Spanish Gold/Part Two

CHAPTER XII

NEXT morning Meldon awoke earlier than usual. He turned out of his bunk at half-past five, and, as yachtsmen often do, began the day by tapping the barometer. It had fallen during the night and was still falling. He went on deck and looked round him. There was no sign visible as yet of a change in the weather. Everything pointed to the certainty of at least one more hot day. He returned to the cabin and shook Major Kent.

"It's not time for you to get up yet," he said. "But I thought I might as well warn you that you'll have to be dressed and ready to start by half-past six."

"I'm not going on a fool's errand at any such hour in the morning," growled the Major.

"I thought you'd very likely say that when you woke. That's the reason I shook you up a bit before it was absolutely necessary. Some people are at their best when they first wake. All really great men are. I am, myself. Other people wake slowly and are uncommonly short in their temper for an hour or so after they get up. That's the sort you are. If you had a wife I'd pity her at breakfast-time."

Meldon went on deck again and surveyed first the Aureole, then Higginbotham's hut. At the end of a quarter of an hour he returned to the Major.

"It's all right," he said. "Higginbotham is stirring and I see Jamesy O'Flaherty fiddling about at the curragh. They'll be off in a few minutes. You'd better be getting up if you want half an hour to dress yourself. We'll breakfast on shore."

"I won't."

Meldon made no answer to this flat refusal. He went on deck again and stared through the glasses at the beach beside the pier. He saw Higginbotham embark in the curragh, watched Jamesy O'Flaherty take the oars, shove off and begin to row steadily. He returned to Major Kent.

"He's gone," he reported. "I hardly dared to hope he would, but he has. In a few minutes he'll be out of the bay. Then I'll swim across to the Aureole at once."

"What for?"

"To deal with the punt, of course. There's a nice little westerly breeze, and when I cast loose the painter she'll drift quietly out to sea."

"J. J., I've stood a lot of your foolery, but I'm not going to allow you to commit theft before my eyes and I'm not going ashore without my breakfast."

"I'll take your two points separately," said Meldon. "There doesn't seem to be any connection between them. First, there's no theft in taking my own punt and sending her out to sea. Second, you must come on shore at once or else the other fellows will wake. They can't get off the Aureole when they do, of course. But I'd rather not have them howling after us. It wouldn't look well if we refused to go back for them. People might say afterwards that we'd taken their punt from them. Whereas if we're well out of the way before they wake we can't be blamed for their being stuck all day on the Aureole."

"It's ten to one they see you setting the punt adrift, and then there'll be a nice row."

"They won't. What would have them up at this hour of the day? They know jolly well that the tide won't be low enough to get into that hole at the bottom of the cliff till about ten o'clock. They won't expect us to stir till after eight, anyhow. But I can't stop here arguing with you. You get a few bits of bread and some butter and sardines and things together, and I'll be off."

Meldon dropped over the side of the Spindrift and struck out for the Aureole. He watched her keenly as he swam, and saw no signs of life on board her. The morning breeze ruffled the surface of the water slightly. The tiny ripples beat against his chin and cheek. The sun shone red through a faint haze. Meldon swam joyously. He was filled with the spirit of adventure and with delightful anticipations of success. The Aureole lay with her bow pointing to the shore. The punt was astern of her. Now and then she pulled at her painter just sufficiently strongly to lift it from the water and haul it taut. Then, while the drops still fell from it, the rope grew slack again and the punt ran up a little towards the yacht. The gurgling wash of the ripples against her side was pleasant to hear. Meldon gripped her by the stern, steadied himself, and lay almost flat on the water with his legs near the surface to avoid the suction of the punt. Then with a sharp jerk of his arms he raised himself till hi chest touched the gunwale. He climbed cautiously on board, loosed the painter from the ring in the bow and lay still for a minute or two, watching the distance between him and the Aureole widen slowly. The breeze was light, and the punt did not drift very fast. Still, she moved towards the mouth of the bay. Sir Giles and Langton were apparently sound asleep. Meldon slid quietly into the water again and started on his return journey to the Spindrift. Now and then he turned over on his back and swam for a few yards with his eyes fixed on the Aureole. There was no sign of awakening on board of her.

He climbed into the Spindrift by the bight of rope he had left hanging over the side for his accommodation.

"Major," he said in a delighted whisper, "the coup has come off. Where's my shirt? Isn't it extraordinary the way things move about during the night. I could have sworn I left it on the end of my bunk. Ah! I have it. Now the sooner we're off the better. Slip the breakfast into the punt and get in yourself. Go on, man. If you want to argue, argue when we're on shore. We haven't a minute to lose. I wouldn't trust that beast Langton not to sneak up in his pyjamas to have a look at us. He did yesterday."

Major Kent, grumbling and protesting, was hustled into the punt. Meldon followed him and paddled briskly to the shore. There was no one, not even Mary Kate, on the pier when they reached it.

"Now," said Meldon, "get that punt ashore and fold her up. We're going to take her with us."

"Why should we drag the punt? We'll only be cutting her to pieces on the rocks."

"Why? Because in the first place, as you'd see if you troubled yourself to think for a single instant, if we leave her here some fool will go off to the Aureole in her when those fellows begin to shout for help. In the next place, because you can't swim, and we'll want her to carry you up the channel to the bottom of the cliff. I must say that these collapsible punts, beastly as they are to row in, have certain good points. We couldn't have carried the ordinary wooden boat all round the island. Just you fold her up while I go over to the curragh there on the shore."

Major Kent lifted the punt out of the water and folded her flat. Then he looked up and saw Meldon, with four oars on his shoulders, going up the hill towards Higginbotham's house.

"What are you doing?" he called.

"I found four oars," said Meldon, "and I'm going to put them in through one of the windows of Higginbotham's house. Nobody will think of looking for them there. I wish to goodness you wouldn't shout at me like that. You'll waken every man on the island before you've done, to say nothing of Sir Giles and Langton."

The Major pursued Meldon up the hill and seized him by the arm.

"J. J," he said earnestly, "I call this theft."

He had the true English respect for law in spite of the fact that both him and his father had spent their lives in Ireland. The very thought of an unhallowed interference with property shocked him inexpressibly.

"You may call it arson if you like," said Meldon, who had nothing but Irish blood in his veins, "or malicious injury, or agrarian outrage, or intimidation. I don't care if you call it cattle-driving or even boycotting. I'm going to stow the oars away all the same. I can't have the owners of the curragh rowing off to the Aureole and putting Sir Giles on shore as soon as our backs are turned."

Meldon breasted the hill and reached the iron hut. He tried each of the four windows in turn. They were all bolted. With the end of one of the oars he deliberately smashed a pane of glass.

"For Heaven's sake, don't," said the Major.

"I must; Higginbotham will probably grumble, but that can't be helped. He'd no right to go away and leave his house barred and bolted as if he was afraid of burglars."

"He very well might be afraid of burglars when you're about."

"Now look here," said Meldon as he shoved the oars through the broken pane, "I don't mind your being abusive, not the least bit. You've been calling me a liar and a burglar and other bad names since ever I brought you to this island. I haven't resented it a bit and I don't. But I tell you what I do dislike, and that's your abominable unreasonableness. I can't bear men who are carried away by mere words and don't stop to think about the meaning of what they say. What is burglary? Isn't it taking a man's own things out of his house when he's not looking? You agree to that definition, I suppose. Very well. What am I doing? I'm putting other people's things into a man's house when he's not looking. Now that's just the exact, bang opposite to what burgling is. Therefore, I'm not a burglar. In fact, I'm the very antithesis of a burglar. You may not know what an antithesis is, but——"

"I do know, so you need not trouble to explain."

"Very well, I'll pursue my line of reasoning. Burglary is wrong. You hinted that yourself a minute ago. But the antithesis of wrong is right. What I'm doing is the antithesis of burglary. Therefore——"

"There's no need to go on talking that rot," said the Major. "It doesn't impress me in the least."

"I feared it wouldn't. Never mind, Major, even if you don't pocket a single doubloon—and I'll be greatly surprised if you're not weighed down with them before morning, but even if you don't pocket one, you're getting a liberal education. The things I've told you about geology, entomology, theology, ethics, and philosophy in general, since we came to this island would set up an ordinary professor handsomely."

Meldon slung the folded punt across his shoulders, took a last look at the Aureole and started to tramp up to the head of the path which led down the cliff to the western beach of the island. Major Kent, with the paddles, the rowlocks, and the basket which contained the breakfast, followed him. The inhabitants of Inishgowlan are not early risers. A few women peered out through the doors of the cabins. Nobody attempted to speak to them or follow them. Neither Thomas O'Flaherty Pat nor Mary Kate appeared at all. Meldon and the Major walked rapidly. At the top of the cliff they paused.

"We're pretty safe now," said Meldon, "and we'll take a few minutes' rest, but we won't breakfast till we're down among the rocks."

He swung the punt off his shoulders as he spoke, sat down and wiped his brow.

"If I'm not mistaken," said the Major, "there's some one on the deck of the Aureole now."

Meldon stood up and looked eagerly.

"There is," he said. "You're quite right. See now, they're both on deck. Well, they can stay there."

"What'll they do now?"

"Shout, I should think. I can't myself see what else there is for them to do. Sir Giles might swim, but it's not likely the other fellow can. That sort of man never does anything really useful. Anyway, if they do swim, they can't carry all their tackle with them for getting down the cliff. All the same, I think we'll move on a bit."

"I'm inclined to go back to them," said the Major. "I don't like——. After all, they've not done anything to us."

"It's not what they've done so much as what they want to do which makes me determine to keep them there. Recollect, Major, they're after the treasure."

"Well, haven't they as good a right to it as we have? I like to play fair."

"They have not as good a right as we have. I deny that entirely. Think of the use those fellows would make of the treasure if they got it. You told me yourself that Sir Giles was a bad hat—so bad that his own father left the family property away from him, as much of it as he could. Langton's no better. You heard what Higginbotham said about his drinking, and he must have a hideously corrupted mind after poking about for years among those manuscripts in the College Library. You don't know how bad most manuscripts are. That's the reason they remain manuscripts. No decent printer would set them up in type. I tell you, if those two fellows get a hold of the treasure, they'll spend it in ways that will make the Spanish captain shiver in his grave, and I don't expect he was exactly a squeamish man. It's nothing but a public duty to prevent their getting a hold of the money, even if we never touch a penny of it ourselves."

"I don't see what all that, even if it's true, has to do with their right to take the treasure if they can, always supposing there is any treasure to take."

"I wish you wouldn't qualify everything you say with a whole string of 'if's,' It robs your conversation of piquancy. But come on now. We must get out of this. They might see us with their glasses. When we've had our breakfast, I'll explain to you why Sir Giles has no right to the treasure."

They made their way down the steep path and reached the rocks at the foot of the cliff. Meldon laid the punt down carefully. The basket was unpacked and a sufficient supply of bread, butter, sardines, potted meat, and jam was spread out on a flat stone. For a while Meldon ate without speaking. An early swim, a long walk, and an hour or two of anxious excitement, whet a man's appetite for breakfast. Major Kent began to hope that he would escape an explanation of his own moral right to the treasure. He was disappointed. Meldon, his appetite sated, lit a pipe and leaned back comfortably against a rock.

"We may as well take it easy for a bit," he said. "The tide won't be out far enough to let us get into that hole for another two hours, and it won't take us more than one to get there."

He smoked contentedly for a few minutes and then began to speak again—

"You read the Times, Major, so I suppose you take some interest in politics."

"I know that the Nationalists are blackguards, if that's what you mean."

"I'm not talking now of these petty little local squabbles. When I say politics, I refer to the great stream of European thought, to the wide movements discernible among all civilised peoples."

He waved his hand towards the ocean to indicate the immensity of his subject.

"I don't know anything about that," said the Major.

"I thought you wouldn't, but you ought to. Are you aware that our modern civilisation is on the very verge of a bust-up? No? Well, it is. The Governments of the various countries are, generally speaking, unaware of the catastrophe which threatens them; or, if they guess anything, are foolish enough to think that they can stifle an explosion by sitting on the safety-valve. You catch my meaning, I suppose?"

"You appear to mean," said the Major, "that all Kings, Princes, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Parliaments are fools."

"Precisely. They all are."

"It's a pity you don't tell them so."

"I will. I've always intended to tell the first one I met. Look at Russia. Choke-full of anarchists and nihilists. Look at Portugal. They're murdering kings and rioting in churches. Look at Finland, admitting women to their Parliament; not that I object to women in the way you do, Major. I think they're all right in their proper place. I only quote Finland as an instance of the general tendency I'm speaking of. Look at New York, with its Socialist riots. Look at Austria-Hungary, or Italy, or any other country you choose to name. Look at the Labour Members in the English House of Commons. Now what does all that mean?"

"I don't know in the least, and I don't care. Things were always pretty much the same. There's nothing new in the condition of the world that I can see."

"You may not see it, but there is. We're on the brink of a revolution—the biggest thing of the kind that there has ever been. And the cause of it is the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people who are using it for purely selfish purposes. Any student of sociology will tell you the same thing. It's a well-known fact. Now what is our duty under the circumstances? What is the duty of every well-disposed person who values the stability of civilisation? Obviously it is to prevent the selfish, depraved, and fundamentally immoral people from acquiring wealth; to see that only the well-intentioned and public-spirited get rich. That is the general principle. Now apply it to the particular case we are discussing. On this island there is untold wealth in solid gold."

"I suppose," said the Major, "that I shall come to believe that in the end. I hear it so often that I shan't be able to help myself."

"There are just two parties who stand a chance of possessing themselves of it. There's no one else in the running for this particular scoop."

"What about Higginbotham and Thomas O'Flaherty?"

"You might just as well say, What about Mary Kate and Michael Pat? They're not in it. Higginbotham is a Government official, to mention only one point, and is so much occupied in ameliorating the condition of the people that he simply wouldn't have time to spend the money, even if he got it. No. There's us and there's Sir Giles and Langton. That's all. Now, ex hypothesi—you know what I mean by ex hypothesi, don't you?"

"I do, but don't let that stop you if you have any fancy for explaining it. I shan't mind listening."

"Your suggestion, Major, as one of the members of our District Council said the other day, when some one accused them all of being drunk, is quite uncalled for. It's only for your sake, to quiet your conscience about the treasure, that I'm going into the matter at all. My own mind is quite clear. I haven't any doubts about Sir Giles."

"If that's all, you needn't go into it any more."

"All right. I won't. Have another sardine? There are two left in the tin. Now that I've finished my pipe I feel that I could do with one of them. In fact I could manage them both if you don't want the other."

"I don't."

"Sure? Oh, well, rather than let them go to waste, I'll eat them."

He took them one after the other by their tails, and, throwing his head back, dropped them into his mouth. With his penknife he scraped out of the pot Some fragments of jam which lingered near the bottom. There was no more bread. Having finished this scanty second breakfast he stood up and stretched himself. Then he announced that it was time to start. Major Kent rose unwillingly and took up the paddles. Meldon swung the punt on to his back again.

"No sign of old T. O. P. this morning," he said. "We've successfully given him the slip. I expect he's cowering in his gloomy cabin, meditating on fresh ways of defeating Higginbotham. Sir Giles and Langton have probably stopped shouting for help by this time. They're too hoarse, I expect, to shout any more. They are now reduced to gnashing their teeth silently and muttering frightful oaths. Higginbotham is searching for bacilli on Inishmore. Poor Higginbotham! I'm afraid it'll be a dull and trying day for him. But we'll make it up to him afterwards. Mary Kate is, I hope, doing her duty by her little cousin Michael Pat and making things a bit easier for young Mrs. O'Flaherty. When we get back to Ballymoy, Major, we'll send a good stiff bottle off to the old woman. Remind me of that, will you, in case it slips my memory. On the whole, things look rosy for you and me—a great deal rosier than I ever recollect them looking before. Come along now, we've no more time to waste."

CHAPTER XIII

IT is not easy to carry a punt—even the kind of punt that folds up—over rugged and slippery rocks. Meldon stumbled frequently and fell three times. He cut his elbow and reopened the rent in the knee of his trousers which he had laboriously sewed up after his first expedition round the coast of the island. His cheerfulness was untouched by misfortune. His energy carried him far ahead of Major Kent, who had the lighter load. Even when he found himself on his hands and knees among seaweed and pools he preserved the punt from injury. He arrived at last at the point on which he had decided that the Spanish galleon must have struck, scrambled round it and reached the ledge of rock above the channel. He was breathless, dishevelled, and so hot that he wished very much to swim rather than row to the hole in the cliff. He put the temptation aside. Major Kent, labouring heavily with the paddles over one shoulder, appeared at the corner. Meldon unfolded and stretched the canvas punt. He made fast the rope, which he had used as a sling, to the ring in her bow, and launched her very carefully. He insisted on embarking at once when the Major arrived.

"No sign of any one swinging down over the cliff to-day," he said, looking over his shoulder as he paddled up the channel. "Sir Giles is otherwise and perhaps less innocently occupied. He is certainly swearing frightfully. He is very likely at this moment cutting Langton's throat."

"It isn't Langton's throat he'll cut. Langton didn't set his punt adrift."

"I dare say he'd rather cut mine if he could, but in the sort of temper he's in at present it'll be almost necessary for him to murder somebody at once."

"But what has he against Langton?"

"Oh, you can't always account for deeds of that sort. They are what the French call crimes of passion. By the way, did you ever read Lombroso on Crime? You ought to. He's a tremendous fellow for the physical characteristics of the criminal. I'd like him to have a look at Sir Giles. I expect—— Hullo! here we are!"

The punt grounded at the very mouth of the hole. There were still a few inches of water in the entrance, and the little beach on which Sir Giles had stood two days before was not yet uncovered. Meldon stepped out of the punt, knelt down, and peered into the hole.

"It's all right," he said. "We can get in easily. It doesn't matter if we get a little wet."

He took the painter of the punt in his hand and crawled into the hole. In a couple of minutes his voice, sounding hollowly, reached Major Kent.

"Come along. It's only the entrance that's really narrow. It's quite a large cave when you're inside, and not nearly so dark as you'd expect. You have to crawl more than a few yards in the water. The ground rises rapidly and it's quite dry where I am now."

Major Kent disliked very much the idea of crawling even a few yards through water; but he knew that it was no use holding back. Meldon was quite capable of emerging and dragging him by main force into the hole. Very unwillingly he stooped down and crept forward.

"It's not a bad place, is it?" said Meldon, "and a pretty good size. You can sit straight up here and hardly bump your head at all."

He made fast the painter of the punt to a large stone as he spoke. "She'll be all safe. The tide will leave her high and dry in another half-hour. I wonder how far this cave goes? I expect the Spanish captain dumped his treasure right at the far end. Come along."

