking she's set about dyin' in real 
 arnest." 
 
 " I'll be over later. I have to go home to get 
 his tea," sai'd Mrs. M'Gloughlan, alluding to her 
 husband. 
 
 Ellen felt the house stifle her. She left her 
 baby with Miss M'Fadden, and crept out alone, 
 making her way up the gorse-covered hill by the 
 lake, which went by the name of the " Whinny 
 Hill." 
 
 She lay down on the grass, putting her fingers 
 in her ears to try and shut out the sound of old 
 Mary Ann's rattling breath. The echo of it 
 seemed to follow her through the clear evening 
 air. 
 
 Down below, on the road, a couple of horses 
 were going home from the plough ; a boy was 
 riding one, sitting sideways with dangling legs 
 and whistling shrilly. 
 
 A boat crossed the lake with sails fully set to 
 catch the faint breeze ; another was close to the 
 shore, and Ellen could hear the splash of the oars 
 and the voices of the fishermen. A flock of pee- 
 wits that they had disturbed rose, circling round 
 uncertainly with soft cries. 
 
 Suddenly the sound of the six o'clock bell from 
 the rectory came clearly across the bog. 
 
 Ellen buried her face in her arms and tried 
 hard not to hear ; the air seemed full of noise this 
 evening, and she wanted to think. 
 
 The faint sweet smell of the gorse came to her ; 
 new golden blossoms were budding everywhere 
 amidst last year's grey, faded branches. In a 
 month or two the hill would be one mass of 
 yellow. 
 
 Just in sight some very small children, who
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 143 
 
 had been dropping potatoes all day, but had 
 not exhausted their energy, were playing games 
 in a ring, with a gleam of red frocks among the 
 whin-bushes. Last year Ellen had played with 
 them scores of times ; now she felt so old, so very 
 old ; she knew she would never play with them 
 again. 
 
 She had been working in the fields all day, 
 leaving her baby in charge of little Annie 
 M'Gloughlan, and with her return to work, to 
 warmth, and to plenty of food, her strength was 
 coming back, and bringing with it the sharpest 
 suffering. She had not recognised in the least 
 that it was in a great measure her physical weak- 
 ness which had enabled her to bear the hopeless- 
 ness of her life with dreary resignation. Now all 
 the youth and strength and love of joy in her 
 was rebelling. 
 
 Air. Duffin could and would marry perhaps 
 Miss Nelly. 
 
 Ellen would have accepted it as the natural 
 course of events, and without resentment, had it 
 not been for his broken promise. That, she told 
 herself, she never would forgive him. 
 
 The children on the hill played on, and their 
 voices came to her in an old rhyme which she had 
 sung almost every day of her school life : 
 
 " Georgy-porgy, pudding and pie, 
 Kissed the girls and made them cry ; 
 "When the boys came out to play, 
 Georgy-porgy ran away." 
 
 Ellen could not have told any more than the 
 children the sense of the words, or what connec- 
 tion they had with the game they belonged to, 
 but the sound of them distracted her thoughts.
 
 144 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 She was a miserable girL Miss Xelly had 
 looked at her scornful - like, and every one 
 thought little of her, and she could not bear it. 
 
 It would be aye the same. When a girl had 
 once lost her character nothing she could do was 
 of any use. There was no hope for her ; she had 
 thought she might be like some girls she knew, 
 and mind it less after the first, but instead it had 
 grown worse to bear never had it been so bad 
 as this day. 
 
 There was this left to her she could drown 
 herself. She would be away from them all then, 
 and perhaps they would think less hard of her ; 
 and her father would bring up the baby, and teach 
 it to be a good girl, and find his comfort in it. 
 
 Mr. Duffin would be sorry; he would know 
 then that she did not take things light, and he 
 would not be able to forget her. 
 
 She drew herself slowly to her feet, and went 
 down the hill with lingering steps. 
 
 The fowls had all come out to revel in a newly 
 ploughed field at the foot. As she passed through, 
 the turkey-cock opened his wings with a " tchuck" 
 of anger at being disturbed. He was the only 
 one who paid any attention to her whatsoever, 
 the rest were much too deeply engaged in their 
 own affairs. A compact party of ducks were 
 foraging about at a rapid, cheerful trot, with an 
 insufferable air of self-satisfaction. They were a 
 great deal too busy to get out of Ellen's way, and 
 she had to wait while they swaggered across the 
 path. 
 
 She sat down by the side of a deep, black bog- 
 hole. Willy had said only that morning that a 
 man could be easily drowned there. What would 
 he say when he found his sister's dead body ?
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 145 
 
 She sat on the edge with her bare feet dang- 
 ling. When they touched the bank the soft turf 
 crumbled beneath them. 
 
 She would be dead dead as old Mary Ann 
 would soon be stiff and cold. 
 
 She saw herself laid out on her bed at home, 
 with the neighbours round, and Willy perhaps 
 sorrowing for his harshness. They would dress 
 her out in white, and bring her flowers as she lay 
 in her coffin. 
 
 Ellen was revelling in a luxury of misery of 
 which she was honestly quite unaware. 
 
 The children's voices came more faintly across 
 the field : 
 
 " Now, young couple, we wish you joy, 
 Every year a girl and a boy." 
 
 It seemed like a mockery. Ellen shuddered at 
 the thought of herself in the cold water, while 
 they played on : 
 
 " Now, young couple, come kiss together." 
 
 She moved her place till her foot touched the 
 soft bottom, which began to give way under it. 
 
 Probably no one would ever find her; she 
 would sink down and be lost, and so best. Her 
 father would be sorry at first, but the baby would 
 comfort him. 
 
 She began to slip a little. 
 
 A clear burst of laughter came to her from the 
 children. 
 
 The cold bog water rose silently round her 
 feet. Suddenly she gave a cry of terror and 
 clutched wildly at the turf on each side of her. 
 For just one moment the struggle was a doubtful 
 one. She fought eagerly for her life, dragging
 
 146 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 herself up by the rushes and heather. It was all 
 over very quickly. When she found herself pant- 
 ing and breathless, but alive, she sank down on 
 the heather and burst into bitter sobbing. 
 
 She could not do it. She realised her cowardice 
 with a sharp pang of despair. There was no 
 escape for her this way she must live. 
 
 Two nights later she was roused from her sleep 
 by shouts and outbursts of tipsy merriment. 
 " The boys " were going home from old Mary 
 Ann's wake. 
 
 It might have been from hers; a half -inch 
 nearer the edge, a little more courage, and she 
 too had been lying in her coffin. 
 
 She clasped the baby closely and warmly to 
 her, and wondered if she was sorry.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE summer had come. The bog glowed with 
 colour, and the " Whinny Hill" was one mass of 
 yellow. For more than half a mile out the lake 
 had dried up, and the marshy grass was dotted 
 with red and white cattle. 
 
 Eccles and his wife had walked out, as they 
 often did of a Sunday afternoon, and had found 
 Lindsay and Ellen in the field. 
 
 Lindsay had carried out the baby and laid her 
 on the grass beside him ; he was smoking medi- 
 tatively, but every now and then he stooped to 
 pat her cheek or take her in his arms and toss 
 her high till she laughed. She was a puny 
 creature still, with a brow of care and great sad 
 eyes, but with Lindsay even Ellen was growing 
 to take a second place. 
 
 Ellen sat in shelter of the hedge with her lap 
 full of marigolds that she had gathered in the 
 long grass, not yet cut for hay. 
 
 She did not take much notice of Eccles and his 
 wife, but she moved a little to give Nancy Jane a 
 place beside her. 
 
 " It's faired up well since yesterday," said 
 Eccles as a greeting. 
 
 " It looks like a good Twelfth," said his father. 
 
 All remarks upon the weather for the last fort-
 
 148 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 night were understood to have reference to the 
 great " 1 2th " of July. 
 
 " It'll be three years since we had it dry," said 
 Eccles, " and it be to be dry this time, for there's 
 no shelter within near a mile of the field. There'll 
 be fourteen Lodges, 1 was countin'. Three from 
 Sloughlan, forby two from beyont the lake " 
 
 He went on reckoning up on his fingers with 
 much satisfaction. 
 
 " And great speeches, I'm thinking." 
 
 "That indeed. There'll be Dr. Morton and the 
 Colonel, and two speakers from Dublin, forby 
 them from all round. Mr. Duffin is to speak." 
 
 "And I'll hould he'll say something worth 
 listening to. He's still one that's not feared to 
 say what's in his mind." 
 
 " It'll be the best Twelfth we've ever had," said 
 Eccles enthusiastically. 
 
 " I am in two minds about going," said Nancy 
 Jane. " If the baby was weaned, and I could 
 lave it with Ellen, or if they met near hand but 
 there's little pleasure in four miles, carrying a 
 heavy wean, and four back, so maybe I'd better 
 bide at home." 
 
 Ellen sat absolutely silent with an expression- 
 less face. The last Twelfth had been the most 
 intense delight. There had been dancing and 
 singing and twelve, bands; she had had a new 
 dress, and for the first time in her life people had 
 begun to treat her as a woman. Archie Kennedy 
 had put himself out all day to get a word with 
 her, and Ellen had enjoyed with all her heart her 
 first taste of power. 
 
 Eccles looked at his wife and laughed. 
 
 "Hark till her!" he said; "as if she had any 
 more mind to stay at home than myself ! If
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 149 
 
 that's the way of it, Nancy Jane, it's unbenownst 
 to me why you're getting a new dress to set at 
 home in, maybe ! " 
 
 This effort of wit was received with much 
 amusement. 
 
 " Maybe I'll go after all," said Nancy Jane with 
 fine indifference; "and I was thinking, if I do, 
 likely you'd give me the loan of your umbrella, 
 Ellen. It's better nor mine, and my dress is that 
 light it would be drookit in a minute." 
 
 " You can have it," said Ellen ungraciously. 
 
 It was hard hard. She could have borne it 
 better if they had even seemed to think it pos- 
 sible she might want to go. But now she must 
 always be at home she would never again have 
 any change or pleasure, and no one thought of 
 her or cared. 
 
 It would be always the same. Nancy Jane 
 could be agreeable enough when she wanted any- 
 thing, but it never occurred to her that Ellen 
 was still a living girl and not an old woman or a 
 machine. 
 
 She got up abruptly, and her sister-in-law fol- 
 lowed her into the house to secure her umbrella. 
 
 Lindsay looked after them, and smoked in 
 silence for a few minutes. 
 
 " Eccles," he said, " I'm onaisy about the wean. 
 She's just breaking her heart. You see, her 
 trouble's aye before her here, and her grand- 
 mother is still casting it up to her, and that car- 
 naptious and ill to please. I've been coming 
 round to think she would be best away." 
 
 " But you couldn't do wanting her." 
 " I was coming to that. I have been wonder- 
 ing if it would suit you and Nancy Jane to come 
 and live out here. There'd be no rent, and I'd
 
 ISO ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 pay my board if so be as she would mind the 
 little one" he touched the baby "and maybe, 
 as she has her own, it would be little more 
 trouble." 
 
 Eccles looked uncomfortable. 
 
 " I'd be glad if you could see your way, lad. 
 You won't lose by it. And the wee thing's that 
 ould-fashioned it 'ud be little trouble. Ellen's 
 never had a chanst. Maybe this would never 
 have come if I'd let her go to Philadelphy when 
 they sent for her. Biit if they are willin' to see 
 to her now, I'll let her go, and get the ticket 
 somehow, and ask them for nothing." 
 
 Eccles said he would think of it. He was taken 
 by surprise, and not sure how Nancy Jane would 
 receive the proposition ; to know this was all-im- 
 portant, as hers was decidedly the stronger will. 
 
 When she appeared in triumph with the um- 
 brella they both went home. 
 
