Containing a Song by Charles Ravenshoe, and Also Father Tiernay’s Opinion About the Family.

Charles and the good-natured Father Tiernay wandered out across the old courtyard, towards the stables — a pile of buildings in the same style as the house, which lay back towards the hill. The moon was full, although obscured by clouds, and the whole courtyard was bathed in a soft mellow light. They both paused for a moment to look at the fine old building, standing silent for a time; and then Charles startled the contemplative priest by breaking into a harsh scornful laugh, as unlike his own cheery Ha! Ha! as it was possible to be.

“What are you disturbing a gentleman’s meditations in that way for?” said the Father. “Is them your Oxford manners? Give me ye’r cigar-case, ye haythen, if ye can’t appreciate the beauties of nature and art combined — laughing like that at the cradle of your ancestors too.”

Charles gave him the cigar-case, and trolled out in a rich bass voice —

“The old falcon’s nest

Was built up on the crest

Of the cliff that hangs over the sea;

And the jackdaws and crows,

As every one knows,

Were confounded respectful to he, to he — e — e.”

“Howld yer impudence, ye young heretic doggrel-writer; can’t I see what ye are driving at?”

“But the falcon grew old,

And the nest it grew cold,

And the carrion birds they grew bolder;

So the jackdaws and crows,

Underneath his own nose,

Gave both the young falcons cold shoulder.”

“Bedad,” said the good-natured Irishman, “some one got hot shoulder today. Aren’t ye ashamed of yourself, singing such ribaldry, and all the servants hearing e?”

“Capital song, Father; only one verse more.”

“The elder was quelled,

But the younger rebelled;

So he spread his wide wings and fled over the sea.

Said the jackdaws and crows,

‘ He’ll be hanged I suppose,

But what in the deuce does that matter to we?’ ”

There was something in the wild, bitter tone in which he sang the last verse that made Father Tiernay smoke his cigar in silence as they sauntered across the yard, till Charles began again.

“Not a word of applause for my poor impromptu song? Hang it, I’d have applauded anything you sang.”

“Don’t be so reckless and bitter. Mr. Ravenshoe,” said Tiernay, laying his Land on his shoulder. “I can feel for you, though there is so little in common between us. You might lead a happy, peaceful life if you were to come over to us; which you will do, if I know anything of my trade, in the same day that the sun turns pea-green. Allons, as we used to say over the water; let us continue our travels.”

“Reckless! I am not reckless. The jolly old world is very wide, and I am young and strong. There will be a wrench when the tooth comes out; but it will soon be over, and the toothache will be cured.”

Tiernay remained silent a moment, and then in an absent manner sang this line, in a sweet low voice —

“For the girl of my heart that I’ll never see more.”

“She must cast in her lot with me,” said Charles. “Ay, and she will do it, too. She will follow me to the world’s end, sir. Are you a judge of horses? What a question to ask of an Irishman! here are the stables.”

The lads were bedding down, and all the great building was alive with the clattering of busy feet and the neighing of horses. The great Ravenshoe Stud was being tucked up for the night; and over that two thousand pounds’ worth of horseflesh at least six thousand pounds’ worth of fuss was being made, under the superintendence of the stud groom, Mr. Dickson.

The physical appearance of Mr. Dickson was as hough you had taken an aged Newmarket jockey and put a barrel of oysters, barrel and all, inside his waistcoat. His face was thin; his thighs were hollow; calves to his legs he had none. He was all stomach. Many years had elapsed since he had been brought to the verge of dissolution by severe training; and since then all that he had eaten, or drunk, or done, had flown to his stomach, producing a tympanitic action in that organ, astounding to behold. In speech he was, towards his superiors, courteous and polite; towards his equals, dictatorial; towards his subordinates, abusive, not to say blasphemous. To this gentleman Charles addressed himself, inquiring if he had seen William: and he, with a lofty, though courteous, sense of injury, inquired, in a loud tone of voice, of the stable-men generally, if any one had seen Mr. Charles’s pad-groom.

In a dead silence which ensued, one of the lads was ill-advised enough to say that he didn’t exactly know where he was; which caused Mr. Dickson to remark that, if that was all he had to say, he had better go on with his work, and not make a fool of himself — which the man did, growling out something about always putting his foot in it,

“Your groom comes and goes pretty much as he likes, sir,” said Mr. Dickson. “I don’t consider him as under my orders. Had he been so, I should have felt it my duty to make complaint on more than one occasion; he is a little too much of the gentleman for my stable, sir.”

“Of course, my good Dickson,” interrupted Charles, “the fact of his being my favourite makes you madly jealous of him; that is not the question now. If you don’t know where he is, be so good as to hold your tongue.”

Charles was only now and then insolent and abrupt with servants, and they liked him the better for it. It was one of Cuthbert’s rules to be coldly, evenly polite, and, as he thought, considerate to the whole household; and yet they did not like him half so well as Charles, who would sometimes, when anything went wrong, “kick up,” what an intelligent young Irish footman used to call “the diwle’s own shindy.” Cuthbert, they knew, had no sympathy for them, but treated them, as he treated himself, as mere machines; while Charles had that infinite capacity of goodwill which none are more quick to recognise than servants and labouring people. And on this occasion, though Mr. Dickson might have sworn a little more than usual after Charles’s departure, yet his feeling, on the whole, was, that he was sorry for having vexed the young gentleman by sneering at his favourite.

But Charles, having rescued the enraptured Father Tiernay from the stable, and having listened somewhat inattentively to a long description of the Curragh of Kildare, led the worthy priest round the back of the stables, up a short path through the wood, and knocked at the door of a long, low keeper’s lodge, which stood within a stone’s throw of the other buildings, in an pen, grassy glade, through which flowed a musical, slender stream of water. In one instant, night was hideous with rattling chains and barking dogs, who made as though they would tear the intruders to pieces; all except one foolish pointer pup, who was loose, and who, instead of doing his duty by barking, came feebly up, and cast himself on his back at their feet, as though they were the car of Juggernaut, and he was a candidate for paradise. Finding that he was not destroyed, he made a humiliating feint of being glad to see them, and nearly overthrew the priest by getting between his legs. But Charles, finding that his second summons was unanswered, lifted the latch, and went into the house.

The room they entered was dark, or nearly so, and at the first moment appeared empty; but, at the second glance, they made out that a figure was kneeling before the dying embers of a fire, and trying to kindle a match by blowing on the coals.

“Hullo!” said Charles.

“William, my boy,” said a voice which made the priest start, “where have you been, lad?”

At the same moment a match was lit, and then a candle; as the light blazed up, it fell on the features of a greyheaded old man, who was peering through, the darkness at them, and the priest cried, “Good God! Mr. Ravenshoe!”

The likeness for one moment was very extraordinary; but, as the eye grew accustomed to the light, one saw hat the face was the face of a taller man than Densil, and one, too, who wore the dress of a gamekeeper. Charles laughed at the priest, and said —

“Yon were struck, as many have been, by the likeness. H............