It was difficult to get along at first. Walking over large round stones which roll about when trodden on is never easy. It becomes extremely troublesome when it is only possible to proceed either on all fours or bent double—when the roof is so low that an unguarded movement results in a blow on the head. But things got pleasanter after a little while. The ground sloped rapidly upwards. Meldon and the Major were soon above high-water mark. Then the stones on which they walked were no longer so smoothly rounded and were much less liable to roll.

"What beats me about this cave," said Meldon, "is that it isn't darker. It doesn't seem to get any darker either as we go on."

The roof rose higher. It became possible to walk upright. Major Kent stretched himself at last to his full height and looked round him. The rocks on each side had widened out, leaving a space between them. They and the roof were quite visible in a dim light which came from the depths of the cave.

"It's interesting to think," said Meldon, "that the last human feet which trod these stones were those of the Spanish captain and his crew. It must have been tough work dragging the cases of bullion along through that narrow part. We can't have much farther to go now. I see what looks like the end in front of us. But I can't understand where the light comes from."

He went on a few yards and then gave a sudden shout—a kind of cheer—half-smothered by excitement. He ran forward, stumbling desperately among the loose stones, but picking himself up and bounding on with outstretched arms. Major Kent, stirred at last out of his grumbling indifference, ran after him. Meldon stopped abruptly. Before him, laid on a slab of rock at the side of the cave, were two iron chests. Their lids stood wide open. They were perfectly empty.

"Good God!" said Major Kent, "there was something here after all, I must say, J. J., I didn't believe in your treasure till this minute, and now it's gone."

"It's gone," said Meldon, "but it can't be gone far. Every argument for believing that it's still on the island holds good. Don't you lose heart. What we've got to do now is to turn to and find out where it's gone and who's got it."

He took another glance at the empty chests and then looked on from where they lay.

"This isn't the end of the cave," he said. "It takes a sharp bend to the right. See how the light, coming round the corner strikes that wall. Let's go on and see where the cave does end and where the light comes from."

"I don't see," he said as he stumbled on, "how Sir Giles can have got it. I've watched him like a cat does a mouse. The only time he got away from me was yesterday afternoon when he went up to Thomas O'Flaherty Pat's house, and I had Mary Kate watching him then. Great Scott! What's that?"

The crash of some heavy body falling on the boulders set the whole cave echoing. Meldon stood still in astonishment.

"If you ask me," said the Major, "I should say that the roof's falling in. We'd better clear out of this while we can."

"I don't care," said Meldon, "if the roof does fall in. I don't care if the whole island crumbles into bits and comes rattling down on top of my head. I'm going to see this business through."

He went forward very cautiously, peering in front of him, until he reached the place where the cave bent to the right. He stood still for a minute. Then he turned and went back to where the Major waited.

"It's Sir Giles," he said. "He's come down through the roof, and he's standing there looking up while something is being lowered to him. I have it, Major. The hole in Thomas O'Flaherty Pat's field! Mary Kate told me they were looking at it yesterday. What an ass I was not to think of it before! Of course it opens straight down into this cave. It couldn't do anything else. Why didn't I think of that sooner? Come on, now, Major. As Sir Giles is here, we may as well have a talk with him."

Taking Major Kent by the arm he stepped forward, turned the corner, and came in sight of Sir Giles Buckley, who was lighting a lantern. Meldon recognised it at once as the riding-light of the Aureole.

"Good-morning, Sir Giles," he said. "You won't need that lantern. The cave is quite light."

Sir Giles started and turned quickly.

"Oh, it's the damned parson," he said. "I more than half expected you'd be here."

"I don't mind owning," said Meldon, "that I did not expect to see you. You swam ashore from the yacht, I suppose."

"No, you didn't expect me. I dare say you thought you had me boxed up for the day when you played that fool's trick, setting my punt adrift."

"It's my punt, not yours. But as we're on the subject of the punt, how did you get ashore?"

"As soon as I found she was gone," said Sir Giles, "I got up the mainsail and went after her. Any one who wasn't a perfect ass would have known beforehand that I'd do that. You must think that everybody in the world is as big an idiot as you are yourself. Did you suppose that I'd sit still and whistle hymn-tunes until you came back and put me ashore?"

"I didn't suppose anything of the sort. I thought you'd swear every oath you knew five or six times over and then cut Langton's throat."

"You drivelling imbecile!"

"Go on," said Meldon, "call me any other name that occurs to you. When you've finished perhaps you'll walk down the cave a bit and I'll show you whether I'm a fool or not."

He turned and walked away, followed by Major Kent. Sir Giles eyed them doubtfully for a minute and then went after them. When he reached the slab of rock on which the chests lay, Meldon turned and made sure that Sir Giles was at his heels. With a dramatic gesture he pointed to the chests.

"Empty, Sir Giles," he said. "Look in and make sure. Quite empty."

"Have you got the stuff?" said Sir Giles. "Damn it! you can't have it. I don't believe you've touched it."

"Believe whatever you like, but there's one thing you may bet on with perfect safety. Whether we've got it or not, you haven't, and what's more you never will. Now, who's the fool, the ass, the idiot, and the drivelling imbecile?"

Sir Giles glared at Meldon. It was evident that he was in an extremely bad temper. His face became first white and then crimson. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound issued from it except a sort of hoarse gurgle produced apparently far down in his throat.

"Don't let your temper get the better of you," said Meldon. "It's foolish, besides being bad form. And remember what I said to you the day we first met about swearing. Excuse my reminding you of that, but I can't help thinking that you mean to curse as soon as ever you can. You have all the appearance of a man who is struggling to find expression for strong feelings of some kind."

Sir Giles stuttered out an oath. Having succeeded in giving utterance to one intelligible syllable, he obtained all at once complete command of his powers of speech. He poured forth a series of voluble imprecations and expressed hopes for Meldon's future which would have startled the author of the most emphatic of the Psalms. He was interrupted by a loud crash from the depths of the cave. He started violently.

"What the devil's that?"

"It's uncommonly like the noise you made yourself when you came down through the roof. My own opinion is that it's Langton. He'd be likely enough to drop in to see that you didn't sneak off with any more than your own proper share of the treasure. Come along and we'll see."

He went up again to the place where he had met Sir Giles. Langton, who had descended very much more rapidly than he wished, sat on a stone nursing a bruised knee.

"Good-morning, Mr. Langton," said Meldon. "I'm delighted to see you. I hope you haven't hurt yourself. As far as I could judge by the noise, you must have come down rather hard. However, I'm glad you're here. You must take Sir Giles in hand and look after him a bit. He very nearly had a fit just now. You ought to see to it that he takes some kind of cooling medicine three times a day—bromides, or castor-oil, or something of that sort. Any chemist would make the mixture up for you if you told him the kind of thing you wanted. Or if there's no good man in your neighbourhood try one of those soothing syrup stuffs you'll see advertised in Christmas numbers. I dare say they're all right. I hesitate as a rule about recommending patent medicines, but you can see for yourself that your friend wants something."

"What the devil brings you here?" said Sir Giles. "I told you to wait at the top for me. Who's going to haul us up now, I'd like to know?"

Langton, still nursing his knee, sat in sulky silence. Meldon looked up at the hole above his head. Peering over the hedge of it was the benevolent and aristocratic face of Thomas O'Flaherty Pat. His long white beard drooped down. His white hair completed a kind of moonlight Aureole round his head. His face expressed a mild and entirely courteous interest in the doings of the men below him.

"It's all right," said Meldon to Sir Giles. "There's a dear old fellow up there, a great friend of mine, who'll do what he can to pull you up, I'm sure. He's not very strong, and he may not be able to haul you quite the whole way, but he'll do his best. And you're taking risks in any case. I see you're using the throat halyard of my boat again in spite of the warning I gave you the day before yesterday. If I were you I'd make Langton lie down flat underneath you as you go up. He'd break your fall a good deal in case——"

"Come out of this," said Sir Giles, taking the rope from Langton and fitting it round his own armpits. "I'll go mad if I have to stand here any longer listening to that ape gibbering. Hi! you above there! Haul up!"

"I forgot to mention," said Meldon, "that the old gentleman doesn't understand a word of English. My friend Higginbotham, who has important business to transact with him, is learning Irish on purpose to be able to carry on the necessary conversations."

Sir Giles plucked furiously at the rope and shouted again.

"There's no use trying to make him understand by shouting," said Meldon, "he's not the least deaf. The best thing you can do is to wait here quietly till the Major and I get away in our punt and back to the far side of the island. It'll only take us about two hours. You and Langton can talk things over together while you're waiting. I'll send up a little girl called Mary Kate who understands both languages. You can tell her what you want and she will explain it to her grandfather. But I do ask you to remember, Sir Giles, that she's a little girl. I don't want to rub it in about your language, but there are some things that a girl of ten years old—you know what I mean."

Sir Giles stooped and took up a large stone in both hands.

"If you utter another word," he said, "I'll bash in your skull with this."

"If you'd keep calm," said Meldon, "you'd run much less chance of bursting a blood-vessel. You ought to be able to realise that I'm giving you sound advice and speaking for your own good."

Sir Giles raised his two hands above his head with the stone between them. He held it there, poised for several seconds, taking aim at Meldon. The rope round his armpits tightened suddenly. He was lifted from his feet. He dangled in mid-air, hands and feet hanging down. When he was about eight feet above the ground he ceased to ascend. He writhed and wriggled, with the result that he began to spin rapidly round and round at the end of the rope.

"If I were you," said Meldon, "I'd drop that stone. It adds considerably to your weight. I told you before that old Thomas O'Flaherty Pat is anything but a strong man. I'm sure he's doing his best, but it looks to me as if he was pretty nearly played out. It's trying him too high to make him hoist both you and the stone at once. I'll send it up to you afterwards if you really want it. But I can't see what use it will be to you. There are plenty of stones up above. The island is simply covered with stones, every bit as good as that one."

The ascent commenced again and continued jerkily with many pauses, until at last Sir Giles disappeared through the hole.

"I think," said Meldon to the Major, "that you and I may as well be dodging off home now. Goodbye, Mr. Langton. We can't be of any further use to you. Sir Giles will pull you up all right. If I were you I wouldn't be in too great a hurry to go. His temper won't be by any means improved by the argument he'll have with Thomas O'Flaherty Pat. You can't imagine how trying it is to argue with a man who can't understand a word you say and can't speak so as you can understand him. That old fellow has just one sentence, something about 'Ni beurla.' He says it over and over again in a way that would get on the nerves of a cow. It takes a cool man to stand it. Higginbotham gets quite mad, and even I have to keep a tight grip on my temper. The effect on Sir Giles will be frightful. And he has that stone with him. He would insist on clinging to it. Goodbye, Mr. Langton."

Meldon and Major Kent went down the cave together. The tide had completely ebbed, and it was possible to crawl through the entrance without getting wet. The punt, which lay high and dry, was carried down to the water and launched. Meldon, as usual, took the paddles.

"One thing," he said thoughtfully, "seems perfectly clear. Sir Giles hasn't got the treasure. If he had he wouldn't have got into such a beastly temper."

"That coup of yours about the punt didn't precisely come off," said the Major with a grin. "He rather had you over that, I thought."

Meldon ignored the taunt.

"The question now is," he said, "who has the treasure? The position seems to me to require some thinking out. It is becoming complex. I'm glad we have a long, quiet afternoon before us."

They reached the shelf of rock, disembarked, and folded up the punt.

"I wish," said Meldon, "that you hadn't insisted on my finishing off those two sardines this morning. I'm very hungry now."

"You'll get nothing more to eat till you get back to the Spindrift, unless you happen to come across that crab which you lost the first day we were here."

"I wouldn't eat a raw crab any way. I'm not a cannibal. Come on and let us get back as quick as we can."

The disappointment of the morning and the sharp appetite which followed hard work in the open air affected even Meldon's temper. He spoke no more for some time, but scrambled doggedly along, only a few yards ahead of Major Kent. Gradually the extreme interest of the treasure-hunt took possession of his mind again and restored his cheerful self-confidence.

"You'll admit now," he said, "that I reasoned perfectly correctly about that treasure. The Spanish captain hid it precisely where I said he did."

"There was only one point you went wrong about," said the Major. "You said the treasure was in that cave and it wasn't."

"It was, originally. I couldn't be expected to foresee that some one would remove it and hide it again in another place. That's what has happened. Now that I know it's gone, I'll turn to and reason out where it's gone to. If it hasn't got any rightful owner we'll get it yet."

"What do you mean by a rightful owner?"

"A live man," said Meldon. "If it was removed and hidden by some fellow that's dead and gone, then he's no more the owner of it now than the Spanish captain is. If there is a rightful owner, of course we're done. I'm not going to commit robbery even for the sake of getting that treasure."

"I'm glad to hear that anyway."

"Now, there are just two people at present alive who can possibly have that treasure. One is Higginbotham. The other is Thomas O'Flaherty Pat. I'll take Higginbotham first."

"What's the good of that? If Higginbotham has it he will keep it."

"Still it would be interesting to know. In favour of Higginbotham it may be urged that he has evidently made a very careful investigation of this island. You see how glibly he came out with that information about the pliocene clay. Now would he have known that if he hadn't, so to speak, got at the inside of the island? That sort of clay doesn't lie about on the surface for everybody to see."

"Why shouldn't it?"

"Oh, just because those fundamental things never do lie on the surface. A fellow wouldn't find out what your backbone consisted of by just looking at your skin, would he? He'd have to put you on an operating table and cut a hole in you to find that out. It's just the same with islands. Higginbotham knew that this island consisted of pliocene clay. Very well, it follows that he must have gone beyond the surface of the island."

"Prompted, I suppose, by an unholy curiosity."

"Prompted by a stern sense of duty. He is employed by the Government at an enormous salary, no doubt, to find out all he can about this island. Naturally he either digs a hole or goes down some hole already in existence. Now, so far as we know, Thomas O'Flaherty's hole is the only one there is. Therefore it seems likely that Higginbotham went down it. If he did he found the treasure and has it now."

"It's all the same to us who has it. As I said before, if Higginbotham has it, he'll keep it."

"I didn't say Higginbotham had it. So far I've only considered what is to be said in favour of what I may call the Higginbotham hypothesis."

"Don't start on hypotheses again, J. J. I'm sick of the sound of the word."

"I can't help it if you are. The proposal of an hypothesis is the only known method of finding out truth. I tell you, Major, I've gone pretty deep into these philosophic and scientific questions, and I know what I'm talking about. You ask any first-rate man and he'll tell you the same thing. Now, against Higginbotham there's just one broad fact to be urged, but I candidly confess it seems to me to be decisive. Higginbotham isn't the kind of man who would come upon hidden treasure even by accident. He has too much of the official mind. It's almost impossible to think of a Congested Districts Board official gloating over Spanish gold. That puts Higginbotham out of court. There remains Thomas O'Flaherty Pat. You'll recollect that I've always had my suspicions of that old man. The way he followed us the first day we went round the cliffs was peculiar, to say the least of it. His persistent refusal to speak a word of English points to the fact that he has something or other to conceal. I shall have to go into his case very carefully indeed. But here we are at the foot of the path. I can't climb up a cliff with a punt on my back and talk at the same time. I'll have to put off discussing old O'Flaherty till we get to the top."

After a quarter of an hour's hard work Meldon reached the head of the path, drew a long breath; and took a look at the bay below him. Then he laid down the punt hur- riedly and turned to the Major, who was still struggling upwards.

"There's another yacht in the bay," he said—"a big steam yacht."

Major Kent hurried over the last few steps of the climb.

"You're right," he said. "There is. If I'd known that this was to be a kind of Cowes week at Inishgowlan I wouldn't have come near the place. I suppose the next thing will be some fellow coming round and asking us to act on the committee of a regatta."

"That's a biggish boat," said Meldon. " The man who owns her must be pretty wealthy. Now what has he come here for?"

"Treasure-hunting, of course," said the Major. "Nobody comes here for anything else."

"Don't jump at conclusions in that way. There's nothing so unphilosophic as forming conclusions on insufficient evidence, and in this case you simply haven't any evidence at all."

"It wasn't a conclusion," said the Major. "It was an hypothesis. Of course if you've any better hypothesis to offer—"

"I have. I believe, in fact I'm practically certain, that the men on that yacht are Members of Parliament."

"You said that about Sir Giles and you turned out to be wrong."

"That's just what makes me so sure I'm right now. I'll explain it to you in one minute. You've sometimes played pitch-and-toss, I suppose—I mean as a boy."

"I have."

"Very well. Now suppose the other fellow tossed the penny. You called heads and it turned out that you were wrong. You'd be practically certain it was tails, wouldn't you? There you are, then. I was wrong about Sir Giles being a Member of Parliament, therefore I'm nearly sure to be right when I say that this man is."

"I don't see that. Not that it's any use arguing with you."

"If you don't see a simple thing like that, it isn't any use."

"All the same I will," said the Major. "Just for once I'll show you what rot you talk. You said it must be either heads or tails."

"I didn't. I said it was nearly sure to be either heads or tails. The penny might light in a mud heap and stand on its edge."

"It's no use reasoning with you."

"It isn't," said Meldon, "if you won't reason right."

"Look here. You say if it isn't heads it's nearly sure to be tails. But suppose he tossed another coin. That's what's happened in this case."

"It's just the same with any coin. There are only two sides to the best of them."

"What I mean is this. Here's a fresh yacht altogether. Quite a different yacht from the Aureole with quite different people in her. It isn't a case of heads or tails at all."

"I don't in the least see what you mean, and I don't believe you see yourself. But you may take my word for it, Major, that there is at least one Member of Parliament in that yacht. There may be more, but I'll bet my hat there's one. Don't bother your head any more about that. These things only make you irritable. We'll get along back to the Spindrift and have a bite to eat. Then I'll take a long, quiet afternoon thinking things out. If I get them sized up to my satisfaction I may go on shore before tea and have a look at Michael Pat. In the evening I'll find out how Higginbotham got on with the tuberculosis bacilli on Inishmore."

CHAPTER XIV

MELDON stretched himself along the seat of the Spindrifts cabin. He had dined very heartily off tinned corned beef and potatoes, followed by several cups of strong tea. He had lit his pipe and felt happy. The unpleasant duty of washing up the plates and cups was postponed until after the evening meal, when one job could be made of all the crockery dirtied during the day.

"There's one good thing about a morning's work such as we have had," he said. "Even if you haven't pulled off the exact thing you went out to do, you enjoy your dinner and your smoke afterwards tremendously. I expect there are fellows at this moment sitting in London restaurants and clubs and places smoking half-crown cigars after gorging themselves with iced soufflés and pâtés of various kinds, who aren't getting half the satisfaction that I am out of this pipe of common twist."

Major Kent grunted. He was disinclined for philosophic argument.

"There's something in one of Horace's odes about its not being Sicilian feasts but hard work and a good conscience which bring real satisfaction. I can't recollect the exact words, but if I had a Horace I could find them."