 Ellen did not come to say good-bye. She was 
 miserable, and hot with rebellion against fate. 
 Was she to be condemned to stay at home next 
 day, when not a soul would be left in the country 
 but Catholics ? when every one would be happy, 
 and Mr. Duffin would be speaking on a platform? 
 
 She was to spend the long lonely day as best 
 she might, and in the evening be ready to wel- 
 come the none too steady steps of her father and 
 Willy. 
 
 She would not stand it she would not. She 
 would go and enjoy herself with the best of them, 
 and let those who chose say a word she did not 
 care !
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE field was gay with flags and bright dresses 
 and orange scarves, and noisy with the sounds of 
 many drums. 
 
 A gorgeous arch of orange lilies, with an effigy 
 in coloured shavings of King William on a 
 prancing steed hanging from the middle, marked 
 the entrance to the festive scene and the skill and 
 taste of the Ballymagra Lodges. 
 
 The Ballyturbet Orangemen had only just 
 arrived, after a hard morning of it. They had 
 been marching in and out of Ballyturbet since 
 daylight, and had gone two miles out of their 
 way to meet the Sloughan Lodges ; after which it 
 had been necessary to honour the rectory and the 
 manse, as well as the Barings and the Lawsons, 
 with ceremonious marches past, which had all 
 taken time and energy. 
 
 The Lodge masters, in their scarlet and gilt 
 robes, had had the best of it ; their gaunt white 
 horses, marvelling at having exchanged their 
 plough for a bunch of orange lilies between their 
 drooping ears, had carried them steadily along in 
 dignified fashion. 
 
 The hardest work had fallen upon the flag- 
 bearers and the drummers ; they looked exhausted 
 and exceedingly damp, though they had thrown
 
 152 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 off their coats and made sundry pauses to refresh 
 themselves. Willy Lindsay was already doubtful 
 where he ended and his drum began, and had had 
 difficulties in steering clear of the sides of the 
 orange arch. 
 
 Eccles, decorated with a coloured scarf and a 
 sword, and in charge of Nancy Jane and the baby, 
 was so far commendably sober. 
 
 At the end of the procession came a crowd of 
 women and children in their best clothes ; for the 
 most part they, too, looked hot and draggled, and 
 were eager to make their way to the stalls which 
 lined the field, or to find a corner where they 
 could sit down and enjoy the provisions they had 
 brought with them. 
 
 At present both men and women kept to them- 
 selves, and there was little mingling of sexes ; it 
 would be different later on. 
 
 Ellen had joined herself defiantly to a party 
 from the lake. She laughed and talked loudly, 
 with a flushed face, and tried to believe she was 
 enjoying herself. 
 
 "I declare if that isn't Ellen Lindsay!" said 
 one woman to another. " Did you ever see such 
 impidence ? Not a bit of shame in her ! " 
 
 " To my eye she looks as if she had had a sup," 
 the other assented. 
 
 The words did not reach Ellen, but she felt 
 them she felt them in the looks and manner of 
 all her neighbours. 
 
 But what did she care ? What did it matter to 
 her? 
 
 When the speeches began she went with the 
 rest to stand below the wooden platform in the 
 middle of the field. She looked very young and 
 pretty ; several people on the platform noticed
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 153 
 
 her flushed, defiant face, with its frame of yellow 
 hair. 
 
 When Mr. Duffin rose to speak, received by 
 Ballyturbet cheers, she moved her position a little 
 till she could see him better, and watched him 
 with hard, curious eyes. 
 
 He did not mince matters in his speech, and 
 his words were thoroughly to the taste of his 
 hearers. He spoke of their ancestors' blood which 
 had been shed by Catholics, and hinted at a pos- 
 sible necessity for more bloodshed in the future. 
 If so, who so ready as the brave boys he beheld 
 before him ? Cries of " To hell with the Pope ! " 
 and cheers. 
 
 "On whom should Ireland depend to strike 
 a necessary blow in her defence but on her 
 Orangemen ? He was sure there was not one 
 here this day who was not ready to fight to the 
 last drop of his life's blood to save his country 
 from the ruin, the utter destruction of Home 
 liule ! " 
 
 An outburst of cheering interrupted him. 
 
 This was what they wanted this was what 
 they had come to hear. 
 
 " Father," said a boy who was standing near the 
 platform, " do you mind that girl's face ? " 
 
 " I can't say as I do." 
 
 " Don't you mind that wet evening she come 
 so often to know if the man was there to marry 
 her?" said the boy. He had opened the door 
 many times to Ellen, while his father had only 
 seen her once. 
 
 " Three cheers for the Eeverend Mr. Duffin ! " 
 cried a voice in the crowd. 
 
 The red-haired boy started. 
 
 " And it was him she asked for ! " he said.
 
 154 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 " Hould your whisht and don't talk foolishness," 
 said the registrar. 
 
 The crowd round the platform began to break up. 
 
 Ellen followed Mrs. M'Gloughlan, but that 
 worthy woman was tired, and soon found a com- 
 fortable bank, on which she sat down abruptly, 
 with a generous exhibition of white-stockinged 
 legs. A selection of youthful daughters estab- 
 lished themselves in her skirts, and several old 
 cronies, eager for a gossip, completed the circle. 
 They did not want Ellen. 
 
 She went farther on, and joined herself to a 
 group of girls who had gone to Miss Nelly's class 
 with her a year ago. Then she had been the 
 most popular among them, and the centre of all 
 fun, and her society had been in great demand. 
 Now they were not unkind, and spoke to her 
 civilly enough. 
 
 But in the past year she had fallen out of 
 them ; she did not know their jokes and stories, 
 and her place had been filled. This girl, who 
 was nervously bold, and yet crimsoned when they 
 spoke to her who had neither the spirits nor 
 the self-confidence to be amusing was like a 
 ghost of the Ellen Lindsay they had known, and 
 missed, and gossiped about. 
 
 In those days she had been the leader ; now the 
 plainest and stupidest felt herself to be conde- 
 scending to her. 
 
 Two older girls, in some sort cousins of the 
 Lindsays, stopped and spoke to her in a friendly 
 way, but their young men came up and she was 
 forgotten. 
 
 One or two men spoke to her, among them 
 Archie Kennedy, who passed her with a careless 
 word and a perfunctory attempt to kiss her.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 155 
 
 But though he, at least, recognised her as the 
 prettiest girl there, and the one who attracted 
 him most, he knew he would be laughed at if he 
 had anything to say to a girl who had " come to 
 trouble." 
 
 The Barings drove up to the field in the after- 
 noon, and once Ellen found herself face to face 
 with Miss Baring. Nelly turned away her head, 
 nodding in a friendly way to the other girls in 
 the group, and exchanging a whisper with one 
 of the Lawsons. Ellen knew as well as if she 
 had heard the words that they were an expres- 
 sion of disgust with her shamelessness in being 
 there. 
 
 She moved away, her eyes smarting with tears, 
 which she kept back with all her strength. 
 
 She did not like to be seen by herself, and tried 
 to look as if she belonged first to one party and 
 then to another. She drew towards them, remain- 
 ing at a little distance, which might have been 
 accidental, so as not to be in the way. Nobody 
 was unkind ; they simply did not think about her, 
 and had all their own friends and amusements. 
 But she was very glad when it was time to turn 
 homewards, and a sleepy, cross little M'Gloughlan 
 was thankfully confided to her. 
 
 Her father she had scarcely seen all day; now 
 he went on among the first, while she followed a 
 group of matrons who got themselves over the 
 ground with much deliberation. 
 
 The procession was decidedly less orderly in its 
 return ; there were a good many stragglers miss- 
 ing, and every now and then some one dropped 
 out of the ranks, either irresistibly attracted by a 
 public-house, or in consequence of having been so 
 attracted earlier in the day.
 
 156 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 Willy Lindsay still had his drum, and was 
 dancing along the road, transformed by drink and 
 excitement into a dangerous maniac. His face was 
 damp and crimson ; his hair stood on end ; his shirt 
 was torn and dirty, and lay open at the throat. 
 Even his drum had suffered ; one side was battered 
 in, the other was stained and bloody. He beat 
 it furiously, calling in a hoarse voice for the 
 Catholics to come on, if they dared face an honest 
 Protestant boy, and qualifying them with many 
 adjectives. As they wisely declined to be beguiled, 
 he suddenly turned upon the nearest nag-bearer, 
 who was quite inoffensive and marvellously sober, 
 and struck him in the face, accusing him of being 
 a Catholic in disguise. 
 
 A general row was only averted by the start- 
 ing of a hopeful rumour that the genuine article 
 was to be found a little farther on, armed with 
 sticks and staves. But this ended in disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 Eccles was being helped along, and at the same 
 time restrained, by Nancy Jane ; he, too, was 
 " fighting drunk," and being armed with a sword, 
 and in the midst of a group similarly armed, he 
 was more dangerous. 
 
 After the main body a string of interlaced 
 couples straggled in twos, and occasionally threes, 
 when some lucky youth was fortunate enough to 
 secure a lady on either side. 
 
 There was a general straightening up among 
 the soberer individuals when the Barings drove 
 through them, followed by Mr. Duffin in his 
 dog-cart. 
 
 Mr. Duffin was elated, and pleased with the 
 success of his speech ; he was thinking of it 
 as he drove past, and did not even see Ellen,
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 157 
 
 though she had to move out of the way to let 
 him pass, and his wheels sent a cloud of dust in 
 her face. 
 
 Neither did he notice that in one or two places 
 the men of the procession drew together with 
 whispers and strange looks as he drove by.
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 NOBODY ever knew exactly how the rumour first 
 started. Probably when the registrar, by the 
 merest chance, exchanged what he knew of Ellen 
 Lindsay's story for what a couple of Ballyturbet 
 men could tell him. At any rate, within a week 
 from the Twelfth, a very .unpleasant whisper had 
 spread everywhere about Ballyturbet. 
 
 People began to remember that Air. Duffin had 
 singled out Ellen as a favourite, and then had 
 suddenly and inexplicably dropped her. One or 
 two neighbours by the lake recalled, or imagined, 
 having seen them together. 
 
 One thing was found to fit in with another, and 
 Mr. Duffin was followed by unpleasant looks, which 
 had not yet developed into words. 
 
 He went on his way rejoicing, and quite uncon- 
 scious of any trouble in the air. 
 
 He was quite sufficiently employed in quarrel- 
 ing to the death with Mr. M'Cune over a piano 
 which had been bought by the Temperance Society 
 of joint Church and Presbyterians. The society 
 had now split into two sections under their re- 
 spective clergymen, and neither would yield or 
 sell their half of the piano. They could not pos- 
 sibly agree to share it still, as in all the year they 
 had fixed upon the same evening on which to
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 159 
 
 desire it one for a concert, and the other for a 
 Service of Song. 
 
 Mr. Duffin and Mr. M'Cune exchanged several 
 letters daily, and had the daily excitement of try- 
 ing to be first in securing the piano for a practice. 
 
 Consequently Mr. Duffin had no time to think of 
 anything else, and remained quite unconscious of 
 the cloud which was ready to burst over his head. 
 
 The rumour reached the Lindsays last. When 
 Eccles heard what his neighbours were saying he 
 went to Willy by instinct, not being given to take 
 the initiative, and Willy, as usual, was the one 
 to act. He said very little at first, but it was 
 remarked that for one whole week he was abso- 
 lutely sober. At the end he had apparently satis- 
 fied himself and made up his mind. 
 
 All summer through a goodly contingent of 
 Bally turbet men went every Wednesday arid 
 Saturday evening to play football in a field near 
 the village. 
 
 The next Saturday, just as the game was over 
 and the players were putting on their coats, Willy 
 Lindsay strolled slowly into the middle of them, 
 and took up his position against one of the goal- 
 posts. 
 