"I wouldn't give Horace too much credit for the remark, even if he made it. An obvious truth of that sort must, I should think, have been discovered by Adam."

"Adam couldn't have discovered it," said Meldon. "As long as he had a quiet conscience he did no work, and when he had to work his conscience was at him day and night."

Major Kent allowed this to pass without contradiction.

"Besides," said Meldon, "I doubt very much whether Adam understood the use of tobacco. If he did I don't see how the secret could have died out. It was Sir Walter Raleigh, as well as I recollect, who brought—— Hullo! there's somebody hailing us."

"Spindrift ahoy!"

The shout floated through the open skylight of the cabin while Meldon spoke.

"I wonder if that's Higginbotham back from Inishmore," said Major Kent. "I hope he hasn't brought a consumptive patient with him. If he has you may deal with him yourself, J. J. It's no affair of mine and I won't help."

"I hope it's not Higginbotham; I don't feel in the mood for dealing with Higginbotham just now. It's as likely as not that he'd be unreasonable about the bacillus hunt."

The hail was repeated: "Ahoy there! Spindrift ahoy!"

"It can't be Higginbotham," said Meldon. "He always comes on board without hailing. It must be that new Member of Parliament off the steam yacht."

"Let's lie low then and pretend we're not here."

"Nonsense. Members of Parliament are often extremely amusing. We'll have him in and listen to him talking about the Irish problem. Get out the whisky, Major. These fellows all drink whisky when they come to this country, whether they actually like it or not. I'll fetch him on board."

He went on deck and discovered to his surprise Sir Giles Buckley and Langton in the Aureole's punt alongside.

"Hullo!" he said. "What brings you here? If it's a new throat halyard you want you may as well go straight back again. We haven't a rope to spare, and I warned you to be careful about the one you had."

"The throat halyard is all right," said Sir Giles. "We haven't come about that. We want to have a little chat with you and your friend."

He smiled as he spoke. Langton also smiled. It was evident that they had agreed together to be civil and agreeable.

"Very well," said Meldon. "Come on board if you like."

His tone was not very cordial. Sir Giles evidently felt the necessity of making some sort of an apology before he accepted the invitation.

"I should like to explain," he said, "that I'm sorry for losing my temper with you in the cave this morning. I don't make any excuse for myself, of course, but——"

"It's all right," said Meldon more graciously. "In fact, I ought to apologise first. I played you rather a shabby trick with the punt this morning."

"Oh, that was nothing. We didn't mind, did we, Langton?"

"Not a bit," said Langton. "We laughed."

"Come below," said Meldon, "and have a drink."

Sir Giles and Langton seated themselves at one side of the table in the Spindrifts cabin. Major Kent and Meldon faced them. A bottle of whisky and two syphons of soda-water stood on the table. Tumblers were filled and the ceremony of pledging each other duly performed. Then Sir Giles spoke:—

"Langton and I were naturally disappointed this morning when we found that those chests in the cave were empty. I think I may take it for granted that you two gentlemen were disappointed too, though I'm bound to say you didn't show it."

"You may take it that way for the sake of argument, if you like," said Meldon cautiously. "But I don't admit that we have any reason to be disappointed. It all depends on who emptied the chests."

"Come now," said Sir Giles. "We quite understand that you don't want to give yourselves away. But we don't believe you have the treasure. In fact, we're certain you haven't. I think it will pay you better in the long run to be straight with us. We're all of us out of it at present. What I've come to propose is this. Let us join forces and find the stuff wherever it is. I don't deny that Langton and I would rather keep it all to ourselves. So, no doubt, would you and your friend. But we'd rather go shares with you than lose it altogether. And that's what will happen if we spend our time chasing each other round and round this wretched little island as we've been doing for the last three days."

"What do you propose to do?" said Meldon.

"First of all I would suggest that we table all the information we have about the treasure. We'll tell all we know and you'll tell all you know. To show you that we mean to play fair I don't mind speaking first."

"Very well," said Meldon. "We agree to that. Go ahead with your story and I'll tell ours afterwards."

"After my father's death," said Sir Giles, "I got the family place, house, furniture, and so forth, and precious little else. I gave orders to have the furniture sold and the lawyer sent me out a bundle of old papers. I wouldn't have bothered myself about the papers at all, only that just at the time they came I had nothing in the world to do. I don't mind owning that I was pretty well stony-broke just then and was stuck in a lodging in a dirty little French town. I read the papers. Among them was an old diary kept by my grandfather. It appears that he paid a visit to this island in 1798, and——"

"You needn't go into that," said Meldon. "We have papers ourselves which give us all the information your grandfather had. Major Kent's grandfather kept a log, as he called it, of that expedition. I expect that both the old gentlemen wrote down pretty much the same thing—all they knew about the matter."

"I didn't think anything of it," went on Sir Giles, "until I happened to meet another stony-broke Englishman."

"I'm an Irishman," said Langton.

"It's all the same thing," said Sir Giles.

"I beg your pardon," said Langton. "It's not the same thing at all."

"Gentlemen," said Meldon, "if this conference is to go on it must be conducted on strictly non-political lines."

"What!" said Sir Giles.

"My friend, Major Kent," said Meldon, "is a strong Unionist, and I can't allow him to be compromised by any political arguments of a Nationalist kind."

Sir Giles gaped at him.

"I wasn't talking politics," he said. "I wasn't thinking about politics. As a matter of fact, I don't care a hang for any politics."

"Langton was talking politics," said Meldon, "and you were arguing with him. He said he was an Irishman and you said he wasn't. Any one with any experience of this country knows where that sort of talk leads to. The Major can't be expected to stand it. He's a Unionist, one of the loyal and oppressed minority, and it isn't right to outrage his feelings by introducing politics into what ought to be a simple business discussion."

Sir Giles checked what was evidently a strong impulse to curse.

"Go on with your story," said Meldon. "I'm sorry for having to interrupt, but do try and keep politics out of it. You were just telling us that you met Langton."

"I met Langton," said Sir Giles, "who was also at the time stony-broke. We got yarning together, having nothing better to do. Naturally we talked a good deal about money, the thing both our minds were dwelling on, because we hadn't got any. I told Langton the story of my grandfather's diary and the Spanish treasure on Inishgowlan. It turned out that Langton had read somewhere——"

"In Trinity College Library," said Langton, "before I resigned my post there."

"Resigned?" said Meldon with a grin.

"If politics are barred," said Sir Giles, "so are offensive remarks. I have agreed to respect Major Kent's feelings about the Union Jack, though I'm blest if I understand how they come in. You must not insult my friend Langton."

"I apologise," said Meldon. "We'll be non-sectarian as well as non-political."

"You tell this part, Langton," said Sir Giles.

"There's not much to tell. While I was in the College Library I came across an old manuscript written in Spanish. It was a good deal mutilated in fact there was neither beginning nor end to it. It appeared to be the log of one of the Armada captains. It began with an account of being shipwrecked on a small island off the west coast of Ireland. The island wasn't named, nor was the situation described, but he told how he and his crew left the island in two curraghs. Their own boats were, I suppose, destroyed. Before they went——"

"They hid the treasure," said Meldon.

"Precisely. They couldn't take it in the curraghs. They meant to go back for it."

"Did he mention the hole in Thomas O'Flaherty's field?"

"Yes."

"I see. I could not understand how you got at that. This is most interesting. Go on."

"There isn't much more to tell," said Sir Giles. "We put our stories together——"

"Oh, but I want to hear what happened to the Spaniard," said Meldon.

"It doesn't matter about him. The log broke off abruptly, didn't it, Langton? What we did was, put our stories together. We made up our minds that the thing was good enough to try for. The sale of the furniture in Ballymoy House brought in some money. I sent Langton over to hire a small yacht. He knew nothing about boats, and you stuck him badly with your old Aureole."

"I don't like that," said Meldon. "We agreed to be non-sectarian and you go introducing religion."

"I only said you stuck him over the boat. There's nothing religious about that remark."

"There is," said Meldon. "To stick a man is a form of swindling, and swindling is a distinct breach of one of the Ten Commandments. There isn't a sect of Christians in the world which doesn't profess to have more or less respect for the Ten Commandments, therefore your remark about sticking Langton over the boat is in the highest degree sectarian and a distinct infringement of the terms of our agreement."

"I've knocked about a good deal in my day," said Sir Giles, "and I've met lots of queer people. In fact, I thought I'd met every kind of man there is in the world. But I'm hanged—'hanged' isn't swearing, it's only a form of emphasis—I'm hanged if I ever met quite as queer a fellow as you."

"What do you propose to do now?" said the Major.

It was his first contribution to the discussion, and the other three men looked at him in surprise.

"Before going into that," said Sir Giles, "we'd like to hear what you know about the treasure. You've had our story. Let us hear yours."

"We've no story," said Meldon. "We had the information in Major Kent's grandfather's log, pretty much the same as what you got from your grandfather. That's all."

Sir Giles and Langton looked at each other. Suspicion was in both their faces.

"We had nothing else to go on," said Meldon.

"Then how did you find the cave?"

"By inductive reasoning," said Meldon. "By careful observation, and a proper use of what is called the scientific imagination."

"If you won't be open and above-board with us," said Sir Giles, "there's no use our talking to you. It's neither fair nor honourable of you to keep a card up your sleeve in this way when we've laid all ours on the table."

"I've got no card up my sleeve," said Meldon. "As a matter of fact I don't play cards, so I wouldn't be likely to have one about me—up my sleeve or anywhere else. I haven't played cards since I left college, and even there I didn't cheat."

"Do you expect us to believe that out of all possible places on this island where that treasure might have been hidden you lit on that cave straight off by accident?"

"I don't expect you to believe anything of the sort. What I said was, that I arrived at the cave by a process of reasoning. You may not be able to reason yourself, but there's no use denying that other people can."

"Strikes me as a bit thick, that. What do you say, Langton?"

"It's a damned lie," said Langton.

"Now, if I said a thing like that to either of you," Said Meldon, "you'd lose your tempers and try to break my head with a stone. But I happen to have some self-control."

"I believe," said the Major to Meldon, with a broad grin, "that this is the first time you've spoken the truth since we came to this island, and it's the only time you haven't been believed."

"We may as well go," said Sir Giles. "There's nothing to be gained by staying here arguing with men who have no sense of honour or decency."

Langton gulped down the remains of his whisky and water and stood up. A sharp bump against the yacht's side shook him into his seat again.

"What the devil's that?" said Sir Giles.

"It must be Higginbotham," said Major Kent. "He always does that. He's come on board twice before, and each time he has rammed the yacht as if he were a torpedo specially paid to knock holes in the sides of ships."

"I'll fetch him down," said Meldon. "Don't go yet, Sir Giles. You'll like Higginbotham when you meet him, I'm sure. He'll want to talk to you about tuberculosis. He's frightfully keen on every kind of consumption, and he's got it into his head that you're interested in the subject."

He rose to go on deck. Before he succeeded in getting clear of the table, Higginbotham descended rapidly, legs first, into the cabin. He was flushed, eager, and evidently in a condition of great nervous excitement.

"I've just got back," he said. "I came off at once—I haven't a minute to spare—to tell you that the Granuaile is in."

"What is the Granuaile?" said Sir Giles.

"Oh, I beg your pardon. I didn't see that you were here, Sir Giles. I was going over to your yacht to tell you. I thought you'd like to know. It will be time enough to give my report later on, won't it? I can't stay now."

"What's the Granuaile?" said Sir Giles. "Let's get that first."

"She's the C.D.B. yacht, and the——"

"For God's sake, man, don't talk alphabetical riddles. What's the A.B.C.?"

"C.D.B.," said Meldon mildly, "stands for Congested Districts Board. Mr. Higginbotham is part of the C.D.B. He's the Board's representative on Inishgowlan."

"The Chief Secretary is here," said Higginbotham. "I can't possibly stay. I'm expecting him up at my place every minute. I must be there to meet him. Goodbye. I suppose you'll come ashore soon and pay your respects. Goodbye for the present."

He backed rapidly up the companion ladder and disappeared. A minute later there was a sound of scraping and another bump against the yacht's side.

"Am I to understand," said Major Kent, "that the Chief Secretary is on the island?"

"Apparently he is," said Meldon. "I wasn't expecting him, but now that he has turned up we must all try to make his stay as pleasant for him as possible."

"Who is the Chief Secretary?" said Sir Giles. "What is he Chief Secretary of? Is it that A.B.C. thing which the last lunatic talked about?"

"You've lived abroad," said Meldon, "or else you'd know that the Chief Secretary is the principal boss of the Government of this country. In fact, he is the Government. He's far and away a bigger man than the Lord-Lieutenant, although he doesn't wear such good clothes or look so ornamental. He varies, of course, from time to time according to circumstances, that is to say, according to whether the English people think they'd like a Conservative or a Liberal for Prime Minister. At present he's a man called Willoughby—the Right Honourable Eustace Willoughby, M.P. By the way, Major, I told you there was sure to be a Member of Parliament on that steam yacht. I turned out to be right, you see, in spite of your sneers. I don't happen to have met this Chief Secretary, but they tell me he's not a bad sort of man in private life. I shall look forward to having some quiet chats with him while he's here."

"You won't get them," said the Major, in a determined tone. "I'm off at once."

"Whatever he is, he has nothing to do with us," said Sir Giles. "We've got our own business to see to. Come now, Mr. Meldon, before we go, you may as well tell us the truth about how you found that cave."

"There's no use my repeating what I've said before. I've told you all we know about the matter. If you don't choose to believe me, don't believe me. I can't help it."

Sir Giles scowled at him.

"Very well, Mr. Parson, if you are a parson, which I doubt. We've offered to run this business in partnership with you and to go shares. It was a fair offer and you've refused it. You won't have me for your friend. You'll find me a nasty enemy to deal with. I tell you straight I mean to handle that treasure before I leave the island. Come along, Langton."

Meldon went on deck with them, saw them into their punt, and waved a cheerful farewell as they rowed away. Sir Giles, who was rowing and faced the Spindrift, scowled in reply, and, to Meldon's intense delight, began to swear.

CHAPTER XV

MAJOR KENT came on deck. He was agitated and showed signs of being in a hurry. Without speaking a word to Meldon he went to the end of the boom and began to unlace the cover of the mainsail. Meldon watched him take it off, roll it up, and stow it in the sail locker.

"What are you at now?" said Meldon.

"I'm going to get up sail and go home at once. I'll listen to no more talk from you, J. J. I've had too much of it already. My mind is made up. I'll not stay in this place another hour."

"Why?"

"Why?" said the Major, who was casting loose the ties which bound the mainsail to the boom. "Do you ask me why? Didn't you hear Higginbotham saying that the Chief Secretary is on the island. I'm not going to stay here to be made look like a fool over all the lies you've told. What could I say to the man if I met him?"

"Do you mean about the geological survey?"

"Yes, I do. Of course I do. And about Sir Giles being a medical missionary or whatever the fool lie you told about him was. And about the National Board of Education building a school, Higginbotham is sure to tell him everything you've said."

"You may make your mind quite easy so far as the school is concerned. That is no business of the Chief Secretary's. The Education Board is the one thing in the country that he has no control over. That came out in Parliament some time ago, as you ought to remember."

"Well, what about the geological survey? You said I'd been sent here by the Chief Secretary and the Lord-Lieutenant. And what about Sir Giles and the tuberculosis?"

"Take one thing at a time, Major, like a good man, and don't confuse yourself. You're afraid he'll be angry because I said he sent you here to make a geological survey of the island. I assure you he won't even be surprised. You don't know these Cabinet Ministers, and of course it's hard for you to realise the life they lead. Now just listen to me. That man, Eustace Willoughby, spends his time mainly in receiving deputations. Hundreds and hundreds of deputations wait on him every week. There isn't a public body in the country, not so much as an Association of Licensed Publicans, which doesn't send two or three deputations to each Chief Secretary. I expect he's receiving one this moment, headed by Thomas O'Flaherty Pat. To every deputation he says something—something nice and sympathetic. He must, you know. That's how he earns his salary. Now I put it to you as a sensible man, can he possibly recollect all the things he's said to all the deputations? He can't, of course. You put a bold face on it. Speak to him civilly but without any show of timidity. Tell him that you went to him as part of a deputation from the Irish Incorporated Geological Surveyors Institute, and that he sent you to this island. He won't know in the least what you're talking about, but he'll be afraid to give himself away by saying he doesn't remember. He'll believe what you say. He must."

"I don't mean to give him the chance. I'm going home."

"Well, if you funk it," said Meldon, "though I can't myself see what there is to be afraid of, I'll go on shore and talk to him. I'll settle the matter all right. You can trust me not to let you in for anything unpleasant."

"I wouldn't trust you an inch. I've trusted you a great deal too much already, and look at the fix I'm in. I'm going straight home."

"Think of the treasure."

"I wouldn't give you the chance of talking to the Chief Secretary for £500 down. You'd make things worse than they are at present, if that's possible."

"Do think of the treasure," said Meldon persuasively.

"There's no treasure, or if there is, somebody else has got it. I tell you I wouldn't stay here to be ballyragged and bullied by a Chief Secretary for all the treasure in the world."

"I'm not putting the matter before you in that selfish way at all. Do try to be a little altruistic, Major. I am speaking about the treasure from the point of view of public duty. Either Higginbotham or Thomas O'Flaherty Pat, probably the latter, has the treasure. But that scoundrel Sir Giles means to steal it. I could see it in his eye that he meant to, and so could you. Sir Giles, as you know, is a man who sticks at nothing. He wanted to murder me to-day with a stone. We're the only people on the island who are in a position to interfere with his abominable plans. If we go away he'll do poor old Thomas O'Flaherty out of his hard-earned gold. He'll rob Mary Kate of her inheritance, of the money that would make life brighter for her. I tell you, Major, I've got to be very fond of that little girl and I won't let the thing be done. Or, if it's Higginbotham that has the money, Sir Giles will go at night and cut Higginbotham's throat. You wouldn't like to think of poor Higginbotham lying all gory in a lonely grave in Inishgowlan, far from his family burying-place and the associations of his innocent youth. It'll be your fault, remember, if he does, because you won't stay here to protect him. I should think that Higginbotham's ghost, a most objectionable-looking spectre, will haunt you to the end of your life. And you'll richly deserve it."

Major Kent made no answer. He loosed the halyard from the belaying pin at the foot of the mast.

"You're still determined," said Meldon, "after all I've said, to get up sail."

"Yes; I'm going home."

"You may get up sail but you'll not go home."

"Why not?"

"Because there's no wind, as you could have seen for yourself long ago if you hadn't been off your head with nervousness. It may amuse you to hoist the sails and get up anchor, and then drift about, up and down the bay, till night-time. The only result will be that you'll go foul of the Aureole or the Granuaile. If that's what you want to do, I'll help you, of course; but I must say it seems to me a rotten way of spending the afternoon."

Major Kent sat down on the deck and glared at Meldon.

"Why couldn't you have told me that before," he said, "instead of standing there and talking like a born fool?"

"I preferred," said Meldon, "to appeal to your higher nature first. I'd like to have seen you doing your plain duty voluntarily. There's very little credit in staying here simply because there's no wind to take you away."

Major Kent smiled feebly.

"I give up," he said. "Say what you like to the Chief Secretary; make any muddle you can. You'll most likely land me in prison before you've done. You'll certainly have every newspaper in the three kingdoms making fun of us. I can't help it. I can do no more. I don't even mean to try."

"You needn't; I'll manage all right. All you have to do is to keep cool and avoid fuss and excitement. Come on shore and let us interview the Chief Secretary at once. I expect we'll find him quite a reasonable man. After all, a fellow can't climb right up to the top of the tree, become a Chief Secretary, a Cabinet Minister, and all that sort of thing, without being more or less reasonable. As long as a man is reasonable it's always quite easy to get on with him. The people who kick up rows and make themselves unpleasant are the smaller kind, the men with prejudices and ridiculous conventional views. Willoughby must have knocked about a good deal in his day. I know he's been ragged a lot by Suffragettes, and that shakes a man up. I expect we'll find him quite amusing."

A boat pulled by two men with a coxswain in the stern left the pier and headed for the Granuaile. Major Kent saw her and pointed her out.

"Perhaps he's leaving at once," he said; "the yacht has steam up still."

Meldon got the glasses and took a long look at the boat, following her in her course to the Granuaile.

"He's not in that boat," he said. "He wouldn't be pulling an oar himself. That wouldn't be suitable for a man in his position, and the fellow who's steering is evidently one of the yacht's officers. He has gold buttons on his coat. Besides, they'd be sure to fly a white ensign, or whistle 'God Save the King,' or make some kind of show if they had a Chief Secretary on board; whereas that's just a plain, ordinary boat."

He laid down the glasses and looked at the pier.

"I see a stranger standing there with Higginbotham," he said; "a plump, little man in light grey clothes with a Panama hat. Give me the glasses again. He has a small brown moustache and a thick, short nose, I can see him distinctly. It's certainly the Right Honourable Eustace Willoughby. I'd know him anywhere by his likeness to a cartoon there was of him in Punch a couple of weeks ago. I wonder, now, why the boat's going off and leaving him there?"

He shifted his position and looked at the Granuaile again.

"By Jove! the yacht's getting up anchor and hoisting the boat on the davits. She's off somewhere in the dickens of a hurry. But why have they left the Chief Secretary behind? What will he do? He can't surely mean to stop the night in Higginbotham's wigwam. There's only one bed, and I happen to know that it's full of broken glass. It was just underneath the pane I smashed this morning when I hove the oars in through the window. All the bits of glass went into the bed; I saw them. This is becoming serious. The Granuaile is certainly off. He must mean to sleep in Higginbotham's bed. He'll probably lose his temper if he does. No man likes being cut about the body with broken glass just as he's going off to sleep. I wouldn't like it myself, and I expect it would be perfect torture to a plump man like Willoughby. What had I better do?"

"I don't know," said the Major. "I dare say you're sorry now that there's no wind. I think if I were you I'd go ashore and try to slip round some back way and sweep out Higginbotham's bed before night."

"I won't do that. I hate sneaking, underhand ways of doing things. Let us be gentlemen, Major, whatever else we are. We'll go ashore with our heads up. We've nothing to be ashamed of."

"You may go by yourself. I won't. I'll stay on the yacht till there's breeze enough to take her out of this."

"Very well, I'll go alone. After all, the man is a stranger here, and whether there's glass in his bed or not we ought to try and cheer him up. Higginbotham isn't very interesting. I'm sure he's boring Willoughby already. I expect the poor man is feeling a bit lonely too, seeing the Granuaile go off. By the way, I wonder where she's going to? She headed for the south point of the island, and that looks rather as if she meant to fetch Inishmore. I hope to goodness Higginbotham hasn't been talking about Sir Giles and the tuberculosis. I'd like to have a chance of making a good impression before I have to begin explaining that business. I wish Sir Giles hadn't gone off in a ridiculous huff. If we'd been friends I might have got him to stand over the tuberculosis and it would have been all right. The Chief Secretary couldn't well contradict a baronet, whatever he might think in his own mind. It isn't my fault Sir Giles took offence the way he did. I was telling him the literal truth. I couldn't start inventing a lot of lies just to please him."

"I don't see why you couldn't. You've invented plenty the last few days."

"I'm going on shore now," said Meldon. "I see Willoughby and Higginbotham strolling up together towards the hut. I don't suppose he's likely to go to bed at this hour of the afternoon, but in case of accidents I'll go at once."

"The only thing you seem to mind about is that broken glass. It doesn't seem to me nearly so serious as the other things."

"It isn't. Considered by itself, it isn't really serious at all. The thing is that Higginbotham won't know how it got there. He won't have any explanation to offer. The Chief Secretary, gashed and bleeding, will blame the wrong man. He'll think that Higginbotham has been playing off some new kind of apple-pie bed on him and he'll be upset about it. That will ruin Higginbotham's prospects in life. That's why I'm anxious about the bed. I must get off at once."

"Go on," said the Major with a sigh. "The Lord alone knows what you'll do when you get ashore. Things can't be much worse, anyway."

"Don't be gloomy," said Meldon, as he got into the punt. "Just trust me a little. I'm not at the end of my resources yet, by any means. After all, what's a Chief Secretary? I suppose he's only flesh and blood like the rest of us. And besides, he's a migratory kind of bird. He's here to-day, and back in his native England to-morrow."

Higginbotham, his face white with anxiety and distress, ran down the hill from his hut and greeted Meldon as he came alongside the pier.

"Meldon," he said, "I'm awfully sorry, but you'd better go back to the yacht at once. Don't come on shore. Like a good man, go back. I can't tell you how sorry I am about it all. He's frightfully angry."

"Who's angry?" said Meldon, stepping ashore with the painter in his hand. "Do try to be intelligible, Higginbotham, and don't speak till you've got your breath. I hate having things gasped out at me. Who's angry?"

"The Chief Secretary."

"Has he gone to bed yet?"

"No, he hasn't. Why should he go to bed? He's up at my place sitting on a chair. I left him just for a moment when I saw you coming ashore. I ran down to warn you, in case you thought of coming up."

"If he hasn't gone to bed," said Meldon, "I don't see that he's anything particular to be angry about."

"It's about Major Kent and the geological survey of the island. He said he'd never heard of such a thing in his life. He said a most unwarrantable use had been made of his name. I can't tell you all he said. He called it intolerable insolence. I give you my word, Meldon, I wouldn't have mentioned the matter if I'd had the slightest idea that you were only pulling my leg. I really believed you. Why didn't you tell me?"

"If I'd told you I shouldn't have pulled your leg. What on earth would be the use of playing off a spoof on a man and at the same time telling him you were doing it? I wish you'd be reasonable, Higginbotham."

"Fortunately I didn't mention the National School or Sir Giles Buckley. When I saw how things really were, I dried up at once. I'm more sorry than I can possibly tell you. Somehow I never thought——"

"That'll do," said Meldon. "Don't go on apologising. I don't blame you in the least. You acted in a perfectly natural way."

Meldon stooped and made fast the painter of the punt.

"You're not coming ashore, are you?" said Higginbotham. "Don't do it. Please don't. Go back to the yacht."

"I'm going up to have a chat with the Chief Secretary," said Meldon.

"But he won't speak to you, I know he won't. I tell you he's simply savage."

"It's for your sake I'm going. I want to prevent your getting into trouble. I don't want to have your prospects blighted on account of any misunderstanding with the Chief Secretary."

"But I'm not in any trouble. I assure you he doesn't blame me. He said so himself. It's only you he's angry with."

"If he's not angry with you now, he very soon will be. As soon as ever he gets into bed he'll be wanting to tear you limb from limb, unless I go up and straighten things out."

"But why? What has he to be angry with me about?"

"You'll find that put as soon as he gets into bed."

Meldon began to walk towards the hut. Higginbotham's fears came back on him and rendered him almost inarticulate. He seized Meldon by the arm and tried to hold him forcibly. With actual tears in his eyes he entreated his friend to stop. He ejaculated unintelligible sentences about "awful rows," "legal proceedings," and "public disgrace." He even mentioned high treason.

"Don't be an ass," said Meldon. "I'm going up to talk sense to that Chief Secretary. If everybody else he comes across is as much afraid of him as you are, it's quite time that somebody that isn't took him in hand. Pull yourself together, Higginbotham, and come up with me. I want you to introduce me. It's awkward walking in on a man you've never met without an introduction."

Higginbotham shook his head. After a last appeal he sat down helplessly on the grass. Meldon walked on towards the hut.

CHAPTER XVI

THE Chief Secretary lay back in Higginbotham's hammock-chair. There was a frown on his face. His sense of personal dignity was outraged by the story he had just heard. He had not been very long Chief Secretary of Ireland and, though not without a sense of humour, he took himself and his office very seriously. He came to Ireland intending to do justice and show mercy. He looked forward to a career of real usefulness. He was prepared to be opposed, maligned, misunderstood, declared capable of every kind of iniquity. He did not expect to be treated as a fool. He did not expect that an official in the pay of one of the Government Boards would assume as a matter of course that he was a fool and believe any story about him, however intrinsically absurd. He failed to imagine any motive for the telling of such a story. There must, he assumed, have been a motive, but what it was he could not even guess.

Meldon entered the hut without knocking at the door.

"Mr. Willoughby, I believe," he said cheerily. "You must allow me to introduce myself since Higginbotham isn't here to do it for me. My name is Meldon the Rev. J. J. Meldon, B.A., of T.C.D."

The Chief Secretary intended to rise with dignity and walk out of the hut. He failed because no one can rise otherwise than awkwardly out of the depths of a hammock-chair.

"Don't stir," said Meldon, watching his struggles. "Please don't stir. I shouldn't dream of taking your chair. I'll sit on a corner of the table. I'll be quite comfortable, I assure you. How do you like Inishgowlan, now you are here? It's a nice little island, isn't it?"

Mr. Willoughby succeeded in getting out of the chair. He walked across the hut, turned his back on Meldon, and stared out of the window.

"I came up here to have a chat with you," said Meldon. "Perhaps you wouldn't mind turning round. I always find it more convenient to talk to a man who isn't looking the other way. I don't make a point of it, of course. If you've got into the habit of keeping your back turned to people, I don't want you to alter it on my account."

Mr. Willoughby turned round. He seemed to be on the point of making an angry remark. Meldon faced him with a bland smile. The look of irritation faded in Mr. Willoughby's face. He appeared puzzled.

"It's about Higginbotham's bed," said Meldon, "that I want to speak. It's an excellent bed, I believe, though I never slept in it myself. But——"

"If there's anything the matter with the bed," said Mr. Willoughby severely, "Mr. Higginbotham should himself represent the facts to the proper authorities."

"You quite misunderstand me. And in any case Higginbotham can't move in the matter because he doesn't, at present, know that there's anything wrong about the bed. By the time he finds it out it will be too late to do anything. I simply want to give you a word of advice. Don't sleep in Higginbotham's bed to-night."

"I haven't the slightest intention of sleeping in it."

"That's all right. I'm glad you haven't. The fact is"—Meldon's voice sank almost to a whisper—"there happens to be a quantity of broken glass in that bed. I need scarcely tell a man with your experience of life that broken glass in a bed isn't a thing which suits everybody. It's all right, of course, if you're used to it, but I don't suppose you are."

Mr. Willoughby turned, this time towards the door. There was something in the ingenuous friendliness of Meldon's face which tempted him to smile. He caught sight of Higginbotham standing white and miserable on the threshold. He made a snatch at the dignity which had nearly escaped him and frowned severely.

"I think, Mr. Higginbotham," he said, "that I should like to take a stroll round the island."

"Come along," said Meldon. "I'll show you the sights. You don't mind climbing walls, I hope. You'll find the place most interesting. Do you care about babies? There's a nice little beggar called Michael Pat. Any one with a taste for babies would take to him at once. And there's a little girl called Mary Kate, a great friend of Higginbotham's. She's the granddaughter of old Thomas O'Flaherty Pat. By the way, how are you going to manage about Thomas O'Flaherty's bit of land? There's been a lot of trouble over that?"

Mr. Willoughby sat down again in the hammock-chair and stared at Meldon.

"Of course it's your affair, not mine," said Meldon. "Still, if I can be of any help to you, you've only got to say so. I know old O'Flaherty pretty well, and I may say without boasting that I have as much influence with him as any man on the island."

"If I want your assistance I shall ask for it," said Mr. Willoughby coldly.

"That's right," said Meldon. "I'll do anything I can. The great difficulty, of course, is the language. You don't talk Irish yourself, I suppose. Higginbotham tells me he's learning. It's a very difficult language, highly inflected. I'm not very good at it myself. I can't carry on a regular business conversation in it. By the way, what is your opinion of the Gaelic League?"

A silence followed. Mr. Willoughby gave no opinion of the Gaelic League. Meldon sat down again on the corner of the table and began to swing his legs. Higginbotham still stood in the doorway. Mr. Willoughby, with a bewildered look on his face, lay back in the hammock-chair.

"I see," said Meldon, "that you've sent your yacht away. That was what made me think you were going to sleep in Higginbotham's bed. I suppose she'll be back before night."

"Really——" began Mr. Willoughby.

Meldon replied at once to the tone in which the word was spoken.

"I don't want to be asking questions. If there's any secret about the matter you're quite right to keep it to yourself. I quite understand that you Cabinet Ministers can't always say out everything that's in your mind. I only mentioned the steamer because the conversation seemed to be languishing. You wouldn't talk about Thomas O'Flaherty Pat's field, and you wouldn't talk about the Gaelic League, though I thought that would be sure to interest you. Now you won't talk about the steamer. However, it's quite easy to get on some other subject. Do you think the weather will hold up? The glass has been dropping the last two days."

Mr. Willoughby struggled out of the hammock-chair again. He drew himself up to his full height and squared his shoulders. His face assumed an expression of rigid determination. He addressed Higginbotham.

"Will you be so good as to go up to the old man you spoke of——"

"Thomas O'Flaherty Pat," said Meldon. "That's the man he means you know, Higginbotham."

"And tell him——" went on Mr. Willoughby.

"If you're to tell him anything," said Meldon, "don't forget to take some one with you who understands Irish."

"And tell him," repeated Mr. Willoughby, "that I shall expect him here in about an hour to meet Father Mulcrone."

"I see," said Meldon. "So that's where the yacht's gone. You've sent for the priest to talk sense to the old boy. Well, I dare say you're right, though I think we could have managed with the help of Mary Kate. She knows both languages well, and she'd do anything for me, though she has rather a down on Higginbotham. It's a pity you didn't consult me before sending the steamer off all the way to Inishmore. However, it can't be helped now."

Higginbotham departed on his errand and shut the door of the hut after him. The Chief Secretary turned to Meldon.

"You've chosen," he said, "to force your company on me this afternoon in a most unwarrantable manner."

"I'll go at once if you like," said Meldon. "I only came up here for your own good, to warn you about the state of Higginbotham's bed. You ought to be more grateful to me than you are. It isn't every man who'd have taken the trouble to come all this way to save a total stranger from getting his legs cut with broken glass. However, if you hunt me away, of course I'll go. Only I think you'll be sorry afterwards if I do. I may say without vanity that I'm far and away the most amusing person on this island at present."

"As you are here," said Mr. Willoughby, "I take the opportunity of asking you what you mean by telling that outrageous story to Mr. Higginbotham. I'm not accustomed to having my name used in that way and, to speak plainly, I regard it as insolence."

"You are probably referring to the geological survey of this island."

"Yes. To your assertion that I employed a man called Kent to survey this island. That is precisely what I do refer to."

"Then you ought to have said so plainly at first, and not have left me to guess at what you were talking about. Many men couldn't have guessed, and then we should have been rambling about at cross purposes for the next hour or so without getting any further. Always try and say plainly what you mean, Mr. Willoughby. I know it's difficult, but I think you'll find it pays in the end. Now that I know what's in your mind, I'll be very glad to thrash it out with you. You know Higginbotham, of course."

"Yes."

"Intimately?"

"I met him this afternoon for the first time."

"Then you can't be said really to know Higginbotham. That's a pity, because without a close and intimate knowledge of Higginbotham you're not in a position to understand that geological survey story. Take my advice and drop the whole subject until you know Higginbotham better. After spending a few days on the island in constant intercourse with Higginbotham you'll be able to understand the whole thing. Then you'll appreciate it. In the meanwhile I'm sure you won't mind my adding, since we are on the subject—and it was you who introduced it—that you ought not to go leaping to conclusions without a proper knowledge of the facts. I said the same thing this morning to Major Kent when he insisted that you had come here to search for buried treasure."

Mr. Willoughby pulled himself together with an effort. He felt a sense of bewilderment and hopeless confusion. The sensation was familiar. He had experienced it before in the House of Commons when Irish Members of both parties asked questions on the same subject. He knew that his only chance was to ignore side-issues, however fascinating, and get back at once to the original point.

"I'm willing," he said, "to listen to any explanation you have to offer; but I do not see how Mr. Higginbotham's character alters, or can alter, the fact that you told him what I can only describe as an outrageous lie."

"The worst thing about you Englishmen is that you have such blunt minds. You don't appreciate the! lights and shades, the finer nuances, what I may perhaps describe as the chiaroscuro of things. It's just the same with my friend Major Kent. By the way, I ought to apologise for him. He ought to have come ashore and called upon you this afternoon. It isn't the want of loyalty which prevented him. He's a strong Unionist, and on principle he respects his Majesty's Ministers whatever party they belong to. The fact is he was a bit nervous about this geological survey business. He didn't know exactly how you'd take it. I told him that you were a reasonable man and that you'd see the thing in a proper light, but he wouldn't come."

"Will you kindly tell me what is the proper light in which to view, this extraordinary performance of yours?"

"Certainly. It will be a little difficult, of course, when you don't know Higginbotham, but I'll try."

"Leave Mr. Higginbotham out," said the Chief Secretary irritably. "Tell me simply this, were you justified in making a statement which you knew to be a baseless invention? How do you explain the fact that you told a deliberate—that you didn't speak the truth?"

"I've always heard of you as an educated and cultured man. I may assume therefore that you know all about pragmatism."

"I don't."

"Well, you ought to. It's a most interesting system of philosophy quite worth your while to study. I'm Sure you'd like it if you understood it. In fact, I expect you're a pragmatist already without knowing it. Most of us practical men are."

"I'm waiting for an explanation of the story you told Mr. Higginbotham."