 " Boys," he said, " will you bide a bit ? I've 
 something to say to you." 
 
 There was a pause. Willy Lindsay was not 
 given to much speech when he was sober, and he 
 was undoubtedly sober now. 
 
 They surrounded him expectantly as he stood. 
 
 Willy spoke in a rough, deliberate voice, and 
 without hesitation. 
 
 " You all know of the misfortune to my sister. 
 I'm not telling you a new story in speaking of 
 our shame."
 
 160 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 He paused ; a murmur went through the group, 
 and they drew closer together. 
 
 "And of these last weeks you've all heard a 
 father given to her child. Now, boys, I'm not 
 saying a girl shouldn't mind herself, or isn't to 
 blame. But what I'm wanting to ask you is 
 this " Willy's voice grew louder, and his face 
 filled with an excitement which was reflected on 
 the faces round him "Is all the sufierin' and 
 shame to fall on the one ill fitted to bear it, and 
 is the other to go free ? Is the other to have 
 never a punishment for what I've piwed, mind 
 you just because he's one of the quality and a 
 disgrace to the Church ? " 
 
 There was an outburst of exclamations and 
 oaths. 
 
 Willy cleared his throat and went on with 
 increasing excitement. 
 
 "To my mind, boys, it's a d d sight worse 
 
 in a gentleman uplifting and moidering a poor 
 girl with his words and ways, that she's not used 
 to, than in the like of us. I've spoke to Sir 
 William Lawson and Mr. Baring, and they won't 
 believe it. If the law won't help, it's for us to 
 help ourselves. Are you willin' to send your 
 sisters and daughters to Sabbath-school to be 
 taught by one who, as like as not, is thinkin' to 
 lead them wrong ? Are you willin' to sit every 
 Sabbath under a man who has been the ruin of 
 one poor girl at the laste ? " 
 
 He was interrupted by a general shout of " No ! 
 no ! " supported by a good deal of strong language. 
 
 Several men said they'd be d d if they would, 
 
 and one went so far as to assert that he'd go to 
 the Presbyterians first, which was understood to be 
 almost a stronger way of putting it.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 161 
 
 " It's for you to say if you'll help us, boys, or 
 if it's none of your business. As for me, may I 
 lose all chanst of the Lord's mercy, may I be 
 struck down dead at your feet and rot in hell for 
 iver, if I'm not revenged on that black-hearted 
 divil ! " 
 
 Willy had raised his hand in denunciation ; he 
 let it fall and wiped his hot forehead, while a 
 hoarse, excited outburst of curses broke out. 
 
 His words had had their effect : the storm had 
 burst.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 " IT'S all done for no other reason than to oppose 
 me, Miss Nelly, and it's always the way with the 
 Presbyterians." 
 
 "That's exactly what Mr. M'Cune says of you," 
 said Nelly. It was Sunday morning, and she anp 
 Mr. Duffin had arrived in Sunday-school very 
 much before any one else, so she was kindly 
 employing the interval in endeavouring to teach 
 him how to govern his parish. 
 
 "Probably Mr. M'Cune does say so," said Mr. 
 Duffin with dignity ; " but allow me to explain 
 to you the full truth of the matter, and how it 
 happens that the piano " 
 
 " Please don't tell me," said Nelly, " or you 
 won't be in a Christian frame of mind for your 
 class. And you know, whoever is right, it seems 
 to me a great fuss about nothing." 
 
 Mr. Duffin was divided between his desire to 
 stand well with the Barings and his irritation at 
 her boldness. 
 
 "You will perhaps allow me to observe," he 
 said solemnly, " that you speak in this manner 
 because you scarcely understand. This matter 
 concerns the proper position of the Church in 
 the parish, and surely, Miss Nelly, you will admit 
 that there is nothing so important ? " 
 
 " I must say I'm fond of peace," said Nelly,
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 163 
 
 who would have fought to the death for her own 
 way. 
 
 " But it is hardly right," said Mr. Duffin, " for 
 the sake of peace in this world to give up working 
 for heaven." 
 
 Nelly laughed. 
 
 "Do you really think that they care in heaven 
 whether you have your concert on Monday or 
 Tuesday ? " she said. 
 
 Mr. Duffin never knew whether to be shocked 
 or not when he was with Nelly Baring. 
 
 He took a middle course now, and said, with a 
 slight accent of reproof 
 
 " It is the principle concerned, my dear Miss 
 Nelly. It would be easy and pleasant to give in 
 for peace in this world, but heaven is more im- 
 portant that we must look forward to as our 
 great object." 
 
 " I don't know that I'm so very keen about 
 going to your heaven," said Miss Baring, shrug- 
 ging her shoulders ; " there'll be nobody there 
 except a few Ulster Protestants, and it's sure to 
 be dull." 
 
 She tried Mr. Duffin hard. He paused, and 
 said, with a constrained smile, that it was very 
 pleasant for Miss Baring to have such cheerful 
 spirits. 
 
 But she was quite unabashed. 
 
 " And in the meantime," she said, " before we 
 get to heaven, how are we to spend this morning 
 upon earth ? Shall I ask you questions on the 
 two last chapters of Joshua, or will you take the 
 chance of finding me a docile pupil ? " 
 
 " Yes, it's very strange," said Mr. Duffin; " there 
 isn't a sign of any one." 
 
 It was strange undoubtedly; it was several
 
 164 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 minutes past ten, and not a child had come to 
 fill the empty forms. Presently the school- 
 mistress and monitress arrived, rather breathless 
 with a sense of lateness. 
 
 Nelly sat on a table and yawned openly for 
 about a quarter of an hour after she had exhausted 
 her conversation ; then she went home, very much 
 perplexed, and related her experiences to her 
 family. 
 
 When he heard it Mr. Baring seemed dis- 
 turbed. He had by no means forgotten his 
 interview with Willy Lindsay the day before, 
 and he did not feel so sure as he had assumed 
 to be that the rumour was unfounded. 
 
 " I suppose I'd better go to church," he said ; 
 " there's the chance of a row, and Lawson is so 
 hot." 
 
 " Oh, then you're in the mystery," said Nelly 
 pertly. 
 
 " Get your prayer-book, my good girl, and mind 
 your own business," said her father, from whom 
 she had inherited her sharp tongue, with several 
 other peculiarities. 
 
 All was quiet as they went up the church 
 the only sign of anything unusual was that walk ; 
 the bell was not ringing, and that the group 
 of men round the church door was large and 
 purposeful. 
 
 As the Barings came up one of them advanced, 
 touching his hat. 
 
 "I beg pardon, your honour ; there will be no 
 service this morning," he said. 
 
 Mr. Baring threw a rapid glance over the small 
 crowd ; he saw it was chiefly composed of young 
 men, dressed in their ordinary Sunday attire, but 
 one and all provided with stout sticks. The few
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 165 
 
 women and children that were there had drawn 
 a little apart. 
 
 Mr. Baring spoke as if all was as usual. 
 
 " Eh ? no service ? " he said. " What brings 
 you here, then ? " 
 
 " We're waitin' on his reverence," said the man 
 grimly. 
 
 He had scarcely finished speaking before Mr. 
 Duffin entered the churchyard, and a murmur 
 and movement went through the crowd. 
 
 Mr. Duffin made a momentary pause in surprise, 
 and then came on towards them. 
 
 He had been very much puzzled by the sudden 
 boycotting of the Sunday-school, and the nearest 
 parents, to whom he had gone, had had but feeble 
 excuses for the absence of their children. 
 
 Now he saw that there was something seriously 
 wrong, but no idea of the truth entered his head. 
 He had grown to feel so secure in his months of 
 impunity. 
 
 " There'll be no service the day," said the man 
 who had spoken to Mr. Baring. 
 
 Mr. Duffin turned on him sharply. 
 
 " What's the meaning of this ? Why is the 
 bell not ringing at this hour ? " 
 
 "The bell's not ringing because the sexton 
 can't get in to ring it. We've been at the trouble 
 of nailing up the dure here, and the vestry dure 
 the same. There'll be no service the day." 
 
 " Nor as long as you're in the parish, ye black- 
 hearted divil ! " said Willy Lindsay, suddenly 
 springing forward. 
 
 The repression of the crowd failed at his words ; 
 there was a quick outburst of rage, and here and 
 there a hand was raised threateningly, or closed 
 in a tighter grasp round a stick.
 
 166 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 Mr. Duffin grew suddenly white. All at once 
 he understood what it meant. 
 
 Mr. Baring came forward. 
 
 "Hold back, boys; what's all this about? 
 Behave like rational beings, and open the church 
 door. You must choose a proper time for any- 
 thing you have to say." 
 
 "If they don't open it at once I'll get the 
 police and have it burst with a crowbar ! " said 
 Mr. Duffin passionately. 
 
 " You'd better not," said M'Gloughlan. " Lave 
 him to us, your honour, and we'll tache him what 
 we have to say." 
 
 " But he'll never cross this dure again, unless 
 it's feet foremost," said Willy, raising his stick 
 significantly. 
 
 Mr. Baring faced them gravely. 
 
 " You're not setting about this right, boys," he 
 said. "If you have some accusation to make 
 against Mr. Duffin an accusation which I have 
 no doubt he can easily disprove this is neither 
 the time nor the place for it. Lindsay, you are 
 an old man and a sensible one " 
 
 " Your honour," said Lindsay, " I'm loath to go 
 again you, and I don't say if I was doin' it I'd 
 maybe choose just this way. But the boys have 
 taken it upon themselves, and I'm told they went 
 to you and Sir William first. Lave it to us, sir. 
 That false-hearted divil isn't fit to live. He's 
 ruined and desthroyed my child, and that's what 
 I put to him to deny if he dar ! " 
 
 "He says right," said M'Gloughlan ; "it's aisy 
 for your honour, but his daughter's as much to 
 him as Miss Nelly, there, is to you ; and he's 
 been so wrought that he would thank God had 
 she been buried a year ago in this churchyard.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 167 
 
 Your honour, what each man here says to him- 
 self is this 'If it hadn't been his daughter it 
 might have been mine.' We see to them as well 
 as we can, but it isn't aisy, and many and many a 
 mother just breaks her heart over the fear. And 
 what can we do again a gentleman like thon ? " 
 
 Mr. Duffin' s face was like chalk. Mr. Baring 
 saw it when he looked at him. 
 
 " I can understand all you say, believing this, 
 boys, but every man should have a fair chance. 
 I have no doubt that Mr. Duffin can easily con- 
 vince you that you are wronging him." 
 
 " Such an accusation scarcely deserves a reply," 
 said Mr. Duffin hoarsely. 
 
 " But it needs one," said Mr. Baring. 
 
 "Of course of course this is all a painful 
 mistake. You have been deceived and mis- 
 led " 
 
 " Not another lie out of you ! " said Archie 
 Kennedy, Methodist and Sunday-school teacher, 
 ending with a burst of opprobrious names. 
 
 Mr. Baring felt it was time to end the scene. 
 
 " You're the strongest to-day, boys," he said, 
 " think what we may of your action. I hope you 
 will disperse quietly, and I promise you that the 
 fullest inquiry shall be made. Mr. Duffin will 
 certainly desire it. I only wish you had set 
 about it better." 
 
 " Maybe if it was your house and child he'd 
 brought to shame, you'd hardly be troublin' about 
 politeness," said M'Gloughlan. 
 
 Mr. Duffin muttered something about a crow- 
 bar, but Mr. Baring shook his head and drew 
 him down the drive. He saw the men looked 
 dangerous, and was doubtful if his presence 
 would restrain them long.
 
 1 68 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 He walked up to the rectory with Mr. Duffin, 
 and heard his denial repeated. Mr. Duffin 
 agreed that inquiry the fullest inquiry must 
 be courted. It was most unpleasant and pain- 
 ful, he said, and Mr. Baring assented dryly. 
 
 He could not bring himself to believe the 
 denial.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 MR DUFFIN was a very miserable man. The 
 blow had fallen so suddenly, and after he had 
 grown to such a sense of security. 
 
 He considered it, tramping up and down his 
 room, as was his habit when much disturbed, 
 frowning and pulling at his moustache while he 
 muttered to himself. 
 
 Betty had spread a cloth over one half the 
 table, to save herself the trouble of removing his 
 books from the other, and had laid out his dinner 
 a chop and a couple of potatoes, all rapidly 
 getting cold. But he was not in the humour 
 to eat. 
 
 Had his absolute denial been wise ? There 
 had not been time to think, and he had spoken 
 on impulse. He had been most unfairly taken 
 at an advantage. 
 
 But it was too late to trouble about that now ; 
 he must stand by what he had said, and face it 
 out and he would. 
 
 Once he had been almost ready to let all go 
 for Ellen's sake. But it was too late to think 
 of that now; Ellen could never be anything to 
 him, and he had ceased to wish it ; the thought of 
 her aroused nothing but a sense of irritation and 
 resentment. 
 
 It must be, he thought, through her that dis- 
 169
 
 lyo ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 covery had come, threatening him with absolute 
 ruin absolute ruin at least from a social point 
 of view. Mr. Duffin doubted if otherwise he 
 could be made to suffer much. 
 
 What steps would be taken ? He did not 
 know. But he felt himself an ill-used man, and 
 exceptionally unfortunate in that he had not re- 
 moved to another parish in time. 
 
 He had several days to think things over, and 
 very unpleasant days they were. If he ventured 
 out he met cold looks and avoidance from every 
 one, sometimes scowls and muttered threats, which 
 he was obliged to ignore. If he remained in- 
 doors he was overwhelmed with Betty's effusive 
 sympathy and championship of his wrongs. 
 
 Every day rubbed away a little more of the 
 carefully cultivated suavity of his manner. When 
 Dr. Morton came to see him towards the end of 
 the week, he faced him, metaphorically showing 
 his teeth like a dog driven to desperation. 
 
 Dr. Morton, who was in the habit of taking 
 men as he found them, without much perception 
 of character, was amazed at the change in his 
 manner, which he found utterly inexplicable. 
 Mr. Duffin would have liked to be civil and 
 careless, but he could not hide his soreness, nor 
 strike the medium between somewhat servile 
 politeness and rudeness. 
 
 Dr. Morton was very much embarrassed, and 
 found his mission very difficult. Had he be- 
 lieved in the other's innocence it would have 
 been easy enough, and no one would have been 
 so hot and eager as Dr. Morton to champion his 
 cause. But confirmation of the first report had 
 come in from every side ; one after another 
 people had begun to remember and put things
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 171 
 
 together, and there seemed little room left for 
 doubt. 
 
 Dr. Morton's frank face was very red, and his 
 words did not come so easily as usual. He stood, 
 leaning against the mantelshelf, unconsciously 
 playing with a vase of withered flowers which 
 Betty had once gathered and arranged in a fit 
 of lavishness, and then apparently considered an 
 ornament for all time. 
 
 " Of course this is very unpleasant," he said. 
 
 " Exceedingly unpleasant for me," said Mr. 
 Duffin. 
 
 "For you and for us all," said Dr. Morton, 
 taking up the vase and looking at it sternly. " Of 
 course we believe your denial you understand 
 that and the Bishop feels that the whole thing 
 must be kept as quiet as possible ; but still he 
 considers an inquiry will be absolutely necessary 
 for your sake." 
 
 Dr. Morton was embarrassed between his 
 own private conviction and the necessity of 
 treating a man as innocent till he was proved 
 guilty. 
 
 " The rumour is utterly false," said Mr. Duffin, 
 "but unless it is disproved it means ruin to me. 
 So neither for the sake of obliging the Bishop nor 
 saving the Church from gossip can I be expected 
 to extinguish myself." 
 
 " Of course," said Dr. Morton, who was pulling 
 the head off one flower after another, in absolute 
 unconsciousness of what he was doing, " but you 
 will scarcely find the parish comfortable in the 
 future " 
 
 " I shall not resign, under any circumstances. 
 I am having a crowbar made to break open the 
 church door next Sunday; if necessary I shall
 
 172 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 -fight it, and if the Bishop turns me out it will be 
 for him to compensate me." 
 
 " You must, of course, do as you think best," 
 said Dr. Morton, " but it is always a mistake to 
 raise a scandal." 
 
 But in his heart he sympathised with Mr. 
 Duffin's intention of fighting it. 
 
 "It's the one decent thing about the man," he 
 said hotly to Mr. Baring afterwards, " that he has 
 some pluck." 
 
 Mr. Baring shook his head. 
 
 " Bluster, but not pluck. You'll see he won't 
 do it. What will be done to him ? " 
 
 Dr. Morton fumed to himself. 
 
 " He'll have to come before a diocesan court, I 
 suppose most unpleasant." 
 
 " And what then ? " 
 
 ".What then what then? Why, then the 
 scoundrel ought to be hung ! I don't mean 
 that. Of course there's no absolute proof, and 
 we are bound to believe the best." 
 
 " But I suppose he won't be hung ? " Mr. Baring 
 persisted. 
 
 "No; not exactly." 
 
 " And what will be done ? " 
 
 " I hardly know I hardly know what the 
 Bishop has power to do. He might suspend him 
 and put in a locum tenens for six months or a 
 year. But I'm afraid he can't turn him out of 
 the parish." 
 
 " Good God ! do you mean a clergyman may do 
 what he likes and can't be turned out or punished 
 like a man in any other profession ? " 
 
 " Oh, not exactly that," said Dr. Morton 
 vaguely, because it was exactly what he did
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 173 
 
 " And one can't help realising," said Mr. Baring, 
 " that the Bishop is hardly the man " 
 
 Dr. Morton stiffened and grew clerical at once. 
 
 " The Bishop is placed in a very difficult posi- 
 tion," he said. 
 
 " Damn it all !" said Mr. Baring, in an outburst 
 of anger. " I wish with all my heart I had not 
 been such a fool as to interfere between him and 
 the beating he so richly deserves ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 IT was autumn again. 
 
 Once more the Barings and the Lawsons were 
 in the garden, playing tennis and eating apples. 
 The year had brought little or no change either 
 to them or to Ballyturbet. 
 
 Mr. Baring, as he sat by his study window, 
 looked a man with whom the world had gone 
 very easily. In truth, he had had the same 
 troubles as his neighbours, over tenants and a 
 vanishing income, but he was blest with a glorious 
 capacity for fuming over things one minute and 
 totally forgetting them the next. 
 
 .This afternoon he pished and pshawed over his 
 letters in a very ruffled frame of mind. 
 
 Nelly came round and tapped at the glass. 
 
 " Father, the Lindsays are at the door asking 
 for you," she said. 
 
 "Very well, very well," said Mr. Baring im- 
 patiently. Then, as Nelly turned away, he threw 
 up the window and called to her, after a helpless 
 fashion in which he sometimes appealed to his 
 womenkind. 
 
 "Nelly, what the devil am I to say to the 
 Lindsays ? Do you know what they've done about 
 Mr. Duffin ? Here's a letter about him. It 
 seems there was some question at first of sus-
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 175 
 
 pending him for a year, but in the end they 
 struck a bargain with him. He wouldn't yield 
 an inch till the Bishop promised him a recom- 
 mendatory letter, and a hundred and fifty a year 
 till he gets another parish of equal value. And 
 they gave in." 
 
 "Father ! " said Nelly, "why, they're reivarding 
 him ! It can't be true." 
 
 " It's true enough. Fifty pounds is to come 
 out of the new incumbent's pocket, and a hundred 
 out of a fund for deserving clergy ; and I haven't 
 a doubt the Bishop will write him a glowing letter. 
 That's clerical justice ! " 
 
 They looked at each other. 
 
 "And what am I to say to the Lindsays? I 
 urged them to leave it to the law like a fool," 
 Mr. Baring ended hotly, his indignation getting 
 the better of him. 
 
 " Say ! " cried Nelly vehemently. " Say it's the 
 most wicked injustice and crying shame you ever 
 heard of ! What else can you say ? " 
 
 " That's so like a woman ! " said Mr. Baring 
 pettishly. " Of course I can't say anything of 
 the sort." 
 
 He sent for the Lindsays, after a doubt about 
 the advisability of seeing them at the hall door, 
 and he certainly made an effort to put the best 
 complexion he could on the thing. 
 
 Willy advanced, cap in hand, and was spokes- 
 man as usual. 
 
 " I am sorry for disturbin' your honour," he 
 said, " but we were thinkiri' you might have heard 
 about Mr. Duffin ? " 
 
 " Well, yes, I have. Take a seat, Lindsay. I 
 may say I have heard." 
 
 " They're sayin' in the town that, far from the
 
 176 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 Bishop punishing him, he's made him a present of 
 money and written praising him up. But I don't 
 doubt it's a mistake. The like of us often take 
 up things wrong." 
 
 " It's not exactly like that," said Mr. Baring, 
 playing with a paper-knife. "You see, there is 
 not much the Bishop could do ; it was necessary 
 to come to some agreement. He couldn't oblige 
 Mr. Duffin to leave the parish " 
 
 " Then it's true, sir ? It's true they're giving 
 him one hundred and fifty pounds every year for 
 what he's done ? They proved he done it, didn't 
 they, sir?" 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so." 
 
 " And do you think they're doin' right ? " said 
 Willy. 
 
 The question was too much for Mr. Baring. 
 He suddenly flamed up 
 
 " No, I do not ! I think it's an abominable 
 injustice. But there is nothing to be done. I 
 am very sorry for you." 
 
 " Maybe," said Willy gravely, " I'll find a way 
 to settle with him yet." 
 
 There was nothing more to be said. After a 
 pause they both went away gravely and quietly. 
 
 " So he's got off clear ? " said Eccles, with an 
 oath. 
 
 "Maybe he has, and maybe he hasn't," said 
 Willy. " See here, Eccles, will you stand to 
 me?" 
 
 " 'Deed and doubles I will." 
 
 " And there's plenty more will. I've not kep' 
 my eyes shut nor my tongue tied, and I happen 
 to know that dirty brute has taken away naught 
 that belongs to him. I've made it my business 
 to know. And as that's so, he'll hardly do
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 177 
 
 without coming down to see to things, once at 
 the laste." 
 
 " Do you think it ? " said Eccles. 
 
 " Ay ; there's a lash of things to see to. He'll 
 come, and we'll be ready for him." 
 
 The two men exchanged a long look of com- 
 prehension.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE short November evening had closed in. The 
 only light, as Mr. Duffin drove through the bog, 
 was from the lamps of his car, or where, at long 
 intervals in the sky, one or two stars were making 
 a faint appearance. 
 
 He had been at the rectory all day, arriving 
 early, and working hard to get everything done. 
 He had had a last interview with Betty, and 
 arranged what things were to be packed, and 
 what was to be sold by auction; he had sent 
 off his horse to a dealer, and made arrange- 
 ments for the disposal of his dog-cart. Finally, 
 he had gone round the house, the yard, and the 
 garden, and could feel he had neglected nothing. 
 
 Now he was free ; that chapter of his life was 
 closed for ever. 
 
 He had thought it best to arrive early and 
 go back late, by way of avoiding any unpleasant 
 meetings, and he had hired the car from a man 
 who was not one of his parishioners, and whom 
 he had never known. 
 
 Now, when he had left Ballyturbet behind him 
 for ever, when he could feel the breeze across the 
 bogs blowing in his face and see the glimmer of 
 light from the Lindsays' cottage for the last time, 
 he breathed a long sigh of relief. 
 