"Quite right. I'm coming to that in a minute. Don't be impatient. If you'd been familiar with the pragmatist philosophy it would have saved time. As you're not—though as Chief Secretary for Ireland I think you ought to be—I'll have to explain. Pragmatism may be described as the secularising of the Ritschlian system of theological thought. You understand the Ritschlian theory of value judgments, of course?"

"No, I don't." Mr. Willoughby began to feel very helpless. It seemed easier to let the tide of this strange lecture sweep over him than to make any effort to assert himself.

"Do you mind if I smoke?" he said. "I think I could listen to your explanation better if I smoked."

He took from his pocket a silver cigar-case.

"Smoke away," said Meldon. "I don't mind in the least. In fact I'll take a cigar from you and smoke too. I can't afford cigars myself, but I enjoy them when they're good. I suppose a Chief Secretary is pretty well bound to keep decent cigars on account of his position."

Mr. Willoughby handed over the case. Meldon selected a cigar and lit it. Then he went on

"The central position of the pragmatist philosophy and the Ritschlian theology is that truth and usefulness are identical."

"Eh?"

"What that means is this. A thing is true if it turns out in actual practice to be useful and false if it turns but in actual practice to be useless. I dare say that sounds startling to you at first, but if you think it over quietly for a while you'll get to see that there's a good deal in it."

Meldon puffed at his cigar without speaking. He wished to give Mr. Willoughby an opportunity for meditation. Then he went on—

"The usual illustration—the one you'll find in all the text-books—is the old puzzle of the monkey on the tree. A man sees a monkey clinging to the far side of the trunk of the tree.—I never could make out how he did see it, but that doesn't matter for the purposes of the illustration.—He, the man, determines to go round the tree and get a better look at the monkey. But the monkey creeps round the tree so as always to keep the trunk between him and the man. The question is whether, when he's gone round the tree, the man has or has not gone round the monkey. The older philosophies simply gave that problem up. They couldn't solve it, but the pragmatist——"

"Either you or I," said Mr. Willoughby feebly, "must be going mad."

"Your cigar has gone out," said Meldon. "Don't light it again. There's nothing tastes worse than a relighted cigar. Take a fresh one. There are still two in the case, and I shall be able to manage along with one more."

"Would you mind leaving out the monkey on the tree and getting back to the geological survey story?"

"Not a bit. If it bores you to hear an explanation of the pragmatist theory of truth I won't go on with it. It was only for your sake I went into it. You can just take it from me that the test of truth is usefulness. That's the general theory. Now apply it to this particular case. The story I told Higginbotham turned out to be extremely useful—quite as useful as I had any reason to expect. In fact, I don't see that we could very well have got on without it. I can't explain to you just how it was useful. If I did, I should be giving away Major Kent, Sir Giles Buckley, Euseby Langton, and perhaps Old Thomas O'Flaherty Pat; but you may take it that the utility of the story has been demonstrated."

Mr. Willoughby made an effort to rally. He reminded himself that he was a Cabinet Minister and a great man, that he had withstood the fieriest eloquence of Members for Munster constituencies and survived the most searching catechisms of the men from Antrim and Down. He called to mind the fact that he had resolutely said "No" to at least twenty-five per cent. of the people who came to him in Dublin Castle seeking to have jobs perpetrated. He tried to realise the impossibility of a mere country curate talking him down. He hardened his heart with the recollection that he was in the right and the curate utterly in the wrong. He sat up as well as he could in the hammock-chair and said sternly—

"Am I to understand that you regard any lie as justifiable if it serves its purpose?"

"Certainly not," said Meldon; "you are missing the; whole point. I was afraid you would when you prevented me from explaining the theory of truth to you. I never justify lies under any circumstances whatever. The thing I'm trying to help you to grasp is this: A statement isn't a lie if it proves itself in actual practice to be useful—it's true. There now, you've let that second cigar go out. You'd better light that one again. I hate to see a man wasting cigar after cigar, especially when they're good ones."

Mr. Willoughby fumbled with the matches and made more than one attempt to relight the cigar.

"The reason," Meldon went on, "why I think you're almost certain to be a pragmatist is that you're a politician. You're constantly having to make speeches, of course; and in every speech you must more or less; say something about Ireland. When you are Chief Secretary the other fellow, the man in opposition who wants to be Chief Secretary but isn't, gets up and says you are telling a pack of lies. That's not the way he expresses himself, but it's exactly what he means. When his turn comes to be Chief Secretary and you are in opposition, you very naturally say that he's telling lies. Now that's a very crude way of talking. You are, both of you, as patriotic and loyal men, doing your best to say what is really useful. If the things you say turn out in the end to be useful, why then, if you happen to be pragmatists, they aren't lies."

Mr. Willoughby stuck doggedly to his point. Just so his countrymen, though beaten by all the rules of war, have from time to time clung to positions which they ought to have evacuated.

"A lie," he said, "is a lie. I don't see that you've made your case at all."

"I know I haven't, but that's because you would insist on stopping me. If you'll allow me to go back to the man who went round the tree with the monkey on it——"

"Don't do that. I can't bear it."

"Very well. I won't. I suppose we may consider the whole matter closed now and go on to talk of something else."

"No. It's not closed," said Mr. Willoughby with a fine show of spirited indignation. "I still want to know why you told Mr. Higginbotham that I sent Major Kent to make a geological survey of this island. It's all very well to talk as you've been doing, but a man is bound to tell the truth and not to deceive innocent people."

"Look here, Mr. Willoughby," said Meldon, "I've sat and listened to you calling me a liar half a dozen times, and I haven't turned a hair. I'm a man of remarkable self-control and I appreciate your point of view. You are irritated because you think that you are not being treated with proper respect. You assert what you are pleased to call your dignity by trying to prove that I'm a liar. I've stood it from you so far, but I'm not bound to stand it any longer and I won't. It doesn't suit you one bit to take up that high and mighty moral tone, and I may tell you that it doesn't impress me. I'm not the British public, and that bluff honesty pose isn't one I admire. All those platitudes about lies being lies simply run off my skin. I know that your own game of politics couldn't be played for a single hour without what you choose to describe as deceiving innocent people. Mind you, I'm not blaming you in the least. I quite give in that you can't always be blabbing out the exact literal truth about everything. Things couldn't go on if you did. All I say is, that being in the line of life you are, you ought not to set yourself up as a model of every kind of integrity and come out here to an island which, so far as I know, nobody ever invited you to visit, and talk ideal morality to me in the way you've been doing. Hullo! Here's Higginbotham back again. I wonder if he's brought Thomas O'Flaherty Pat with him. You'll be interested in seeing that old man, even if you can't speak to him."

Higginbotham started as he entered the hut. He did not expect to find Meldon there. He was surprised to see Mr. Willoughby crumpled-up, crushed, and cowed in the depths of the hammock-chair, while Meldon, cheerful and triumphant, sat on the edge of the table swinging his legs and smoking a cigar.

"You'd better get that oil stove of yours lit, Higginbotham," said Meldon. "The Chief Secretary is dying for a cup of tea. You'd like some tea, wouldn't you, Mr. Willoughby?"

"I would. I feel as if I wanted tea. You won't say that I'm posing for the benefit of the British public if I drink tea, will you?"

It was Meldon who lit the stove and busied himself with the cups and saucers. Higginbotham was too much astonished to assist.

"There's no water in your kettle," said Meldon. "I'd better run across to the well and get some. Or I'll go to Michael Pat's mother and get some hot. That will save time. When I'm there I'll collar a loaf of soda-bread and some butter if I can. I happen to know that she has fresh butter because I helped to make it."

Mr. Willoughby rallied a little when the door closed behind Meldon.

"Your friend," he said to Higginbotham, "seems to me to be a most remarkable man."

"He is. In college we always believed that if only he'd given his mind to it and taken some interest in his work, he could have done anything."

"I haven't the slightest doubt of it. He has given me a talking to this afternoon such as I haven't had since I left school—not since I left the nursery. Did you ever read a book on pragmatism?"

"No."

"You don't happen to know the name of the best book on the subject?"

"No, but I'm sure that Meldon——"

"Don't," said Mr. Willoughby. "I'd rather not start him on the subject again. Have you any cigars? I want one badly. I got no good of the two I half-smoked while he was here."

"I'm afraid not. But your own cigar-case has one in it. It's on the table."

"I can't smoke that one. To put it plainly, I daren't. Your friend Meldon said he might want it. I'd be afraid to face him if it was gone."

"But it's your own cigar! Why should Meldon——"

"It's not my cigar. Nothing in the world is mine any more, not even my mind or my morality or my self-respect is my own. Mr. Meldon has taken them from me and torn them in pieces before my eyes. He has left me a nervous wreck of the man I once was. Did you say he was a parson?"

"Yes. He's curate of Ballymoy."

"Thank God I don't live in that parish! I should be hypnotised into going to church every time he preached, and then—— Hush! Can he be coming back already? I believe he is. No other man would whistle so loud as that. If he begins to ill-treat me again, Mr. Higginbotham, I hope you'll try and drag him off. I can't stand much more."

CHAPTER XVII

MELDON flung open the door of the hut and entered. He at once took possession of the remaining cigar and lit it.

"I met Mary Kate," he said, "and I sent her on with the kettle. By the way, Mr. Willoughby, have you such a thing as half a crown about you?"

The Chief Secretary plunged his hand into his pocket and brought out a number of coins, gold and silver.

"Take it all," he said; "I don't feel as if I should ever want money any more."

"Thanks," said Meldon. "I'll take half a crown. It's for Mary Kate. As a rule I only give her sixpence at a time, but she'll naturally expect more when she's fetching water for a Chief Secretary's tea. Higginbotham generally gives her sugar-candy."

Meldon's grin and the look of embarrassment on Higginbotham's face hinted to Mr. Willoughby of a joke behind.

"I wish," he said, "you'd tell me about Mary Kate and the sugar-candy."

"Oh, that story's hardly worth telling," said Meldon. "It was only that she nearly had the face ate off Higginbotham one afternoon."

"She ate his face! But surely——"

"He wasn't trying to kiss her, if that's what you're thinking of. Higginbotham's not that kind of man at all. Besides, she's quite a little girl, though remarkably intelligent. No. There was some slight misunderstanding about some sugar-candy between her and Higginbotham. Both of them came to me and complained. I did what I could to set the matter right. You've not been troubled about it lately, have you, Higginbotham?"

"No; it's all right now."

"Is that all I'm to be told?" said Mr. Willoughby.

"There's really nothing more to tell, and besides I want, while I think of it, to warn Higginbotham about the condition of his bed. I happened to spill some broken glass and a few oars on to your bed this morning, Higginbotham. It doesn't really matter about the oars. You'd be sure to notice them as you got in, but you might not see the glass. What I advise you to do is to take the blankets and things outside the door and shake them well before you go to bed."

"I don't suppose it would be any use my asking," said Mr. Willoughby; "but I should greatly like to know how you came to strew Mr. Higginbotham's bed with oars and broken glass."

"I don't think it would interest you much," said Meldon.

"I assure you it would. I can't even imagine circumstances under which it would be any temptation to me to put oars—of all things in the world—and broken bottles into another man's bed."

"It wasn't broken bottles. It was a broken window-pane. The circumstances were these: This morning I wanted to conceal some oars——"

"From?"

"From their owners, and——"

"Oh, from their owners. I see. Stupid of me not to have guessed. Please go on."

"From their owners, who would, or at all events might, have made a very bad use of the oars if they had been able to get at them. Very well. I naturally thought at once of Higginbotham's bed."

"I don't see why you say 'naturally.' It doesn't seem to me at all a natural place to think of. I'm sure I should never have thought of it."

"It doesn't much matter in this case what you would have thought. Higginbotham's bed was the place I thought of at once; and I am still of opinion, in spite of anything you say, that it was a good place. I couldn't open the window, so I smashed it. That's the whole story. I don't suppose it's as good a one as you expected. But you would have it."

"It's better than I expected," said Mr. Willoughby, "and I'm much obliged to you for telling me."

There was a gentle tap at the door. Meldon jumped down from his seat on the table and took his cigar out of his mouth.

"That's Mary Kate, I expect, with the hot water."

It was Mary Kate. She entered the room with a sheepish grin on her face. In one hand she carried a kettle of hot water, in the other hand a loaf of soda-bread. The kettle was a good deal the heavier burden of the two, and she had evidently carried it first in one hand and then in the other. Its handle had some flour on it. The bread was mottled with black off the kettle.

"That's a good girl," said Meldon. "Here's half a crown for you. How much money is that you have now altogether?"

"It's four shillings," said Mary Kate.

"There," said Meldon, "I told you she was an intelligent child. Now listen to me, Mary Kate. The reason you're getting half a crown this time is that the gentleman over there in the chair is the Chief Secretary. Do you know what a Chief Secretary is?"

"I do not."

"Well, I haven't time to explain it to you now; but if you come up here to-morrow to Mr. Higginbotham he'll tell you all about the Chief Secretary. How's Michael Pat?"

Mary Kate grinned.

"If you're going to grin like that when I ask you questions," said Meldon, "you'd better go home."

He pushed her gently from the room and shut the door.

"Now, Higginbotham, put that kettle on your stove and bring it to the boil again. And you'd better take a note of your engagement with that child. It won't do for you to be out when she comes. Now for tea."

"Mr. Meldon," said the Chief Secretary, "I'd take it as a personal favour if you'd stay here and see me through the interview between Father Mulcrone and the old man who won't give up his land."

"Certainly. You're not expecting any sort of a fight, are you? If you are, I'd better go and borrow a stick somewhere."

"Oh, no. Nothing of that sort. It's only that the priest got rather the better of me yesterday. He made me promise what will cost the Government a thousand pounds and he'll probably want to get as much more out of me this afternoon."

"That'll be all right," said Meldon. "You leave it to me. Give me a free hand, that's all I ask. I'll manage him for you."

"Thank you," said the Chief Secretary; "he's a persistent man, but if anybody can get the better of him I'm sure you can."

"I suppose," said Meldon, "it was either a pier or seed potatoes he wanted the money for. Probably seed potatoes. The place must be rotten with piers already."

"He wanted both," said Mr. Willoughby. "It was the potatoes I promised."

"Well, I'll get you out of that if I can. But don't count on it. I may not be able to manage."

Mr. Willoughby looked rather doubtfully at the loaf of bread with the smears of kettle-black which Mary Kate's fingers left on it. He was not reassured by the way in which Meldon cut it up. The plan was simple. Grasping the loaf firmly, he sliced off long strips. These he laid one by one flat along the palm of his left hand and held them in position by pressing his thumb into the corners. Then he drew a buttery knife across them. Higginbotham laid out his two cups and his slop bowl. They were quite clean. Meldon's hands were not. When tea was over Meldon suggested that they should smoke.

"I'm sorry," said Mr. Willoughby, "that I've no more cigars with me. The rest of my supply is on board the Granuaile"

"Higginbotham," said Meldon, "stick your head outside the door and see if the steamer is coming into the bay yet. You must try a fill of my baccy, Mr. Willoughby. I'm sure Higginbotham will have a spare pipe."

He pulled a lump of black twist tobacco out of his trousers pocket and handed it to the Chief Secretary. Then he rose and began to search for a pipe. Mr. Willoughby eyed the tobacco, turning it over and over in his hand. Higginbotham returned with the news that the Granuaile had just appeared round the south point of the bay.

"I fear," said Mr. Willoughby, "that this tobacco is too strong for me. I think that as the Granuaile is so near I'll wait until I can get some more of my own cigars."

"All right," said Meldon. "I'll have a pipe. I'll step down to the pier as soon as I have it lighted and be ready to meet Father Mulcrone. I'll send the boat back for the cigars. In the meanwhile, Higginbotham, you'd better go and collar Thomas O'Flaherty Pat."

"He promised to come here," said Higginbotham, "as soon as ever the Granuaile dropped anchor."

"Don't you rely too much on his promises," said Meldon. "That old boy has taken you in once or twice already. You can't believe a word these people say," he explained to Mr. Willoughby. "Even Mary Kate would lie to you if she stood to gain anything by it. They simply don't know what truth is."

"Are they pragmatists?" asked Mr. Willoughby.

"No; they're not," said Meldon severely. "If you had listened to me when I was explaining to you what pragmatism is, you'd know that these people aren't pragmatists. I can't go into the whole question again now; but I'll just say this much: The pragmatists, according to their own idea, know what truth is. And what's more, they're the only people in the world who do. Now what I said about Thomas O'Flaherty Pat and Mary Kate is that they don't know; therefore they can't be pragmatists. That ought to be fairly obvious. I'm off now to meet Father Mulcrone. Goodbye."

"Mr. Higginbotham," said the Chief Secretary, "did you follow that reasoning about the pragmatists and Mary Kate?"

"Not—not quite. But I didn't take up ethics in College. Meldon did."

"Did you watch him cut the bread-and-butter for tea?"

"I did. I was sorry he insisted on cutting it. His hands were—— But he's a really good sort at bottom, though he has his peculiarities. I've known him for years."

"It must have been a great privilege. Did you see the bit of tobacco he offered me?"

"No; was there anything wrong with it?"

"He took it out of his trousers pocket," said Mr. Willoughby, "and it was quite warm. Mr. Meldon is certainly a very remarkable man. I wonder how he'll get on with Father Mulcrone. I wonder will he succeed in capturing all my cigars."

The Granuaile's boat, with Father Mulcrone seated in the stern, approached the pier. Meldon hailed her. The priest, a plump man, with a weather-beaten face and small, keen grey eyes, waved his hand in response.

"Delighted to see you," said Meldon, as the boat touched the pier and the priest stepped ashore. "I have heard a good deal about you. My name is Meldon—J. J. Meldon. I'm acting with the Chief Secretary here and he asked me to meet you."

"How do you do? How do you do?" said the priest.

"Quite well. I needn't ask how you are. Flowers in May are nothing to you in the matter of bloom of appearance."

Father Mulcrone seemed a little surprised at this warm compliment.

"What does the Chief Secretary want with me now?"

"We'll come to that in a minute. First of all I want to know is there nothing else that would do you except a pier?"

"A pier!"

"Well, seed potatoes, then. I forgot for the moment which it was."

"The season's very backward, very backward indeed," said the priest, "and the poor people will be badly off next spring. Unless we get some help from the Government there'll be starvation in our midst."

"Have you a Board of Guardians on the island?"

"We have not. And I wouldn't say but we're as well without one."

"I dare say you're right," said Meldon. "But about those seed potatoes. The thing for you to do is to get the nearest Board of Guardians to pass a good strong resolution."

"That might be done."

"Tell them to put something in about the representatives of the people and the inalienable rights of the tillers of the soil."

"They'll do that whether I ask them or not."

"Get that resolution forwarded to the Local Government Board in Dublin. Then wait three weeks."

"What for?"

"Oh, it's the usual thing. If these things aren't done properly the Chief Secretary can't act, simply can't. Then send a deputation to wait on the President of the Board. You understand me?"

"I do, of course."

"It'll be as well if you could spare the time to go up with the deputation yourself. Lay the matter before them in temperate language—strong but temperate. Then you'll see what'll happen about the seed potatoes."

Father Mulcrone winked at Meldon.

"Do you take me for a born fool," he said, "that you're talking that way to me?"

"As you've asked me the question straight, I may as well say that I don't take you for anything of the sort. I knew the kind of man you were the minute I set eyes on you. But I promised the Chief Secretary that I'd try and do you out of those seed potatoes if I could."

"So you thought you'd get him off if you persuaded me to have a lot of resolutions passed and go on a deputation."

"I did think that, and what's more I think it still. But you wouldn't fall in with the plan."

"I would not."

"Very well, then. We'll pass on, as they say, to the next business. There's an old fellow on this island called Thomas O'Flaherty Pat."

"I know him well," said the priest.

"Well, you'll hardly believe it, but that old fellow is holding out against the entire Congested Districts Board. He won't give up his wretched little house and the bit of land round it, hardly big enough to sod a lark, and it with a hole in the middle that would swallow a heifer."

"I'll talk to him," said the priest.

"I thought you would. That's the reason I sent for you. Come along. We have him set out waiting for you. At least I told Higginbotham to go and get him."

Taking Father Mulcrone's arm he walked up towards the hut.

"I almost forgot to tell you," he said, "that the great difficulty about old O'Flaherty is that he can't talk English."

"He'll talk it quick enough when I get at him."

"I just thought he would."

"For the matter of that I'm not sure that I wouldn't as soon sort him in Irish."

"Just as you like, of course," said Meldon. "It's all the same to us, so long as you bring him to his senses."

"What right has a man like him to be thwarting the excellent intentions of the Board?"

"None," said Meldon; "and poor Higginbotham, who's brimful of the most excellent intentions you can possibly imagine, is nearly heart-broken about it. You'd be sorry for Higginbotham if you saw him; he's growing thin."

"I have seen him," said the priest, "if he's the inspector the Board sent out. He was over at Inishmore this morning, just after the yacht left, looking out to see which of the people had consumption."

They reached the hut and found Mr. Willoughby seated in the hammock-chair. Higginbotham was absent in pursuit of the reluctant Thomas O'Flaherty Pat. Mr. Willoughby rose at once and offered the chair to the priest.

"No, thank you; no, thank you," said Father Mulcrone. "If I sat down in the like of that chair I'd never get out. I'm a heavy man."

"Father Mulcrone and I will sit on the bed," said Meldon. "Oh, it's all right, Mr. Willoughby. I'll move the oars and give the quilt a shake. I don't want to set Father Mulcrone down on a pile of broken glass. I've more respect for him than to do that."

He took the quilt outside the hut and flapped it vigorously up and down.

"I see Higginbotham and the old man coming down the hill together," he said. "There's quite a little crowd after them, but we needn't let anybody in unless we like. By the way, Mr. Willoughby, Father Mulcrone and I had a chat on the way up from the pier about those seed potatoes. He can't do without them. It's a case of potatoes or coffins for the people on those islands next spring."

"I feared so," said Mr. Willoughby with a sigh; "but I'm sure you did your best."

Higginbotham, with Thomas O'Flaherty Pat, a dignified captive, entered the hut. The old man took off his hat and bowed courteously to the men in front of him. He held himself erect. His fine eyes wandered gravely round the hut. His face expressed neither curiosity nor obsequiousness. Mr. Willoughby was a gentleman, accustomed to the society of titled hostesses and the manners of exclusive London clubs. Higginbotham could behave gracefully at suburban tennis parties. Meldon and Father Mulcrone were strong and self-assertive men. Thomas O'Flaherty Pat looked and behaved in this company like a genuine aristocrat. He waited for what was to be said to him with an air of courteous aloofness. He appeared fully conscious of a certain superiority in himself, a superiority so self-evident as to require neither assertion nor emphasis.

"You are Mr. Thomas O'Flaherty, I think," said Mr. Willoughby.

"Ni beurla agam," said the old man, bowing again.

Then Father Mulcrone began. He spoke in Irish, rapidly and at some length. Thomas O'Flaherty Pat replied in a few calm words. The priest spoke again, raising his voice indignantly. Again he received only the briefest of answers. A torrent of words followed from the priest. Father Mulcrone had made no idle boast when he said that he could deal with the old man in Irish. He never paused for an instant, never hesitated for a word. Thomas O'Flaherty was moved to quite a long reply. The priest interrupted him frequently, but the old man showed no sign of excitement and spoke all the time with gentle courtesy. When he stopped, Father Mulcrone rose from the bed and spoke with unabated volubility. He gesticulated violently, waving his arms and bringing the palms of his hands together with loud smacks. For half an hour the dispute continued, heated argument on the one side, dignified reply on the other. At last Thomas O'Flaherty Pat shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of despair.

"I have him persuaded at last," said Father Mulcrone, wiping his brow with the back of his hand, "but I had a tough job of it. A more obstinate man I never met in all my born days."

"I thought you'd get him in the end," said Meldon. "I couldn't understand a word you were saying, of course, but the way you said it made me feel that the poor old fellow hadn't half a chance."

"If you have the papers ready to-morrow morning," said Father Mulcrone to Higginbotham, "I'll see that he signs them."

"We're all greatly obliged to you," said Meldon. "Without your help I really don't know what we should have done."

"As Mr. Meldon says," added the Chief Secretary, "we're greatly obliged to you. And now, gentlemen, I hope you'll come and dine with me on the Granuaile. I can offer you a small cabin for the night, Father Mulcrone. It's too late to go back to Inishmore."

"Thanks," said Meldon. "We'll go, of course. What do you say, Father Mulcrone? I'm only sorry the Major won't be with us."

"The Major!" said Mr. Willoughby. "Oh, yes; Major Kent, of course, the geological expert. Go and fetch him, Mr. Meldon. I shall be delighted to see him."

"He wouldn't come if I did," said Meldon. "Apart altogether from the survey business he wouldn't come. Nothing would induce him to dine out without a dress-coat, and he hasn't got one on the yacht. That's the kind of man he is. In any case I don't want to go back to the yacht to ask him. There's a breeze getting up now and if the Major got me on board he'd want to up anchor and run home."

Meldon took possession of the Chief Secretary and led the way to the pier. He looked up at the sky and sniffed the air suspiciously.

"There's a change coming," he said. "It will be blowing hard before morning."

"Which of the two yachts is yours?" asked Mr. Willoughby.

"Do you mean which of the two actually belongs to me, or do you mean which do I happen to be cruising in at present?"

"That," said Mr. Willoughby, "sounds like another riddle. Does it by any chance illustrate the pragmatist philosophy?"

"It might, if properly worked out. But I'm too hungry to attempt that now. About those yachts—the one to the south is Major Kent's Spindrift. I'm with him for this cruise. The other is my Aureole. I've hired her to Sir Giles Buckley. I see him and his friend Euseby Langton coming ashore now in their punt. By Jove! That reminds me. Higginbotham!"

He stood still suddenly. The Chief Secretary also halted. His face expressed patient expectation and a determination not to be surprised. Higginbotham and Father Mulcrone overtook them.

"Higginbotham," said Meldon, "did you lock the door of your hut?"

"No, I didn't. I locked it this morning when I went——"

"And you found your bed full of oars and broken glass," said Mr. Willoughby. "I think you're right to leave the door open this time."

"When I tell you," said Meldon, "that Sir Giles is coming ashore in his punt and that he went down the hole in Thomas O'Flaherty's field this morning, perhaps you will go back and lock your door."

"I will, if you like, but I don't know what you mean."

"If you don't understand what I'm telling you," said Meldon, "you needn't bother about the door; but in that case Thomas O'Flaherty Pat ought certainly to be warned."

"I thought when I first heard of you," said Mr. Willoughby, "that you were an impudent liar. Next I decided that you were a lunatic. Then I made sure you were a man of unusual force of character and mental agility. Now I'm getting puzzled about you again."

"Don't bother about me," said Meldon. "I'm sorry for Thomas O'Flaherty Pat, that's all. It makes me a bit nervous to see Sir Giles coming ashore in the dusk of the evening."

"Who is Sir Giles?" asked Mr. Willoughby.

"He's rather a hot lot. In fact, he's a bit of a lad. He'd"—Meldon paused and looked meaningly at the priest, then he whistled—"as soon as drink a pint of porter. You know what I mean, Father Mulcrone."

"I do," said the priest; "I do well."

"I don't," said Mr. Willoughby. "I wish you'd explain. Do you know, Mr. Higginbotham?"

"I do a little," said Higginbotham. "That's to say, I more or less guess."

"I suppose," said Mr. Willoughby plaintively, "that it's better for me not to know. I am a mere child compared to you two reverend gentlemen. I ought to be grateful to you for respecting my innocence and for not speaking more plainly than you do."

A boat from the Granuaile lay alongside the pier. The party embarked just as Sir Giles Buckley's punt reached the shore.

"Good-evening, Sir Giles," said Meldon. "Surely you're not going down that hole again to-night."

Sir Giles scowled in reply.

"That gentleman doesn't seem to be on very good terms with you," said Mr. Willoughby.

"He's not just at present," said Meldon. "I had a conversation with him this afternoon. He chose to assume that I wasn't speaking the truth, and he hasn't got over it since."

"I have a certain sympathy with him," said Mr. Willoughby. "I dare say he knows little or nothing about pragmatism. I went very near getting angry myself when I thought—just for the moment—that you had been deceiving Mr. Higginbotham."

"You got over it all right," said Meldon. "Nobody minds a man flaring out now and then as you did. You don't keep on sulking like that beast Sir Giles. You are a more or less reasonable man."

CHAPTER XVIII

ON board the Granuaile Mr. Willoughby showed himself a courteous host. He took Father Mulcrone to a cabin and offered to provide him with anything he wanted. But the priest, having foreseen that he would sleep elsewhere than in his own bed, had with him a small bag which contained all that he required. Higginbotham and Meldon were put into another cabin. The party assembled in the saloon and dinner was served.

"You do yourself pretty well on this boat," said Meldon as he tasted the soup. "The Major and I have been living principally on sardines and tinned brawn. Higginbotham gets a lobster now and then. I suppose you have more lobsters than you care about in the course of the summer, Father Mulcrone?"

"I get plenty," said the priest. "Lobsters, potatoes, and tea. They're the easiest things to get on Inishmore."

After this the conversation languished. Mr. Willoughby was disappointed. He expected an amusing dinner. He found himself obliged to talk on dull subjects to Higginbotham, who was too much overawed by the company of a Chief Secretary to do more than make respectful replies. Meldon said a word in praise of each dish he tasted, and Father Mulcrone supplemented what he said in the manner of a man who seconds a vote of thanks. Otherwise, neither of the two clergymen talked. They were both hungry. They were both accustomed to take their meals alone. They both regarded the eating of a good dinner as a serious business, demanding undivided attention. Mr. Willoughby, tired of Higginbotham, undertook a monologue, and kept it going quietly until dinner was over and cigars were lit.

Then Father Mulcrone told a story. Meldon capped it with another. Father Mulcrone replied with a better one. Meldon outwent it. The stories became more and more extravagant. Mr. Willoughby looked from one clergyman to the other and laughed heartily. Higginbotham giggled convulsively in a corner. Neither of the clergymen even smiled. With perfectly grave faces, in tones which would have suited a scientific lecture, they narrated absurdity after absurdity. It was Meldon who reached the climax, who told a story so monstrously improbable that Father Mulcrone gave up the attempt to better it.

"For a young man," said the priest, "and I wouldn't say you were more than seven-and-twenty——"

"I'll be that in three weeks, if I live so long," said Meldon.

"You've a deal of experience of this country and the ways of the people."

"For the matter of that you've seen a thing or two yourself."

"I have; but when I was your age I didn't know the half of what you do."

It was a handsome tribute. Meldon appreciated it. He raised his glass of whisky and water, nodded to Father Mulcrone and said—

"May the devil fly away with the roof of the house where you and I aren't welcome."

"I consider myself fortunate," said Mr. Willoughby, "in having as my guests to-night two men with the knowledge of Ireland which you possess. I'm learning more from your conversation than from all the Blue Books I ever read."

"I think we may understand from that remark," said Father Mulcrone, "that there's no danger of the slates being taken off the Lodge in the Phœnix while you're in it."

"You'll be welcome there, either of you," said Mr. Willoughby, "while I hold office. You'll be all the more welcome if you come together."

"We'll do it," said Meldon.

"What are the authorities of your Churches thinking of," said Mr. Willoughby, "when they leave you a curate, Mr. Meldon, and you no more than a parish priest, Father Mulcrone?"

"I'd be well off if I was that itself. It's a C.C. I am, and so far as I know it's a C.C. I'm likely to remain."

"You ought," said Mr. Willoughby, "to be bishops at least, both of you. If I had the arranging of these things you'd be archbishops. Why aren't you?"

"I haven't reached the canonical age," said Meldon. "You can't be a bishop till you're thirty. I've three years more to wait."

"I went very near being a bishop once," said Father Mulcrone, "and it's my sincere hope I'll never be as near it again. It wasn't in this diocese but another, and I won't tell you where for fear of an action for libel. The old man that was the bishop died. The night after they buried him I happened to be going along the road in the dark. It might have been ten o'clock or half-past. Who did I see coming along towards me but the dead man, dressed up in his robes, and his episcopal ring on his thumb. When he caught sight of me he took off the ring and held it out to me as much as to say, 'It's yourself, Father Mulcrone, that's to succeed me.' I was pleased, I can tell you. I stuck out my thumb for him to put the ring on, seeing that was what he seemed to be wanting to do. Would you believe it, gentlemen? The ring was red hot!"

"And is that," said Meldon, "the place bishops go to when they're dead?"

"It's the only place ever I heard of," said Father Mulcrone, "where a ring could get into such a state as that."

"On the whole, then, I think I'll stick to my curacy. It's safer."

"You're right. It's what I've done myself."

There was a silence for a minute or two, broken Only by half-suppressed sniggers from Higginbotham. Then Meldon rose with a sigh.

"You have me beat, Father Mulcrone. I give in to you. The equal of the experience you've just narrated never came my way. I think I'll be saying good-night, Mr. Willoughby. If you'll send a boat to the pier with me and Higginbotham, I'll get my punt there and go off to the Spindrift."

The Granuaile's boat landed Meldon and Higginbotham at about eleven o'clock. A change in the weather was certainly coming. Great masses of clouds were piled up over the western half of the sky. Broken fragments, the advance guard of their army, rushed eastwards. The little wind there had been earlier in the afternoon was gone. The air was ominously still. From the far side of the island came the roar of waves. The sea was dashing sullenly against the rocks and dragging at the stones on the beaches. Not yet lashed by the storm, it already felt a premonition of the storm's coming. Even the water in the sheltered bay was affected with a vague uneasiness. Dark lumps rose here and there on its surface and sank again. Silent surges crept unexpectedly up the smooth sides of the pier, mouthing at the stones, slipping down again unsatisfied, eddying in hungry circles.

Meldon looked round him uncomfortably.

"I'll take the punt on board to-night," he said, "and I'll pay out a few extra fathom of anchor chain. There'll be a blow before morning. If I were you, Higginbotham, I'd stuff an old towel or something into that broken window. It's going to rain and rain heavy. Good-night."

"Good-night. What a pleasant man Mr. Willoughby is! I am so glad there was no trouble between you and him. Good-night."

Meldon struck a match and lit his pipe. Then he stooped down to loose the painter of the punt. As he did so he heard footsteps on the granite surface of the pier, the footsteps of some one who approached him. He supposed that Higginbotham had returned again to say some forgotten word. With the rope he had cast loose in his hand he stood and waited. It was not Higginbotham who approached. Whoever it was stopped about ten yards away from him. Meldon could dimly discern the figure of a man much taller than Higginbotham. A voice, raised very little above a whisper, reached him—

"Master."

Meldon stooped and refastened the painter. He heard the voice again but did not recognise it.

"Master."

He approached the tall figure, peering eagerly through the darkness.

"I'm blessed," he said, "if it isn't old Thomas O'Flaherty Pat! So you've got one word of English, have you? Maybe now if you searched in the corner of your mind you might find a little more."

"I have plenty," said the old man. "There's few have more English nor better English than myself."

"I always thought you had," said Meldon. "I'd have laid long odds on it if I'd been a betting man, which, of course, I'm not. Now what is it you want?"

"It's yourself, Master."

"Is it, then? And what would you do with me supposing you had me? Tell me that. Is it wanting me to speak a word for you to the Chief Secretary you are, to get back your house and land?"

"It is not."

"If it is, I'll do it, of course; but I tell you straight that it won't be the smallest bit of use. The whole might of the British Empire is against you. They'll get your land out of you if they have to send a man-of-war round to do it. Besides, you know, you gave yourself away badly in that interview with Father Mulcrone to-day. I don't blame you. I knew very well you were done for when they fetched the priest to you. It was a mean trick, that. No real sportsman would have done it. It was a sort of sitting shot. You didn't have the ghost of a chance. Now if you'd been treated fairly and left to worry it out with nobody but Mary Kate to come between you and the Board, you might have kept them arguing till either they or you were dead."

"It isn't wanting you to speak for me I am. Neither to himself, nor his reverence, nor to any other man."

"Is it a writing, then?"

"It is not."

"Well, I'm glad to hear that any way, for I haven't brought my fountain pen with me on this cruise, and I'm thinking it's poorly I'd write with any pen and ink that you are likely to have. But if it isn't to speak nor yet to write I don't quite see what it is you do want."

"It's yourself."

"That's all very fine. I owe you a good turn for giving me that crab, and I admire the plucky way in which you've stood up to Higginbotham and the Board, but I'm not going to hand myself over body and soul to a man I've only known for three days without finding out what he wants me for. Has anything gone wrong with Mary Kate or Michael Pat?"

"I'd be thankful to you if you'd step up to my little houseen, the place that they're going to take from me."

"What for?" said Meldon. "I declare to goodness it's very near as hard to make out what you want now you're talking English as it was before."

"There's that there that I'd be glad to show you. Maybe you'd tell me what would be the best to be done. It's what I never expected to show to any man, let alone a stranger like yourself. But my mind's made up, and I'll show it to you."

Meldon gripped the old man by the arm.

"Is it the treasure you have hid there?"

"Treasure?"

"Treasure; yes. Gold. Do you understand? Is it gold you have up in your house?"

"It might, then."

"Is there much of it? How much is there?"

"There's a power. Glory be to God, there's a mighty deal of it! More, maybe, than ever you saw in one place together in all your life."