 His troubles were over, and he was full of 
 178
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 179 
 
 hope. He had a fresh start before him, some- 
 where perhaps in England where nobody had 
 ever heard of Ballyturbet; he was one of the 
 exceptionally lucky in life who are given another 
 chance. And he could afford to wait till the 
 chance was a good one. There was no hurry; 
 he would look about him and consider, and this 
 time he would not fail. 
 
 Fortune was on his side, and who could tell 
 how high he might rise in the future ? 
 
 In the dark Mr. Duffin smiled to himself with 
 entire satisfaction. 
 
 The road through the bog was narrow and not 
 too safe, and they were driving slowly and 
 cautiously. 
 
 Mr. Duffin from his seat watched the cottage 
 lights grow smaller and dimmer with a dreamy 
 sense of contentment. 
 
 " Stop damn you, stop ! " 
 
 The shout broke through the darkness with 
 startling suddenness, interrupting the peaceful 
 now of Mr. Duffin's thoughts of the future. 
 
 The driver drew up abruptly, so abruptly that 
 if they had not been going at the slowest of trots 
 the horse would scarcely have kept his feet. 
 
 They came to a full stop in the darkness. 
 
 " What is it ? What are we stopping for ? " 
 said Mr. Duffin, annoyed at being roughly roused 
 out of his dream. 
 
 He put out his hand towards the driver, and 
 found, with a shock of surprise, that the man had 
 jumped from his seat. Somebody grasped the 
 horse's head so roughly that it drew back, nearly 
 sending the car off the road, and a stone struck 
 Mr. Duffin on the forehead. 
 
 He put up his hand in a bewildered way to
 
 180 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 wipe off the blood he felt slowly trickling down 
 his cheek. What had happened? What was 
 going to happen ? 
 
 " Is anything wrong ? " he said in a sharp voice 
 of alarm. 
 
 He got no answer ; there had so far been no 
 further words about it at all. But suddenly a 
 dozen strong arms gripped him and drew him 
 from his seat. 
 
 He was thoroughly awake to his danger now. 
 He struggled desperately, and he was a strong 
 man, but his efforts were useless against so 
 many. 
 
 "What is it? What are you going to do, 
 boys ? " he said hoarsely. 
 
 " Settle with you for the girl you've ruined." 
 
 Somebody said the words, and to Mr. Duffin 
 they came like a shout through the silence, and 
 repeated themselves again and again in his head : 
 " Settle with you for the girl you've ruined 
 settle with you for girl you've ruined." 
 
 A cold terror fell upon him ; the sweat gathered 
 on his forehead, and he shook from head to foot 
 with mortal fear. 
 
 " My God ! are you going to murder me ? " 
 
 Then in a moment he was beneath a rain of 
 blows. They fell upon his back, his shoulders, 
 his head; the men were half drunken, and did 
 not measure their strokes. 
 
 He struggled hard at first, striking out into 
 the darkness, fighting silently, with thick, gasp- 
 ing breaths, for his life. After a time he fell 
 forward on his knees. 
 
 He uttered no cry. There was no sound at 
 all, except the heavy breathing of the men and 
 the thud of their blows.
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 181 
 
 All at once he slipped through their hands 
 and fell on his face in the road. 
 
 The blows ceased. There was a pause, while 
 the men stood in the darkness with idle hands, 
 suddenly sobered. 
 
 " He's kilt entoirely," said Archie Kennedy, 
 meaning that his beating had been a severe one. 
 
 "I'm afeard it's worse than that," said Eccles 
 hoarsely. 
 
 Willy broke the silence that followed. 
 
 " Give us a light," he said. " Where's the lan- 
 tern, Archie ? " 
 
 He took it, and knelt down beside the fallen 
 man, sending the light full upon his ghastly, 
 blood-stained face. He tore open the shirt and 
 laid his hand on his heart, during a few minutes' 
 breathless expectation. 
 
 Then he rose to his feet, and the lantern showed 
 a dozen white faces. 
 
 It had all happened so quickly. A few minutes 
 before the man at their feet had been a living, 
 breathing man, full of hope and satisfaction 
 with life; now he lay there no longer at their 
 mercy. 
 
 One of the group broke the silence in a voice 
 of horror. 
 
 " God knows we've gone too far," he said ; 
 " we didn't mean this ! " 
 
 Archie Kennedy burst into sobs ; he was 
 nothing but a boy, and he was frightened and 
 only half sober. 
 
 " If we had a docthor there might be a chanst 
 yet," said Eccles Lindsay. 
 
 His brother stopped his irresolute movement. 
 
 " You'll go for no docthor, you fool. The man's 
 dead ; there's no docthor in the world could mend
 
 1 82 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 
 
 a broken skull. He's got what he desarved, and 
 no more, and we've to look to ourselves. Andy 
 Murdoch, take your car and be off, and mind you 
 know none of us the night. Archie, quit makin' 
 a woman of yourself, and take a hoult of the 
 body round the oxter. We'll lave him in a grave 
 where it'll be long enough before they find him." 
 
 " What are you going to do ? " 
 
 " I am goin' to let the bog swaller him, as it's 
 done many a betther man," said Willy grimly. 
 
 A shudder went through the group; to some 
 this seemed the most cruel thing of all, but none 
 of them liked to speak. They were dismayed by 
 the darkness and the suddenness of it all, and 
 obeyed Willy by instinct. 
 
 Unwillingly, but without putting their opposi- 
 tion into words or action, they took up the body 
 and carried it off the road, down a path which 
 led into the bog. They went slowly and care- 
 fully, picking their steps by the help of the 
 lantern. Choose their path as they might, the 
 feet of the men, carrying their heavy burden, 
 sank above their ankles in the soft peat. 
 
 " Easy now," said Willy ; " we'll lave him here." 
 
 They paused; at their feet the lantern shone 
 on a dark, still pool of water. 
 
 " Let him go," said Willy. 
 
 Eccles gave a quick cry : " I can' t ! I can't ! 
 It's a wicked thing." 
 
 Willy turned on him. 
 
 " You fool ! You know what it manes to us ? 
 It's him or us. Let the body slip, Archie, and 
 mind your own f ut " 
 
 They lowered him slowly. Willy, who was 
 foremost, stepped too near, and felt the ice-cold 
 water creeping round his ankle. He started
 
 ACROSS AN ULSTER BOG 183 
 
 back with an exclamation of horror, and, his 
 support being removed, the body fell into the 
 water with a sudden splash. 
 
 Wet drops flew into the men's faces; young 
 Kennedy, shivering and sobbing, wiped his cheek 
 feverishly again and again. 
 
 In the light of the lantern the circles in the 
 water grew gradually less distinct; while they 
 stood silently it closed, dark and quiet as ever. 
 
 " He's there till the Judgment Day," said Willy. 
 " God forgive him." 
 
 " And God forgive us ! " said Archie Kennedy 
 under his breath. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Prnted by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. 
 Edinburgh and London
 
 A SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE 
 
 BY M. HAMILTON 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Athenaeum. 'The characters are exceptionally distinct, the move- 
 ment is brisk, and the dialogue is natural and convincing.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. 'Joanna Conway is on distinctly new lines, 
 and it has given us pleasure to follow her spicy, attractive personality through 
 all the phases of her carefully, finely-depicted evolution.' 
 
 The National Observer. 'A remarkably life-like picture of English 
 society. The author is a keen observer. The writing is above the average.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. ' An excellent novel. Joanna Conway is one of 
 the most attractive figures in recent fiction. It is no small tribute to the 
 author's skill that this simple country girl, without beauty or accomplishments, 
 is from first to last so winning a personality. The book is full of excellent 
 observation." 
 
 Black and White. ' Some pleasant hours may be passed in following the 
 fortunes of Joanna, the charming heroine of M. Hamilton's A Self-Denying 
 Ordinance. The book is well written, and holds the attention from start to 
 finish. The characters are true to life.' 
 
 The Methodist Times. ' The story retains its interest throughout. It 
 contains some vividly-drawn delineations of character.' 
 
 Woman. 'Contains the finest, surest, subtlest character drawing that 
 England has had from a new writer for years and years past." 
 
 Public Opinion. 'A well written and fascinating novel. It is a clever 
 sketch of life in its different phases. . . . "Every personage strikes one as 
 being richly endowed with individuality." ' 
 
 The Manchester Courier.' A decided success. There are such women 
 as Joanna Conway in the world, though, unfortunately, not so many as are 
 required ; but there are few writers of the present day who can do justice to 
 such a character, so poetical, and yet so practical. . . . There is humour in 
 the book : the scene is chiefly in Ireland, and who can truly write of Ireland 
 without humour ? but the greatest charm is in the wonderful tenderness, in 
 the womanly chivalry which renders so true the title of a self-denying 
 ordinance. 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 THE YEARS THAT THE LOCUST 
 HATH EATEN 
 
 BY ANNIE E. HOLDSWORTH 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Literary World. 'The novel is marked by great strength, which 
 is always under subjection to the author's gift of restraint, so that we are made 
 to feel the intensity all the more. Pathos and humour (in the true sense) go 
 together through these chapters ; and for such qualities as earnestness, insight, 
 moral courage, and thoughtfulness, The Years that the Locust hath Eaten 
 lands out prominently among noteworthy books of the time.' 
 
 The Daily News. ' Bears out to the full the promise given by Joanna 
 Traill, Spinster. The author has a genuine sense of humour and an eye for 
 character, and if she bids us weep at the tragedy of life and death, she makes 
 us smile by her pleasant handling of human foible and eccentricities.' 
 
 The Standard. 'A worthy successor to Joanna Traill, Spinster. It is 
 quite as powerful. It has insight and sympathy and pathos, humour, and 
 some shrewd understanding of human nature scattered up and down its pages. 
 Moreover, there is beauty in the story and idealism. . . . Told with a humour, 
 a grace, a simplicity, that ought to give the story a long reign. . . . The 
 charm of the book is undeniable ; it is one that only a clever woman, full of 
 the best instincts of her sex, could have written.' 
 
 The Review of Reviews. ' It has all the charm and simplicity of treat- 
 ment which gave its predecessor (Joanna Traill, Spinster) its vogue.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette.' The book should not be missed by a fastidious 
 novel-reader.' 
 
 The Court Journal.' The moral of the book is excellent ; the style 
 strong and bold. 
 
 The Scotsman. ' The story is well told, and a vein of humour serves to 
 bring the pathos into higher relief.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. ' It is sincere and conscientious, and it 
 shows appreciation of the value of reticence.' 
 
 The Manchester Courier. ' The book is full of delicate touches of 
 characterisation, and is written with considerable sense of style.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. ' Worked out with great skill and success. . . . 
 The story is powerfully told.' 
 
 The Liverpool Mercury. 'The story is told with sympathy and pathos, 
 and the concluding chapters are touching in the extreme.' 
 
 The Birmingham Gazette.' A sad story beautifully written, containing 
 pure thoughts and abundant food for reflection upon the misery which exists in 
 the world at the present day. The tale is particularly pathetic, but it is true 
 in character. It will be read with interest' 
 
 The Leeds Mercury. ' Full of powerful situations.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 HERBERT VANLENNERT 
 
 BY C. F. KEARY 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The National Observer.' Clever characterisation, natural dialogue, 
 moral sanity, and keen observation and knowledge of the world. . . . The 
 minor characters are as diverse as they are numerous, and there is not a lay 
 figure in the book.' 
 