"Come on, then," said Meldon. "Let me set eyes] on it. I dare say you guessed—I always said you weren't such a fool as you tried to make out to Higginbotham—I dare say you guessed that the Major and I were after that treasure ourselves."

"I did."

"I thought you did. And the gentlemen from the other yacht were after it, too. You guessed that, I suppose?"

"Didn't I see them going down the Poll-na-phuca? What else would the likes of them be after in such a place?"

"Well, I'll say this. If I wasn't to get it myself, I'd sooner you had it than another. I hope you'll make a good use of it and not be wasting it on drink and foolishness. Give Mary Kate a good fortune when the time comes and marry her to a decent man."

"Sure, what's the use of talking?" said the old man in a tone of despair. "It'll be took from me along with the house. The Board will take it and never a penny will the little lady be the better of it, no more than myself or any other one."

"Maybe they won't get taking it," said Meldon, "though indeed for all the good you're getting out of it at present they might as well. I don't see that it's any use to you if you don't so much as buy yourself a decent suit of clothes and spend sixpence on getting your hair cut. It's a shame for a rich man like you to be going about the way you are."

"What good would grand clothes be to the likes of me?"

"I'm beginning to understand things a bit," said Meldon, whose thoughts had passed away from the use to be made of the money. "I see the reason now why you wouldn't give up the house and land to Higginbotham. You're certainly no fool. That dodge of yours, pretending you couldn't speak a word of any language except Irish, was uncommonly nippy. I doubt if I could have hit on anything better myself, and I've had some experience in disguises. Only for the priest you might have kept them all at bay. I don't see what they could have done to you, even if they took to asking questions in Parliament."

"What was the good? They have it taken off me now at the latter end."

"They have the house and land," said Meldon. "There's no doubt of that. But I wouldn't say they have the treasure yet. You came to the right man when you came to me. If that treasure can be saved, I'll save it. What would you say now if we carried it down to-night to Mrs. O'Flaherty's, Michael Pat's mother, and hid it under the old woman's bed?"

"I wouldn't trust her. She'd steal it on me."

"I don't believe she would. Not if you gave her a bit for herself and bought a silver mug or something for Michael Pat. But if you don't like the notion of her, what about Mary Kate's mother? She's your own daughter."

"She'd steal it on me as quick as another."

"Would she, then? I declare to goodness you have a pretty low opinion of your relatives and friends. I don't believe they'd touch a penny of it. Have you any plan in your own head?"

"Let you be coming up and taking a look at it."

"I will, of course; I'm most anxious to see it. But tell me what it is you think of doing with it?"

"I thought maybe——" the old man paused and laid his hand on Meldon's arm.

"Well?"

"I thought maybe you and the other gentleman would take it with you in the yacht and put it in the savings bank beyond in the big town."

"That beats all," said Meldon. "And what would hinder us from making off with it and never coming next or nigh you again?"

"You wouldn't do the like."

"Well, as a matter of fact I wouldn't. No more would the Major. But how do you know that? It's a queer thing that a man who wouldn't trust his own daughter, and her living under his very eye, would hand over a lot of money like that to two strangers."

"Sure, I could see by the face of you the minute you first set foot on the pier that you were as simple and innocent and harmless as could be. Anybody could tell by the talk of you that you couldn't get the better of a child, let alone a grown man like myself, begging your honour's pardon for thinking that ever you'd want to do the like."

"You're quite wrong about that," said Meldon, irritated by this compliment to his integrity, "and if you dare to say such a thing again I'll not help you with your treasure. Mind what I say. Another word of that sort out of your head and I'll go straight down to Higginbotham and tell him what you've got."

"Let you be coming along now," said Thomas O'Flaherty in an indulgent tone, "and don't be wasting the night talking. Walk easy. It's a rough way from this on to my houseen, and there's stones on it would break the leg of a bullock, let alone yours or mine."

CHAPTER XIX

THEY reached the cabin. Old O'Flaherty fumbled at the latch and opened the door. Inside, the place was almost quite dark. A few sparks glowed faintly on the hearth. The small square window looked like a grey patch on the black wall. Meldon paused at the threshold, unwilling to advance without light towards unknown furniture, over a pitted and hilly earthen floor. O'Flaherty disappeared into a corner and could be heard breaking sticks. The fragments were flung on the hearth. The old man went down on his knees and blew the embers.

"I have the end of a candle on the dresser beyond," he said, "if I could come by as much fire as would light it."

"If that's what you're after," said Meldon, "I have a box of matches in my pocket."

He drew out the box and struck one. O'Flaherty pounced on his candle, lit it, and set it on the stone seat which filled an angle of the wide hearth.

"Let you give me a hand now, and we'll shift the dresser," he said. "I could do it myself, but it'll be done quicker if you take the near end of it."

Meldon caught hold of the dresser and pulled it over to the far side of the room. O'Flaherty stood on a wooden stool and took down a shovel which rested among the rafters of the roof. He scooped away loose earth from the place where the dresser had stood. At the depth of about an inch he came upon a number of boards laid close together. He prized up one of them with the edge of the shovel and lifted the others out. A hole lay open. Meldon peered into it but could see nothing. He fumbled for his matches. O'Flaherty fetched the candle from the stone seat in the hearth. He lay flat and, stretching his hand into the hole, held the candle far down. Meldon saw piles of coins standing in neat rows. He, too, lay down on the floor, reached into the hole, and, touching them with his fingers, counted the piles. There were ninety-eight of them. He lifted one and counted the coins in it. There were twenty.

"Hold the candle here," he said.

Thomas O'Flaherty, rising to his knees, set the candle on the floor at the edge of the hole.

"They're all gold, every single one of them," said Meldon. "If those were no more than just ordinary sovereigns you'd have pretty near two thousand pounds. But by the weight of them I'd say that they're worth two or three sovereigns each. You're a rich man, Thomas O'Flaherty Pat. There may be richer men in the province of Connacht, but I don't believe there's one with the same command of ready cash. I declare to goodness, if it wasn't for Gladys Muriel, I'd wait a few years on the chance of getting Mary Kate. However did you get all that money up out of the cave?"

"I did have a bit of rope fixed to a big stone the way it wouldn't shift on me and me going up and down. The lids of the iron boxes gave me my 'nough of work before I got them lifted, and them rusty with the damp there was in it. But, with the help of God, I got them lifted at the latter end. Then I'd be putting the gold into a bit of a bag that I had on me. It was very little I could take at the one time, for it would surprise you how heavy it is, and me having to climb the rope and not one at the top to give me a hand. Maybe it wouldn't be more than once in the day and often not that much itself that I'd go down. I did be in dread that some of the boys would discover what I was after. From first to last I wasn't less than a whole year at the job."

"You would be all that," said Meldon. "It's a mortal pity I wasn't here at the time. We'd have rigged up some sort of pulley at the top of the hole, and with me filling at the bottom and you taking the stuff at the top we'd have had it out in a single day. But there's no use talking about that now. The gold's here, right enough, however you got it."

Meldon turned the coins over and over in his hand, held one to the light and then another, felt the weight of them singly and then two or three at a time.

"What put you on to it?" he said. "What made you think of looking in that hole?"

"Sure the people always had it that there was a deal of gold on the island somewhere. My father knew it and his father before him, and everybody had heard tell of it. Long ago they did be searching for it. There was two of the gentry once came to look after it. But people got tired, finding nothing, and at the latter end they gave it up. It's maybe a hundred years since anybody laid down his mind to look for it. But there was one place that I knew nobody ever searched, and that was the Poll-na-phuca."

"Why not?"

"They'd be in dread on account of them that do be in it."

"Them that—oh, the fairies, of course!"

"Well, I used to be turning it over and over in my mind and me no more than a gossure. And I said to myself that seeing the gold was somewhere and that there was just one place that nobody would be caring to look for it, it was there it must surely be. It came into my mind, too, that the like of them that hid it first wouldn't be in dread of who might be in the hole or who might not. I've heard them say that the gentry doesn't give much heed to them tales. Indeed, they might choose out the Poll-na-phuca just by reason of there being many another that wouldn't go next or nigh it"

"That was a fine piece of deductive reasoning," said Meldon. "I couldn't have argued the thing out better myself. I say, Tom—you won't mind my calling you Tom, will you? I'll say Pat if you like, but your whole name is too long for frequent use—the wind's rising. Did you hear that last gust? It's going to be a nasty night."

"It was long enough," said old O'Flaherty, shading the candle from the draught, "before I could get my mind laid down to go into the Poll-na-phuca. I'd be saying to myself in the daytime that I'd go and thinking maybe I'd better not when it was dark. Or it would be the storms in the winter and the noises there'd be coming out of it would make me think it would be wiser to leave that sort of people to themselves and not be meddling with them. But in the latter end, when I was getting used to living near it and no harm coming to me, I went down."

"And did ever you come across a leprachaun or anything of that sort? Tell me the truth now."

"I might, then. Believe you me there's queer things that nobody, not the clergy themselves, knows about, down in the depths of the bowels of the earth where the sun doesn't be shining. There's queer things there."

"Higginbotham says there's pliocene clay."

"There might. I wouldn't say but there is. The likes of him would surely know. But there's more."

"I wouldn't wonder," said Meldon. "I didn't come across anything of the sort myself; but then I was only there once, and besides, I'm not the sort of man that a fairy would come near. But we can't afford to spend the night in gossiping. Are you still bent on my taking the gold away with me in the yacht?"

"I am."

"It'll take the best part of the night to get it on board. For one thing I'm bound to waken Major Kent the first trip and then I'll have to give him some sort of an explanation of what I'm doing. You don't know the Major and so you can hardly realise the length of time it takes to explain anything to him. He'll want to argue, and he's always in a bad temper when you first wake him. The morning will hardly see us through the job. Luckily the only person with any sort of right to interfere is Higginbotham. He's frightfully officious, and you never can tell what his Board might regard as coming under the head of mining rights. But it's easy to put Higginbotham off the scent. Do you happen to have that bag anywhere about, the one you used to take down into the cave?"

O'Flaherty rose, climbed on his stool again, and grubbed among some dirty sails and nets which hung on a beam above the hearth. He descended with an ancient flour sack in his hand.

"That's not such a small bag as you led me to believe," said Meldon. "I wouldn't care to go off in out punt with that bag full of gold. You may have noticed that ours is one of those patent collapsible punts, and you have to be uncommonly careful what you take in them. The best thing we can do is put a few hundred of your doubloons in the bottom of the sack, ferry them off, and then come back for more. My goodness, listen to that! There must be half a gale of wind blowing this minute and that won't make the job of navigating the Major's beastly hat of a punt any easier. Still, if nothing else will do you except to get the stuff on to the Spindrift, we'll—— Hallo! what on earth are you doing with the candle?"

Old O'Flaherty rose suddenly to his knees as Meldon spoke, held the light aloft, gave an inarticulate cry, and then dropped the candle. As he did so Meldon was struck on the head from behind and rolled over senseless on the floor.

"I've settled the curate," said Sir Giles Buckley. "Have you got a hold of the old man?"

Euseby Langton had not got hold of O'Flaherty. His nerve had failed him at the moment of assault and he stood helpless in the door. Thomas O'Flaherty realised his position at once. He rose from his knees and began to move silently through the hut. It was quite dark.

"No," said Langton. "I—I missed him."

"Damn it!" said Sir Giles; "we must get him or he'll raise hell all over the island. I can't see a stim."

O'Flaherty guessed from the sound of his voice that Langton was in the door and that his way of escape was barred. He moved through the hut in the hope that Langton might be tempted to pursue him. Sir Giles felt after him in the dark; but the place, familiar to O'Flaherty, was strange to him.

"Stay in the door, Langton," he cried. "Don't let him pass you."

He struck a match and caught sight of O'Flaherty standing a few yards in front of him. But the old man was ready for the manoeuvre and had his wits about him. He struck at the match with his hand and extinguished it. Sir Giles made an effort to grapple him, failed, and dropped his match-box. O'Flaherty moved away from him, felt the shovel with his feet, stooped and picked it up.

"Strike a match, Langton," said Sir Giles.

The moment the first sparkle of light shone O'Flaherty struck at Sir Giles with the shovel. He brought the flat of the blade down on the arm which Sir Giles stretched out to guard his head. Then, with a call to Langton for help, Sir Giles flung himself on the old man. O'Flaherty was feeble, but he fought desperately. Sir Giles's right arm was numbed from the blow of the shovel. He called again for help. Langton seized O'Flaherty round the neck and pulled him backwards. Between them they overpowered the old man and laid him on the floor. They had come well provided with what they were likely to want. Ropes were produced. O'Flaherty was securely bound and gagged. Sir Giles drew a candle from his pocket and lit it.

"Now for the curate," he said. "I've knocked the senses out of him anyway. It's a good job I hit hard. I wouldn't care to be scrapping in the dark with him. The old fellow gave me enough to do, and you're nothing but a damned coward, Langton. Now we'll tie up the Rev. J. J. Meldon and gag him, so that he won't stir even if he comes to. When there's light enough we'll lower the two of them into the cave and leave them there."

"That'll be murder," said Langton, "and I told you I'd have nothing to do with murder."

"Don't be an infernal ass. There's no murder. Some fool or other will find them to-morrow or the day after, and they'll be alive all right. We must get a clear start out of this. Don't you know that the steamer would overtake us at once if she started after us? And she will if those two fellows are found and tell their story. Come and give me a hand."

Meldon's legs were tied together. His hands were lashed to his sides. A gag was forced into his mouth and secured.

"Now we have him safe," said Sir Giles, "even if he does come to. Let's get at the gold. We've no time to waste."

Meldon's head was a hard one. Very shortly after he was bound he recovered consciousness. He recognised Sir Giles and Langton and saw that they were stooping over the hole where the treasure lay. He saw them lifting out the coins and putting them into a leather hand-bag which lay beside them on the floor.

He could recollect nothing of what had happened, bu he grasped at once the obvious fact that old O'Flaherty was being robbed. He struggled at the ropes which bound his hands and feet, but found that he could not stir them. The gag prevented him from either speaking or crying. One form of activity alone remained possible for him. He rolled across the floor of the hut.

It is not easy to roll in a straight line towards any given object. The human body, like a biassed bowl, has a tendency to turn on the hips as on an axle, and arrive ultimately somewhere near the place from which it started. But the distance which Meldon had to travel was not great. He succeeded, after convulsive efforts, in cannoning with some force against Langton. Taken completely unawares, Langton toppled forwards, extinguishing the candle in his fall. A further effort upset the bag into the hole, and then Meldon followed it and fell, doubled up, on top of the treasure.

Sir Giles cursed vehemently. He stood up in order that he might curse with better emphasis. As a further relief to his feelings he kicked Langton, who still sprawled beside the hole. Then he went down on his hands and knees and felt about for the candle. The search drew from him other expressions of annoyance. Meldon, though his position in the hole was extremely uncomfortable, found a good deal of pleasure in listening to Sir Giles. At last the candle was retrieved and lit again.

"I'd better knock that infernal parson on the head again," said Sir Giles. "It's the only possible way of keeping him quiet."

"Don't; you'll most likely kill him."

"Nothing would kill that fellow. He wouldn't die if you hanged him."

"I won't have you smashing his skull anyway. Can't you take him outside the door and leave him there?"

Meldon was pulled out of the hole, dragged across the floor of the hut, and deposited on a bank of grass opposite the door. It was raining heavily.

"Cool yourself there awhile," said Sir Giles. "When it's light enough I'm going to drop you down into the cave that the treasure came out of. You and that damned old ragman can lie at the bottom of it and look at each other till somebody comes to rescue you."

Meldon received a good many bruises and scratches, but he retained his consciousness. He knew where he was. Below him was the end of the bohireen and the door of the hut. His mind was filled with a vehement rage against Sir Giles. He was totally indifferent to anything that might happen to himself. He desired intensely to do something which would obstruct, annoy, and, if possible, injure the man whom he regarded as a personal enemy. He hit upon a plan which seemed hopeful.

He writhed to and fro until he succeeded in rolling down the bank to the bohireen. By much wriggling he arranged himself across the path. His head was on the grass at one side, his feet on the grass at the other. He lay on his side with his face towards the door of the hut. He was extremely uncomfortable. !A stream of water was running down the stony track. His body dammed it, and it mounted up against him, soaking him through. The wind blew more water against the part of his clothes which the stream did not reach. A sharp-pointed stone stuck into his right shoulder. His face was cut and plastered with mud. His body seemed to be bruised all over. His head ached violently. But all this mattered nothing to him for the moment. His faculties were absorbed in watching the door of the hut.

Sir Giles and Langton appeared. They carried between them the leather bag, full almost to the bursting-point. Langton held the candle in one hand, but it was almost immediately extinguished by a gust of wind. Their eyes were not yet accustomed to the darkness. They took the first few steps cautiously. Meldon turned over on his face and waited, lying quite flat. He felt a foot touch him. He drew his knees up under him and arched his back Suddenly. The stratagem was entirely successful. Sir Giles pitched forward and fell, dragging the bag from Langton's hands. It burst open and the contents were scattered broadcast over the muddy lane. Meldon, highly delighted, waited for the volley of oaths which was to be expected. He was disappointed. Sir Giles rose in silence. His anger this time was too fierce for blasphemy. He stood over Meldon and kicked him savagely on arms and legs and body. He was wearing rubber-soled yachting shoes, and his vengeance was not as ferocious as it looked. Missing Meldon once or twice owing to the darkness and his rage, he kicked stones and hurt his own toes greatly. Langton, who failed to realise the feebleness of the assault, protested.

"Drop that. Drop it, I say. Do you want to let yourself and me in for being hanged? If you leave the man in the middle of the path you've no one to blame but yourself when you trip over him. What's the use of behaving like a madman?"

"I didn't leave him here. He crawled here himself."

"Rot," said Langton. "He couldn't crawl."

"I'll put him somewhere this time that he won't get away from so easy."

He gripped Meldon by the feet and hauled him up the bank. He dragged him along the grass till he came to a wall. He called Langton to his assistance and between them they lifted Meldon over it and deposited him in a ditch at the far side.

"Get back over that if you can," said Sir Giles.

He kicked Meldon again. "So far," he said, "I've just had one solid piece of satisfaction this evening. I've stopped your talking with that gag. If I did right I'd cut your tongue out now I have you tied, so that you'd never be able to talk again."

Meldon listened. It annoyed him very much that he could not speak. He wanted to refer Sir Giles to the case, discussed by the historian Gibbon, of certain Christian martyrs, who spoke fluently and well after being deprived of their tongues by an executioner. He also wanted to say, that so far, working against long odds, he had got the better of the struggle and had annoyed Sir Giles more than Sir Giles had annoyed him. He tried to give expression to his feelings by winking first with one eye and then with the other. But it was so dark that the winks could not be seen, and Sir Giles departed without knowing what Meldon thought of him.