 The Daily News. ' Herbert Vanlennert is good throughout. The 
 analysis of the hero's character is excellent. The story is crowded with minor 
 characters, all clearly individualised and seen in nice relation to their sur- 
 roundings. There is much power of observation, much knowledge of life and 
 art displayed throughout.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette.' A piece of life and a work of art. ... Mr. 
 Keary's men and women are solid all through. He is as honest in his presen- 
 tation of life as Mr. Gissing, but he is more pointed and wittier ; he is less 
 witty than Mr. Meredith, but he is more responsible. . . . Mr. Keary's work 
 stands out as a very brilliant piece of honest, knowledgable, wise artistry. We 
 say it deliberately, that there are very few novels of our time that bear so 
 unmistakably the grip of the master-hand as Herbert Vanlennert? 
 
 The St. James's Gazette.' A novel like this helps us at once to under- 
 stand, to judge, and to enjoy life ; and that is to say that he has written a 
 novel of the kind that only the great novelists write. From time to time there 
 comes a new novel marked by a kind and degree of excellence that compels 
 praise of an emphatic kind. There need be no hesitation about deciding that 
 Herbert Vanlennert is such a book.' 
 
 The Review of Reviews. 'In Herbert Vanlennert indeed is a whole 
 little world of living people friends and acquaintances whom it is not easy to 
 forget.' 
 
 The Sketch. ' Full of cleverness and a legitimate realism. Of two of the 
 most strongly marked and skilfully drawn characters, one is Maynard, the 
 artist of genius ; the other, a striking contrast to Maynard, is Bernard, who 
 passes a serene existence in the study of metaphysics. Very charming and 
 interesting are Mr. Keary's bright and vivid descriptions of English country 
 life and scenery in Derbyshire.' 
 
 St. Paul's. 'The book contains much clever writing, and is in many 
 respects a strong one.' 
 
 Black and White. 'There is abundance of skilfully drawn characters 
 and brilliantly sketched incidents, which, once read, cannot be forgotten.' 
 
 The Scotsman. ' Mr. Keary, even when he is treading on delicate 
 ground, writes with circumspection and cleverness.' 
 
 The Bradford Observer. ' It is a fine piece of art, and should touch its 
 readers to fine issues.' 
 
 The Manchester Courier. 'The book is most interesting, and embodies 
 a great deal of careful work, besides some very plain speaking.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 MISS GRACE OF ALL SOULS' 
 
 BY W. E. TIREBUCK 
 In One Volume, price 6.r. 
 
 The Times. ' Since Mrs. Gaskell wrote her Mary Barton we have seen 
 no more interesting novel on the condition of the working classes. Mr. 
 Tirebuck is thoroughly master of his subject. ... A vivid and impressive 
 narrative of the great coal strike of a couple of years ago." 
 
 The Literary World. ' Every reader anxious to hear of a work that is full 
 of brains and vigour may unhesitatingly enter Miss Grace of All Souls' upon 
 his list of books worthy to be perused. . . . Mr. Tirebuck, not content with 
 providing " Grace" for our admiration, has made another claim upon our love 
 by presenting us to Nance Ockleshaw. For her sake alone Miss Grace of All 
 Souls' should be read, and we hope that the novel will make its way into many 
 a home, there to be considered with all the care that is due to it.' 
 
 The World. ' The most remarkable contribution made by fiction to the 
 history of the working classes since Mary Barton, and it has a wider range 
 and import of deeper gravity. It appeals directly to the thoughtful among 
 readers, those who care to learn, on the object-lesson plan, the facts and 
 aspects of life among the multitudes, with whom they are brought into actual 
 contact. The girl who is its central figure is an original and very attractive 
 character.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. 'An uncommonly well-told story, interesting from 
 first to last. Mr. Tirebuck has drawn a truly delightful character in the 
 miner's wife ; indeed, the whole family might well have been sketched straight 
 from the life. It is difficult to make a work of fiction at once instructive and 
 entertaining, but Mr. Tirebuck has done it in Miss Grace of 'All Souls' '.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. 'An admirable piece of work. Here is realism 
 in its proper proportions : the rude, harsh, Methody life of the northern miner 
 engraved in all its essentials. Mr. Tirebuck manages to illustrate the con- 
 ditions of miners' lives for us with complete fidelity. Not a touch of the 
 humour, the pathos, the tragedy, the grime, the sin, and the ideals is lacking. 
 . . . Mr. Tirebuck has done his work to perfection. The story is not a moral 
 tract, but a work of art of great significance.' 
 
 The British Weekly. ' Mr. Tirebuck is a practised and powerful novelist, 
 and in this story he has taken us right inside the heart of the poor. His 
 description of the collier's wife is wonderful work.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. ' As a picture of working men and women, 
 instinct as it is with knowledge, sympathy, passion, and conviction, we have 
 seldom, if ever, read anything so good.' 
 
 The Manchester Courier. 'The character of Miss Grace reminds the 
 reader of the heroine of Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho.' 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 pioneer Series 
 
 The Athenaeum. "If this 
 
 Series keeps up to the present high 
 level of interest, novel readers will 
 have fresh cause for gratitude to 
 Mr. Heinemann." 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. 
 " Mr. Heinemann's genial nur- 
 sery of up-to-date romance.' 
 
 The Observer. "The smart 
 'Pioneer Series.'" 
 
 The Manchester Courier. 
 
 "The 'Pioneer Series' promises 
 to be as original as many other of 
 Mr. Heinemann's ventures. 
 
 Black and White. "The 
 brilliant ' Pioneer Series.'" 
 
 The Liverpool Mercury. 
 " Kach succeeding issue of the 
 ' Pioneer Series ' has a character 
 of its own and a special attrac- 
 tiveness." 
 
 Price 35. net, uniformly bound 
 in cloth ; or, in ornamental 
 paper wrappers, zs. 6d. net 
 each volume.
 
 BMoneer Series 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 Joanna Traill, Spinster 
 
 BY ANNIE E. HOLDSWORTH 
 
 The Observer. " Every word tells that it is the work of a true 
 woman who has thought deeply and lovingly on a most painful 
 subject. . . . The picture is a beautiful one, which it would be well 
 for many women to ponder over. ... In her claims for wider 
 sympathy, a higher understanding of right and wrong, and her 
 noble picture of woman helping woman, the authoress has dene a 
 good work." 
 
 The Methodist Times. "This is an exceedingly fine work of 
 fiction." 
 
 The Gentlewoman. ' ' Will rank among the prominent books 
 of the year." 
 
 The Guardian. " Shows marked power of drawing character, 
 and character of no commonplace kind. ... A very clever and 
 very suggestive book. " 
 
 The Saturday Review. " ' Joanna Traill, Spinster, ' is so grave 
 in subject, so passionate and earnest in treatment, and so absolutely 
 right in morals, that one might suppose the series intended to lead 
 into high regions of pure reason." 
 
 The Publisher's Circular. "A remarkably clever piece of 
 work. . . . The 'Pioneer Series ' starts with an initial volume as 
 remarkable in its way as that which initiated the ' Pseudonym 
 Library.'" 
 
 The Morning Leader. " Mr. William Heinemann could hardly 
 have done better than start his ' Pioneer Series ' with the noble and 
 courageous story of Annie E. Holdsworth. ... A novel charged 
 with real human characters subtly drawn." 
 
 The Sun. "Alive with character and movement. ... In 
 point of construction and completeness, it is quite a model for the 
 series it inaugurates, and it will fare far below its deserts if it does 
 not attract considerable attention." 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. "The interesting story is powerfully 
 told. Boas is drawn with keen fidelity ; the touch of humour is 
 supplied in the characters and proceedings of Joanna's married 
 sisters, who are skilfully worked into the closing tragedy of her 
 noble and selfless life." 
 
 St. Paul's. " It is a problem book, and the problem is coura- 
 geous, and one of the newest in fiction." 
 
 The Dally Telegraph. "The character of the spinster is 
 admirably drawn throughout, with a sympathy and insight which 
 reveal no small measure of artistic gift. Miss Holdsworth evidently 
 has both power and pathos."
 
 pioneer Series 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 George Mandeville's Husband 
 
 BY C. E. RAIMOND 
 
 The Athenaeum. "The chief merit of the book lies in the 
 portrait of the husband. . . . There is very great dramatic pro- 
 priety in many of the little touches which indicate his nature, and 
 contrast it with his wife's . . . and a very just effect is conveyed 
 by the gradual metamorphosis of his Bohemian and unconventional 
 joyousness. A most excellent and powerful piece of work." 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. "This novel is a good novel, and it is 
 to be sincerely hoped will not occasion a storm of blasts and counter- 
 blasts, as we fear it may. ... Its author is a very able writer, and 
 a keen, if rather brutal, satirist." 
 
 The Literary World. "Mr. Heinemann has certainly 'struck 
 oil' in ' George Mandeville's Husband.' . . . This story of paternal 
 love will stick in the memory of every one who reads it." 
 
 The World. "Mingled humour, pathos, just protest, and un- 
 answerable, straightforward, strong common-sense, in a style re- 
 freshingly vivid, realistic, and effective. . . . The story of the artist 
 and his little daughter is painfully pathetic, and a fine test of the 
 severe simplicity of the author's style." 
 
 The Spectator. "George Mandeville herself is an even more 
 effective picture than George Mandeville's husband ; and the third 
 figure in the little group described in it their child Rosina is the 
 most delicate and exquisite study of the three. . . . Mr. Raimond 
 is undoubtedly an artist of great power. . . . He certainly under- 
 stands women's distinctive graciousness and ungraciousness, as few 
 women of the advanced type appear to understand it." 
 
 The Pall Mall Budget. -"Clever, biting, and irresistible." 
 
 The Ohserver. "Charmingly written, light of touch, and 
 interesting from first to last, with some delightfully humorous bits, 
 and here and there a phrase full of pathos." 
 
 The Dally News. "That the author can write with grace and 
 pathos is shown in the presentation of Rosina. The relations be- 
 tween the father and child are very tenderly described. The book 
 is written in nervous and easy English. It is exceedingly clever." 
 
 The Guardian. "A novel of rare concentration, combined with 
 powerful delineation of character, . . . and told in the most ad- 
 mirable English." 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. " It is a really clever and careful bit of 
 work, and both in conception and execution is very different from 
 the ordinary average novel. . . . The ' Pioneer Series ' ought to be 
 a success if succeeding volumes have anything of the same high 
 quality as ' George Mandeville's Husband.' "
 
 Ube pioneer Series 
 
 VOL. III. 
 
 The Wings of Icarus 
 
 BY LAURENCE ALMA TADEMA 
 
 The Athenaeum. "On the whole, Miss Alma Tadema has 
 succeeded in the difficult task of titling a story in letters. . . . The 
 book is remarkable for the vividness with which the feelings of a 
 woman in love are realised. Many writers have shown, as it were, 
 from outside the most charming women in love, but that is not the 
 same thing as entering into those feelings almost personally, as Miss 
 Alma Tadema has done." 
 
 The Dally Chronicle. "Taken simply on its merits, 'The 
 Wings of Icarus ' is a very creditable performance. It is pleasantly 
 and unaffectedly written, and it tells, or rather indicates, a really 
 tragic little story. " 
 
 The Globe. "The exhibition of the inner soul of Emilia is of 
 such absorbing interest, her emotions are delineated with so much 
 force, yet with so much delicacy, that the mind of the reader is 
 wholly taken possession of, and Emilia's woeful love-tale has all 
 the fascination of a classical tragedy, . . . unquestionable literary 
 charm, a rare refinement, and a fund of poetic suggestion." 
 
 The Dally Telegraph. "In our opinion, the intrinsic merits 
 of this brilliant booklet justify the belief that in time to come the 
 illustrious name of Alma Tadema will earn as high honour in 
 connection with written romance as that which it has hitherto 
 acquired by association with painted presentments. ... An in- 
 tensely pathetic tale of passionate love and ineffable self-sacrifice. 
 . . . Nothing has been more impressively told in the pages of 
 modern fiction than the denouement of this sad but deeply fas- 
 cinating story." 
 
 The Sketch. "The working out of the story is novel enough. 
 . . . ' The Wings of Icarus ' is a book of promise. There is a 
 large amount of fine work in it. In the interpretation of delicate 
 shades of sentiment Miss Alma Tadema is already skilled." 
 
 The Dally News. "The character of the heroine is very 
 cleverly portrayed. . . . Constance is a suggestive sketch; the 
 feebleness of her nature is redeemed by the pathos of her fate. 
 Miss Tadema writes eloquently." 
 
 The Pall Mall Budget. " Miss Alma Tadema has written 
 with fidelity to a type, and a good deal of genuine feeling." 
 
 The Liverpool Mercury. "The story of a woman's heart- 
 break, powerfully written, deeply interesting, but also very sad." 
 
 The Manchester Courier. "As a revelation of the character 
 of a woman's passionate and unbalanced nature it is exceedingly 
 powerful. ' '
 
 TTbe pioneer Series 
 
 VOL. IV. 
 
 The Green Carnation 
 
 BY ROBERT HICHENS 
 
 Puncli, in the "Blue Gardenia (a colourable imitation)." 
 "Archie, I am writing a book. ... It will be called 'The Blue 
 Gardenia.' The title is one of the unemployed ; it has nothing to 
 do with the story. ... I shall not lack the art of personal allusion. 
 If my characters go out into the village, and see the village clergy- 
 man, I shall make him the Archbishop of Canterbury. People 
 like it. They say it's rude, but they read the book and repeat the 
 rudeness." 
 
 The Times. "Am using enough." 
 
 The OfoserYer. " It is likely to rouse a great deal of interest 
 and excitement, being modern of the moderns, daringly personal 
 often, and from the first page to the last bristling with well-pointed 
 spears, sparkling with epigram, and glittering with wit, sarcasm, 
 and delicious cynicism. It is intensely entertaining and up-to-date. 
 . . . The temptation to quote is almost irresistible; but where 
 there is such a superabundance of good things it is difficult to 
 choose. . . . The book is a classic of its kind, and its witty scorn 
 at the insipidities of a cult run to seed is admirable." 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. " One of the most brilliant expositions 
 of latter-day humour that has been brought to the public cognisance 
 for many a day." 
 
 The World. " Brimful of good things, and exceedingly clever. 
 It is much more original, really, than its title implies. . . . The 
 character-sketches are admirable." 
 
 The Globe. "The Green Carnation' is unquestionably an 
 entertaining book. . . . The author of this latest social satire has 
 done his spiriting gently. . . . Mr. Esm6 Amarinth is doubtless 
 intended for a portrait, not for a caricature. . . . One of the most 
 consistently amusing that has been given to the public for some 
 time." 
 
 The Sketch. " There is plenty of clever satire in it." 
 
 The Illustrated London News. ' ' The general public will 
 like ' The Green Carnation,' . . . because it is full of fun and 
 humour, and has no page whereat you may not laugh loudly. . . . 
 The student of literature will be interested in it, because it marks a 
 further development in the form of satire invented by Peacock in 
 'Crotchet Castle,' and adopted by Mr. Mallock in the 'New 
 Republic.' . . . The writer of 'The Green Carnation' is ... 
 quite as witty as either of his two models, and has all Peacock's 
 talent for buffoon description of incident, and Mr. Mallock's pretty 
 power of giving you a whole man or woman in a little flash of 
 words. His style has grace. He is a nicely equipped satirist."
 
 TTbe flMoneer Series 
 
 VOL. V. 
 
 An Altar of Earth 
 
 BY THYMOL MONK 
 
 The Speaker. "It is not merely clever, but pathetic and 
 natural; and although the author has not been able to resist the 
 temptation to introduce that question of the Seventh Command- 
 ment, which is apparently the one question that has any interest 
 for the New Woman, she judiciously gives to it an interest that 
 is merely hypothetical." 
 
 The Gentlewoman. ' ' ' An Altar of Earth ' belongs to the 
 impressionist-cum-realistic method that finds such popular favour 
 for the moment. Of its kind the book is more than a fair example, 
 and apart from the excellent construction of plot is marked by 
 many happy terms of expression. ... A neatness of thought, and 
 an aptness for suggested characterisation, give the tragic story 
 great strength." 
 
 The Saturday Review. " The latest volume of Mr. Heine- 
 mann's ' Pioneer Series' maintains to some extent that tradition of 
 originality, and of that quality, which we have agreed to call 
 'modern,' that previous volumes in this series have led us to 
 expect. The book ... is a book of much promise. It is 
 exceedingly well written; and . . . there is pathos and genuine 
 dramatic power." 
 
 The Sunday Times. " ' An Altar of Earth ' is a slight, pretty, 
 and well-written story, with a rather curious culminating incident. 
 . . . There is a summery, pine-tree air about the little story which 
 is very pleasant ; the dialogue is bright, and Daphne is delicately 
 and cleverly drawn, in spite of the shadow of death that hangs over 
 her during the whole story. She is much the cheeriest person in 
 the book. . . . This volume of the clever series should also be very 
 popular." 
 
 The Sun. "There are touches in the book that remind one of 
 'An African Farm,' and the descriptions of Surrey scenery are 
 charmingly fresh and true. Like its predecessors, the book is 
 decidedly unconventional." 
 
 The Observer. " It is a pathetic little story." 
 
 The Dundee Advertiser. "Powerful in its unwonted pathos, 
 the story is not the least noteworthy in a remarkable series. ... It 
 is of unique merit, and distinguished by an odd beauty of indefin- 
 able fascination." 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. "The book is distinctly clever and 
 readable. ... On the whole, she has written a striking and 
 powerful book."
 
 TTbe flMoneer Series 
 
 VOL. VI. 
 
 A Street in Suburbia 
 
 BY EDWIN W. PUGH 
 
 The filobe. " The first sketch, 'The Courtship of Jack Cotter, 
 indicates a sense of humour which Mr. Pugh develops later on ; 
 but more to the credit of this little book than its attempts to amuse 
 are the cleanness and the wholesomeness of its simple ethics, and 
 its avoidance of unsavoury details. . . . This ' Pioneer' writes well, 
 has an eye for dramatic effect, and has observed local humours 
 with fruitful appreciation." 
 
 The Sketch. " By humour and pathos of a healthy kind, and 
 not a little literary skill, Mr. Pugh has given some very vivid pictures 
 of poor London life. There is one scene, in the chapter called 
 ' A Small-talk Exchange,' describing the desperate venture of a 
 child with a farthing at its disposal into a sweet lottery, which, in 
 its way, for shrewdness and veracity, it would be hard to beat. And 
 there are other scenes and stories, too, with the breath of life in 
 them. 'A Street in Suburbia" is the best of the ' Pioneer Series,' 
 not forgetting 'George Mandeville's Husband.'" 
 
 The Dally Chronicle. " These short sketches of low London 
 life show observation and the assiduous use of a note-book. . . . 
 Mr. Pugh has more sympathy with, and consequently, perhaps, 
 a truer insight into, the type of character he sketches than Mr. 
 Morrison. Mr. Pugh is kindly where Mr. Morrison is only 
 caustic. ... To Mr. Pugh's credit be it said, he selects for literary 
 reproduction only such incidents as have in them something of 
 pathos or of humour. Naturally enough, he sees little that is 
 picturesque in Marsh Street, but when he does he seizes it like an 
 artist." 
 
 The Pall Mall Budget. " Mr. Pugh is subjective, and writes, 
 in fact, professedly as one who had been brought up among the 
 people he describes. He ranges over the fields of tragedy, and 
 comedy, and farce . . . always with sympathy and intelligence. 
 . . . The first sketch, 'The Courtship of Jack Cotter,' is genuinely 
 humorous, and for pathos I would take ' Mamma's Angel.'" 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. " All his characters live, move, 
 and have their being, and we recognise a rare truthfulness to life 
 in Hiram Sikes. ' A Street in Suburbia ' has revealed Mr. Pugh's 
 ability." 
 
 To-Day. "Mr. Pugh has the gift of observation, the power of 
 seeing those little things that make one man's character different 
 from another. . . . Mr. Pugh can be genuinely funny when he 
 chooses. The best thing in the book is 'The First and Last 
 Meeting of the M.S.H.D.S.' The letters signify the 'Marsh 
 Street Hall Debating Society.' If this were the only good thing 
 in the book which it isn't by a long way it would still make the 
 volume worth buying. . . . This is certainly one of the few books 
 that ought to be bought, and not borrowed."
 
 Ube pioneer Series 
 
 VOL. VII. 
 
 The New Moon 
 
 BY C. E. RAIMOND 
 Author of " George Mandeville's Husband ' 
 
 The Dally Chronicle." In his new story, the author of 
 'George Mandeville's Husband' breaks fresh ground. . . . The 
 satirical element in his former story was, no doubt, what made 
 people talk about if, but it was not the finer portion of the work. 
 ... In ' The New Moon ' no such element of attraction will be 
 found. ... It is a simple, poignant soul-drama, worked out 
 entirely by three characters, a man and two women, one of whom 
 remains to the last ignorant of the part she is playing. It may be 
 said, perhaps, that there is a dash of satire in the portraiture of 
 Millicent Monroe, with her childish, petulant, inconsequent mind, 
 given over to the cult of signs and omens ; but the character is 
 delicately and sympathetically studied, without any touch ot 
 cruelty. Towards the end, indeed, this silver-grey figure becomes 
 deeply pathetic, and may perhaps be regarded (whether the author 
 so willed it or no) as the success of the book. It may appear 
 ... as though the book ought to be ' crowned ' by the Thirteen 
 Club, as works of edification are crowned by the French Academy. 
 But we are not sure that the conclusion will be equally gratifying 
 to that dare-devil body. If it does not actually justify the well- 
 known superstition about 'seeing the new moon through glass,' it 
 at least puts it to a symbolic use which the stalwart rationalism of 
 the Thirteen Club will scarcely approve. Artistically, however, 
 the symbolism is ingenious, subtle, and effective. The portrait of 
 Dorothy Lance is as living as that of Millicent, though her charac- 
 teristics are naturally less marked. ... A story that moves us ; 
 and we must own to having read the last pages of 'The New 
 Moon ' with breathless interest and emotion." 
 
 The World. "The plot of this story of a great friendship between 
 a man and a woman is original and uncomplicated ; the narration 
 of it is simple, eloquent, and artistic ; the tone is pure and poetical. 
 There is a problem in it, but it is none the worse for that no faint 
 praise, surely." 
 
 The Dally News. " It is a moving story, and in the supreme 
 crisis it vibrates with restrained passion. The crisis is all the more 
 impressive that the note of triumph and purity rings through its 
 anguish." 
 
 The Saturday Review . ' ' The emotional phases are drawn with 
 amazing force and sympathy. The book is a profoundly moving 
 one, seizing hold of the reader from the very outset, and it makes a 
 worthy member of what promises to be a very brilliant company of 
 story-books indeed."
 
 pioneer Series 
 
 VOL. VIII. 
 
 Milly's Story 
 
 (The New Moon) 
 
 BY Mrs. MONTAGUE CRACKANTHORPE 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. " ' Milly's Story" seems to us a very 
 clever account of a nervous, invalided woman, disposed by early 
 education to be credulous, but possessed of a certain fine instinct 
 with which wiser and duller people do not credit her." 
 
 The Dally Chronicle." There is a good deal of ingenuity in 
 the way in which the incidents of the original tale are, so to speak, 
 turned inside out." 
 
 The Liverpool Mercury. "The nervous, sensitive, disease- 
 stricken woman, hopelessly in love with a man who has given his 
 heart to another, is a picture which will not easily fade from the 
 mental vision." 
 
 The Saturday Review. " In spite of our personal prejudice 
 against the character, we must admit the story is a remarkably 
 ingenious gloss upon Mr. Raimond's work. Indeed, the character 
 is here far more convincing than it was in the original." 
 
 The Morning Post. " Milly is not here quite the weakling, 
 with a soul capable only of liberal credulity or timid fear. At 
 moments she can hate, and the scene in which in imagination she 
 places the naked truth before Dorothy's eyes is marked by honestly 
 indignant passion." 
 
 The Realm. " The author of ' Milly's Story' undertook a very 
 difficult bit of work, and has carried it through with success. 
 Milly's interview with the different occultists is very interesting 
 reading, and satisfactorily explains many things in her life which 
 were a puzzle. . . . ' Milly's Story ' is very well written." 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. " This is a clever book, and the 
 descriptions of eminent palmists and other fashionable witches, 
 which take up some portion of it, are a really interesting study of 
 one most curious aspect of modern London life." 
 
 The World." The book is clever, curious, at times even 
 pathetic." 
 
 Black and White. "The point of view of the dabbler in 
 occultism, who is neither a charlatan nor a frivolous pryer into 
 secrets, has never been better put."
 
 Ube flMoneer Series 
 
 VOL. IX. 
 
 Mrs Musgrave and Her Husband 
 
 BY RICHARD MARSH. 
 
 The Times." Mr. Marsh's story is the extremely sensational 
 romance of a double crime, and it is a decidedly original psycho- 
 logical study to boot. . . . The morality is perverse, and there is 
 nothing of a moral, though the author may urge that he is not 
 responsible for that. And morality apart, we can only say that we 
 wish he had snatched the sinful couple from the police and con- 
 tinued their adventures through a second volume." 
 
 The National Observer. "The interest is well sustained, and 
 the book can be recommended as a good companion for a railway 
 journey." 
 
 The St. James' Gazette. "This is one of the completest 
 things in the murder line we ever came across. De Quincey we 
 know, and Miss Braddon, and Mr. William Shakespeare ; all these 
 on occasion have a pretty taste- in blood. But compared with Mr. 
 Richard Marsh, they are the merest amateurs." 
 
 The Dally Chronicle. " Original and ingenious." 
 
 The Realm. "The book is consistent, eminently readable, and 
 told in a direct style." 
 
 The Daily Graphic. " The best parts of the book are the 
 psychological chapters, which are curious and original." 
 
 The Scotsman. "An altogether interesting and excellently 
 written story." 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. " An exceedingly interesting tale." 
 
 Woman. "A first-rate novel of sensation, tempered by some 
 searching psychology." 
 
 Vanity Fair. " The interest is absorbing from the first chapter, 
 in which the keynote is artfully struck, to the logical climax." 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. ' ' The deadly duel between the 
 two men in the Antwerp train, when the physical and moral con- 
 trast is admirably brought out, attains a very high level of dramatic 
 power." 
 
 The Birmingham Gazette. " With consummate skill Mr. 
 Marsh sandwiches his horrors with exquisite bits of humour, and 
 we lay down the book feeling that we have read an uncommonly 
 clever novel."
 
 pioneer Series 
 
 VOL. X. 
 
 The Red Badge of Courage 
 
 BY STEPHEN CRANE 
 
 The Saturday Review." This extraordinary book will appeal 
 strongly to the insatiable desire to know the psychology of war- 
 how the sights and sounds, the terrible details of the drama of 
 battle, affect the senses and the soul of man." 
 
 The Speaker. " Every page is crowded, not merely with inci- 
 dents such as the war correspondent describes, but with the tragedy 
 of life. The reader sees the battle, not from afar, but from the 
 inside. ... As a work of art, ' The Red Badge of Courage ' deserves 
 high praise. As a moral lesson that mankind still needs, the praise 
 it deserves is higher still." 
 
 The St. James' Gazette. "This is not merely a remarkable 
 book ; it is a revelation. Mr. Crane has laid the War God on the 
 dissecting-table and exposed his every bone and nerve and sinew and 
 artery to the public gaze." 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. " Mr. Crane has certainly written a 
 remarkable book. He has deliberately synthesised the particular 
 emotions of warfare, which, it is plain, he had been at pains to 
 analyse fastidiously." 
 
 The Dally Chronicle. " Mr. Kipling has shown us the private 
 soldier in barrack and camp. Mr. Crane brings him into action. 
 . . . Mr. Crane's book, we repeat, is a really fine achievement." 
 
 Black and White. " Mr. Crane presents war, not in dramatic 
 nor heroic aspect, but terrible and pitiful as it sometimes appears." 
 
 Mr. George Wyiidham, M.P., in the New Review. " Mr. 
 
 Crane is a great artist. ... In ' The Red Badge of Courage ' he 
 has surely contrived a masterpiece. ... I think that his picture of 
 war is more complete than Tolstoi's, more true than Zola's." 
 
 The Saturday Review (second notice). "The curiosity of 
 literary readers has been aroused by the extraordinary success of 
 Mr. Stephen Crane, whose remarkable book, ' The Red Badge of 
 Courage," we reviewed in a recent issue. Mr. Crane is still a very 
 young man, about twenty-three years of age. His book was written 
 when he was twenty-one. . . . The extraordinary instance of early 
 maturity is another proof of the fact that the imagination can enter 
 into and realise the actualities of life so vividly and deeply as to 
 surpass in realism the records of experience. "
 
 pioneer Series 
 
 VOL. XI. 
 
 The Demagogue and Lady Phayre 
 
 BY W. J. LOCKE 
 
 Author of " At the Gate of Samaria" 
 
 The Dally Chronicle. " Goddard and Lizzie, his wife, are both 
 exceedingly well-drawn characters." 
 
 The Sketch. "Mr. Locke's well-written, sensible, and sympa- 
 thetic story." 
 
 The Scotsman." Not many stories of the kind are more 
 cleverly written than this of Mr. Locke." 
 
 The Weekly Sun." Mr. Locke is a Realist, but a Realist in 
 the best sense of the term. He has grappled with the soberest 
 realities of everyday life, and rises triumphant from a contact that 
 would be fatal to a writer of less splendid gifts." 
 
 The Yorkshire Herald. ' ' The story is worth reading, and is 
 all the more entertaining because the hero's politics are not the 
 theme of the book, but mere fragments of its inevitable em- 
 broidery." 
 
 The Liverpool Mercury. "The characters of the story are 
 drawn with a firm hand, and sad as many of them are, the details 
 are eminently true to life." 
 
 Black and White." Contains admirable work." 
 
 The Sheffield Dally Telegraph.' ' The story is cleverly written, 
 with full knowledge of political life."
 
 flMoneer Series 
 
 VOL. XII. 
 
 Her Own Devices 
 
 BY C. G. COMPTON. 
 
 The Manchester Courier. "Very bright and interesting." 
 
 The Dally Telegraph. " Mr. Com pton knows a good deal of 
 theatrical and Bohemian society in London, and his pictures of it 
 are forcible and realistic the colours dashed on with careless skill. 
 The book is full of cleverness.' 
 
 The Sketch. "We are grateful to Mr. Compton for an enter- 
 taining book." 
 
 The Globe. "The dialogue is bright throughout, and the tale 
 makes very pleasant reading." 
 
 The Homing. "The character of Susan Stanier is acutely 
 observed, and in all her humours the actress pushing, unscru- 
 pulous, vain, flighty, selfish creature that she is is thoroughly 
 human." 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. "The author does not waste 
 words in his descriptions, and he has not read his George Meredith 
 in vain. Several of the characters are skilfully drawn." 
 
 In Preparation 
 
 Papier Mache. By CHARLES ALLEN. 
 The New Virtue. By Mrs. OSCAR BERINGER. 
 Across an Ulster Bog. By M. HAMILTON. 
 One of God's Dilemmas. By ALLEN UPWARD.
 
 The Novels of 
 Ivan Turgenev 
 
 TRANSLATED BY CONSTANCE GARNETT 
 Uniform Edition. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 35. net each volume 
 
 The Times. " A warm welcome, then, is due to the translations 
 of Turgenev's novels, in course of publication by Mr. Heinemann." 
 
 The Dally Graphic." One cannot but be glad that Mr. Heine- 
 mann has thought fit to produce a satisfactory little edition of the 
 exquisitely pathetic tales of Turgenev." 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 Rudin 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. " The method is perfect; difficulties 
 of character overcome without explanation, subtleties so objectively 
 brought out in conversation, for instance that we might almost 
 fancy the author himself did not know how much he was saying 
 a simplicity which apparently only Russian novelists possess." 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 A House of Gentlefolk 
 
 The Times. " Readers may content themselves with admiring 
 'A House of Gentlefolk' for those beauties which belong to all 
 ages and countries." 
 
 VOL. III. 
 
 On the Eve 
 
 The Scotsman." The work has a thousand good qualities, the 
 best of which defy analysis, but will charm any one who reads the 
 story." 
 
 The Literary World." It is human nature between two covers, 
 a simple tale told simply by a genius."
 
 The Novels of Ivan Turgenev 
 
 (Continued] 
 VOL. IV. 
 
 Fathers and Children 
 
 The Realm. " The supreme excellence of the book consists in 
 the fact that it possesses merits which are rarely found in combina- 
 tion. It is at once a great work of art and a profound study of a 
 movement. . . . The book abounds in passages of idyllic beauty 
 far too numerous to quote." 
 
 The Scotsman. " Bazaroo is a type of modern scepticism, and 
 the art of the story consists in the skill with which this type is 
 brought into contrast with other types and temperaments." 
 
 VOLS. VII. AND VIII. 
 
 A Sportsman's Sketches 
 
 IN 2 VOLS. 
 
 The Times. " It is superfluous to praise the excellent tales of 
 Turgenev ' A Sportsman's Sketches.' The strong, unaffected, and 
 sympathetic drawing of rustic character, the landscape, the very 
 atmosphere, are all alike admirable." 
 
 The Dally Chronicle." The great Russian has no cleverness, 
 no violence, no mannerism, but he has the rare beauty of patient 
 and peaceful art. Terrible wisdom and insight are his, infinite 
 emotion not suffered to be lawless, immense strength adorned with 
 delicacy and grace, and at heart that necessary of artists a bound- 
 less devotion to his own land, which has inspired him to his great 
 achievements. His work is compassionate, beautiful, unique ; in 
 the sight of fellow- craftsmen always marvellous and often perfect." 
 
 VOL. V. 
 
 Smoke 
 
 VOLS. VI. AND VII. 
 
 Virgin Soil
 
 The Novels of 
 Bjornstjerne Bjornson 
 
 EDITED BY EDMUND GOSSE 
 
 Uniform Edition. Post 8vo, cloth. 33. net per volume 
 
 The Literary World. " The excellent edition of Bjornson." 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 Synnpve Solbakken 
 
 The Literary World. " We are shown in the course of a book 
 which is almost devoid of plot the peasant at work, in love, and at 
 fisticuffs ; but the simpler the page the more prominent the genius 
 of a writer who, asking no help from the novelist, touches the 
 common with the magic of his power till the result is a whole that 
 enchants." 
 
 * VOL. II. 
 
 A r n e 
 
 The Academy. "This tale of the peasant-poet who 'went on 
 tending the cattle and making songs,' while he was 'shy of all 
 whom he did not know, and disliked them because he believed they 
 disliked him,' has all the simple and poetical charm of Bjornson's 
 best works, and contains some of his best lyrics." 
 
 VOL. III. 
 
 A Happy Boy 
 
 VOL. IV. 
 
 The Fisher Maiden 
 
 VOL. V. 
 
 The Bridal March 
 
 VOL. VI. 
 
 Magnhild 
 
 . VOL. VII. 
 
 Captain Mansana 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
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