CHAPTER XX

SIR GILES and Langton went back to the lane and set about the task of hunting for the gold which had been scattered. They found the bag at once and in a corner of it a couple of dozen coins. The rest were strewed about among the mud, the pools, the running water, and the loose stones. The wind tore across the island in violent gusts. The rain beat furiously upon them. The candle which Langton had put in his pocket was lighted and promptly extinguished. Sir Giles made a kind of shelter for it with his coat and tried to keep it burning. He succeeded for a minute or two. Then a gust of wind whirled over the coat and the candle was blown out again.

"Let's give it up," said Langton. "Let's go back and get another load."

"I will not give it up. Do you suppose I'm going to leave a small fortune lying in this lane when I might have it for the gathering? Go back to the hut and try if you can find any kind of a lantern."

Langton searched in vain, for old O'Flaherty owned no lantern. He returned to report his ill-success.

"I'll go down to the yacht," said Sir Giles, "and get one of her lamps. You wait for me here and pick up what you can in the meanwhile."

But Langton had no taste for crawling about on his hands and knees feeling for coins in mud and water. He was chilled and dispirited. When Sir Giles left him he stumbled back into the hut, wrung the water out of his coat, and waited in shelter. In about three-quarters of an hour Sir Giles returned with the Aureole's riding light in his hand. The search began again. After half an hour's hard work the bag was nearly filled, and, carrying it between them, the two men set out for the Aureole.

"Two more trips will be enough," said Sir Giles. "If we haven't got it all we shall have to leave the rest behind us. Thank the gods, the rain is stopping. The wind will go down now. If it doesn't, Langton, you may say your prayers. We'd never fetch Ballymoy or anywhere else in this gale."

Meldon lay in his ditch. The ropes with which he was bound began to cut into his flesh. He was more bruised than ever. But he found a real satisfaction in picturing to himself Sir Giles as he searched for the coins in the dark. He was determined to try and free himself. A few efforts convinced him that he could do nothing with the ropes on his arms and legs. The gag seemed more hopeful It was a woollen scarf. It was forced between his teeth, pulled tight front behind so as to drag his lips out into a kind of grin and knotted firmly at the back of his neck. He tried to gnaw it through with his teeth, but only succeeded in biting the insides of his cheeks until they bled. He wriggled along the ditch and got the side of his head against a stone with a sharp edge. He worked his head up and down, rubbing the woollen gag against the stone. He hoped in this way to wear the stuff through. The work was tedious and painful. But he persevered and in the end reaped his reward. The last strands of the wool parted. His mouth was free.

He looked round him and took stock of his position. At first he could see nothing but the stone wall, the grassy side of the ditch, and the sky. He noticed that it was beginning to get light. The rain had ceased. The clouds were being blown apart. Meldon guessed that it must be nearly three o'clock. He remembered that Sir Giles intended to lower him into the Poll-na-phuca as soon as there was light enough. He had no intention of being buried alive there if he could help it. He set to work to writhe and wriggle himself out of the ditch. He found himself at last in the field below O'Flaherty's house. He had a clear view of the bay and saw Sir Giles rowing out to the Aureole. The light increased and he noticed with great satisfaction that there was a heavy sea running outside the bay. He reflected that it would be totally impossible for the Aureole to leave her sheltered anchorage. But the wind was falling. In a couple of hours a venturous man might attempt to run for the mainland with three or four reefs tied down in his sail.

Sir Giles and Langton left the yacht again and pulled for the pier. Meldon decided that they must still have another load of treasure to ship. They had, as he calculated, an hour and a half's work before them. He saw below him, two fields off, the house in which Mary Kate and her parents lived. He made up his mind that he must get near enough to waken somebody in it before Sir Giles came to him again. There was only one possible way of getting there. He must roll down the hill.

He made up his mind to act at once. Having the use of his mouth he shouted a word of encouragement to Thomas O'Flaherty before he started:—

"Hullo! Thomas O'Flaherty Pat! Hullo! I expect you're gagged and tied somewhere and can't answer. But I've got the beastly thing worked out of my mouth and I'm going to get the better of those two blackguards yet. It'll all depend on my being able to get hold of Mary Kate. Goodbye. I'll see that this business pans out all right in the end."

The field in which he lay sloped even more steeply than most fields in the island. At the bottom of it was a wall and in the middle of the wall a gap. Beyond the gap was another steep field and at the bottom of it was the house. Meldon aimed for the gap. He congratulated himself that Higginbotham's philanthropic plans for the bettering of the islanders' system of land tenure had not yet been carried out. In the fences that were to be erected there would not be gaps and no man could roll over a six-foot Congested Districts Board bank.

He wriggled himself into position and started rolling down the hill. He advanced rapidly for a few yards and then came to a dead stop, lying up and down the hill. He wriggled again, rolled again, and was again brought up short by the impossibility of keeping his body parallel to the slope of the hill. Still he advanced and at length actually arrived at the gap. He lay still, giddy and breathless. He saw Sir Giles and Langton go into the hut. He started, as soon as he could, to roll across the second field. There were four bullocks in it which were lying together in a group when Meldon rolled suddenly among them. They were startled, struggled to their feet and galloped off in four different directions. After a while curiosity conquered their terror. They returned cautiously and slowly, sniffing and pawing, starting now and then in fresh alarm. Convinced at last that Meldon was harmless they gathered close round him and eyed him with wonder. He lay quite still because he could see Sir Giles and Langton coming out of the hut and suspected that they would search for him. He realised that the cattle hid him effectually.

Having lowered O'Flaherty into the cave Sir Giles and Langton went to the ditch in which they had left Meldon. They were surprised to find that he had disappeared.

"Can he have got loose?" said Langton nervously.

"If he'd got so much as his tongue loose," said Sir Giles, "he'd have raised the hell of a row by this time. That fellow would no more keep quiet than a corn-crake would stop making the vile row it does make in the middle of the night. He can't have gone far. We must look for him."

"No. Let's get out of this at once. The people will be awake and about soon."

"We ought to have been off two hours ago," said Sir Giles. "Only for that cursed parson we would have been. First we had to waste the time dragging him out of the hut, and then his infernal practical jokes cost us another hour and a half. We'll have to leave him now and chance it. We can only hope he's lying dead somewhere."

Meldon watched them tramp down the bohireen and realised that he was safe. He understood also that he had very little time to spare. In half an hour Sir Giles would be on board the yacht again.

"He'll have to tie down three reefs," said Meldon to the nearest bullock, "if he doesn't want to be drowned. And that'll take him some time with nobody but Langton to help him."

The remark caused the bullocks to edge away a little. Meldon started rolling again towards the cottage. Now and then as he drew nearer to it he shouted. At length, when he had got within about twenty yards of it the door opened and Mary Kate peered out Meldon shouted to her:—

"Mary Kate! I say, Mary Kate! come here as quick as you can."

The child approached him cautiously. Like the bullocks, she had never before seen anything exactly like Meldon as he lay in the field.

"Mary Kate," he said, in tones meant to be reassuring, "do you go to bed in your clothes?"

The question was reasonable. The child was dressed just as usual in her red petticoat and flannel bodice.

"I do not," said Mary Kate. "I dressed myself when I heard the shouts of you."

"Very well, then. Go and get a knife."

"A knife, is it?"

"It is," said Meldon. "A knife."

"What sort of a knife?"

"Any sort of a knife you like, from a scythe down to a lancet, will do. In fact, I dare say we could manage with your mother's scissors. But run now and get something that will cut."

Mary Kate went back into the house and returned with a sickle.

"My da will be wanting the scythe to-day," she said, "but if this will do you, you can have the loan of it."

"I don't want the loan of it. I want you to cut the rope that's round my arms, and be quick about it."

"The Lord save us and help us! Is it tied you are? Who's after doing the like of that to you?"

"I am tied. But if you'd stop standing there staring like a stuck pig, and come over here with the sickle, I'd soon be loose."

Mary Kate approached him grinning.

"Don't grin," said Meldon. "I've said that to you before. Look here, Mary Kate, I've been cracking you up all over the island the last three days for one of the most intelligent children I ever met. It was only last night I offered your grandfather to marry you if he liked. But I'll not marry you. And I'll never say another good word for you, and what's more I'll take the half-crown and the three sixpences away from you unless you come here and cut the rope."

"You couldn't," said Mary Kate.

But the threat produced its effect on her. She stopped grinning and began sawing at the rope. The sickle was blunt but Mary Kate worked vigorously. One strand after another parted. Meldon got his arms free.

"Give me the sickle," he said.

His hands were numb and he was obliged to rub them up and down against his legs before he could take a firm grip of it. At last he managed to hold it, and set to work at the rope that bound his ankles.

"Mary Kate," he said, "go back to your da. Is he in bed?"

"He might, then."

"Well, if he is, get him out and tell him to go up to the Poll-na-phuca with a rope and a ladder, and he'll find your grandda at the bottom of it if he isn't dead."

"The Lord save us! They've took him at the latter end."

"Don't," said Meldon, "get any rotten idea about fairies into your head. This isn't a fairy matter at all. Tell your father that if he doesn't go at once the old man will be dead, and as sure as ever he is I'll have your father hanged for murdering him. Do you understand me now?"

"I do," said Mary Kate.

Meldon found it difficult to stand, and was only able to totter down towards the pier. He saw Sir Giles and Langton reach the Aureole and board her. He quickened his pace as much as his numbed, stiff limbs would allow. He watched the mainsail being hoisted, and noticed that the gaff was pulled little more than three-quarters way up the mast.

"Thank God!" he muttered, "they see that they must tie down some reefs. I'll do them yet."

He reached the pier. Realising that the water was still rough, he turned from the Major's punt and went along the beach to Jamesy O'Flaherty's curragh. He launched it and took the oars. There was no need for him to row. The wind drifted him rapidly from the shore. Sir Giles and Langton were tying down reef-points in the flapping mainsail of the Aureole and did not see him. He headed the curragh for the Granuaile and climbed on to the steamer's deck. Everybody on board was asleep. As the readiest way of attracting attention Meldon began to ring the bell which hung amidships and to shout "Fire!" at the top of his voice.

A couple of sailors ran on deck and stood staring at him. Others followed them and began to ask questions. Meldon continued shouting "Fire!" and ringing the bell. He saw that Sir Giles had stopped tying reef-points and was hoisting the sail as quickly as he could. The Chief Secretary emerged in his pyjamas. Father Mulcrone followed him in a white cotton night-shirt and a pair of trousers.

"What's on fire?" said Mr. Willoughby.

"Nothing," said Meldon. "I wanted to wake you up, that's all. Send a boat at once and stop that yacht sailing."

"Why?"

Meldon's mind worked quickly. He realised that long before he could tell the story of the treasure and reply to all the questions which would necessarily be asked, Sir Giles would have got off. Already he could see that the Aureole's jib was being hoisted.

"Never mind why," he said. "Do it."

"I can't possibly," said Mr. Willoughby, "send a boat to capture a gentleman's yacht without rhyme or reason. It would, I imagine, amount to an act of piracy on the high seas. I'd do a good deal for you, Mr. Meldon; but, after all, I have to recollect that I am Chief Secretary for Ireland. Just fancy—the House of Commons—the newspapers——"

Meldon turned without listening to the end of the apology. He appealed to the crew of the Granuaile.

"Will any of you lower a boat and come with me?"

The men hung back, some grinning, some open-mouthed in blank astonishment. One glance at them convinced Meldon of the hopelessness of his appeal. He looked round him and caught sight of Father Mulcrone.

"Come along, Father Mulcrone. You're the only man in the whole crowd. Hop into the curragh as quick as you can."

"Give me time to tuck my night-shirt into my trousers and I'm with you," said the priest.

He crossed the deck and dropped into the curragh. Meldon followed him. Mr. Willoughby peered over the bulwarks of the Granuaile.

"Stop!" he shouted. "Wait! Hold on!"

The curragh shot out from the steamer's side.

"It's no good," said Mr. Willoughby, "they're off. I have always heard that the clergy did queer things here in the West of Ireland, but I'm hanged if the other fellows don't seem as anxious to get off as the priest and the parson are to catch them."

Sir Giles and Langton, one at each side of the winch in the bow of the Aureole, were working with frenzied vigour to get the anchor up.

"He can't cut the cable," said Meldon to the priest. "Thank God, it's chain; the only thing on board the Aureole that isn't absolutely rotten."

"Pull away," said Father Mulcrone. "She's over her anchor now. He'll have it off the bottom in a minute."

Meldon pulled hard.

"He has it," said the priest. "Now he's hauling the jib across her to get her head round. Shove the stern of the curragh in, and I'll grab her before she gets way on."

The Aureole's head paid slowly round and the mainsail began to draw. In obedience to a violent tug at the oars the curragh spun round and her stern struck the yacht amidships. Father Mulcrone gripped the weather bulwarks with both hands. The curragh swung alongside and was dragged stern first through the water as the yacht gathered way. Sir Giles left the tiller, sprang across the deck and began hammering at the priest's hands with his clenched fists.

"Let go," he yelled; "let go."

He stood up and kicked at the priest's hands. Then he trampled on them, still yelling, "Let go." Father Mulcrone held on. Sir Giles kicked at his face, holding on to the weather runner to preserve his balance.

"Let go or I'll brain you."

Father Mulcrone held on. He was not the kind of man who lets go. Mr. Willoughby had discovered this about him when dealing with the question of seed potatoes for Inishmore. Meldon scrambled on board the yacht. He came on Sir Giles from behind, seized him by the shoulders, swung him round, rushed him across the sharply sloping deck, and flung him overboard.

"Let go now," he shouted to Father Mulcrone, "and pick up the fellow I've pitched into the sea. He may be able to swim or he may not. In any case you'd better look after him. I'll manage the other man and the yacht."

Langton sat dazed and helpless in the cockpit, holding the end of the mainsheet in his hand. Meldon snatched it from him and seized the tiller.

"Loose the jib sheet," he shouted, "and let me get her sailing."

Langton did not stir. Meldon dropped the tiller, ran forward and loosened the sheet himself. Then he got the yacht under command and set her racing to windward across the bay.

"If you stir hand or foot," he said to Langton, "I'll pitch you into the sea. I don't believe you can swim, whatever Sir Giles can do. Ready about now, and mind yourself."

The yacht swung round and flew off on the new tack. The half-reefed mainsail bellied ridiculously. The water rushed green along the deck and foamed over the coaming of the cockpit. Meldon, a light of triumph on his face, stood up and looked round him.

Father Mulcrone had Sir Giles in tow behind the curragh and was pulling for the shore. It is difficult to get a swimmer into any small boat. It is totally impossible to get one into a canvas curragh. The priest had gone as near rescuing Sir Giles as was possible under the circumstances. A boat was lowered hastily from the Granuaile and the Chief Secretary, still in his pyjamas, got into her. She was pulled towards the curragh. A small group of islanders, men and women, stood on the end of the pier. Major Kent was awake and watched the exciting scene from the deck of the Spindrift. The Aureole ran under her lee. Meldon threw his boat up into the wind and hailed the Major.

"Hullo! Everything's all right. I've got the treasure safe here. I always said I would and I have. I'll send Father Mulcrone off for you as soon as he's done rescuing Sir Giles."

The Granuaile's boat reached the curragh. Sir Giles, spluttering sea-water and curses, was hauled on board. Meldon, having got the Aureole on the third tack, flew past them and shouted—

"I say, Father Mulcrone, just put back to the Spindrift and bring Major Kent ashore. It's a pity for him to be missing all the fun."

A little group of men came down the hill towards the pier. Among them, supported by his son-in-law and a nephew, was old Thomas O'Flaherty Pat. In front of him, dancing with delight and excitement, her hair blown wild with the wind, went Mary Kate.

Meldon's tacks became shorter as he neared the land. The men on the pier cheered him each time he passed them. He waved his hand in response, and, when that seemed an inadequate acknowledgment of the enthusiasm, took Langton's cap and waved it. The Granuaile's boat reached the pier and was greeted with more cheers. The people of Inishgowlan, not yet aware of what had happened, were ready to cheer anybody. The Chief Secretary, stepping daintily, for he was barefooted, went on shore. Sir Giles, dripping and dismal, followed him. Meldon made his last tack and beached the Aureole close alongside the pier. The islanders and the men from the Granuaile's boat ran to him with offers of help. Meldon gripped Langton by the collar of the coat and lifted him over the side of the yacht into the water.

"Take him," he said, "and stand him up on the pier beside the other blackguard."

He stepped over the side himself.

"I expect the boat has a hole in her," he said to three of the men who still waited. "You had better get the anchor on shore and make it fast. If she goes adrift on us now, she'll sink."

He waded ashore, went to the pier and greeted Mr. Willoughby.

"Sorry I hustled you this morning," he said. "It seemed the only thing to do at the time."

"I don't mind being hustled in the least," said Mr. Willoughby. "Living the kind of quiet, monotonous life a Chief Secretary does live, I'm sure a hustle now and then is good for me."

"It's very kind of you to say so. Sure you don't mind coming ashore in your pyjamas?"

"Not a bit. I rather enjoy it for a change. But I'd greatly like to know what this is all about."

"I never," said Meldon, "saw pyjamas just that particular shade of pink before. Where do you get them?"

"They're Irish manufacture, if that's what you're driving at. I daren't wear anything else even at night. But you haven't told me yet——"

"Oh, that's a long story."

"I'm sure it must be. Perhaps you'd rather put off telling it till after breakfast?"

"Not at all," said Meldon. "It's not so long as that. Oh, here's Father Mulcrone. Didn't you get the Major?"

"He wouldn't come ashore," said Father Mulcrone. "He didn't seem to care about meeting the Chief Secretary."

"Oh, the geological survey, I suppose," said Meldon. "That's all over and done with; isn't it, Mr. Willoughby?"

"Quite," said Mr. Willoughby. "It lies buried in a remote past. Things move so rapidly on this island that the affairs of yesterday are prehistoric before we are dressed this morning. Besides, a geological survey is nothing compared to the—the pragmatist method by which you roused us from our berths. Why did you give us the idea that something was on fire?"

"Because I wanted you to prevent Sir Giles Buckley from sailing off in the Aureole."

"I gathered that from the way you spoke at the time. But please tell me why you wanted to stop him."

Meldon glanced at the dripping Sir Giles. He was most unwilling to tell the story of the gold which lay in the Aureoles cabin. He wondered whether Sir Giles could be counted on to back up a version of the morning's adventure in which no mention of the treasure appeared.

"You may not know that that boat"—he indicated the Aureole with his thumb—"is rotten. Everything in her is rotten except the anchor chain."

"Yes?" said Mr. Willoughby.

"Well," said Meldon, "that explains what you want to know, doesn't it?"

"Not quite. I'm stupid, I suppose; but as a matter of fact it doesn't explain anything to me."

"Don't you see that if Sir Giles had gone to sea in a rotten boat with the wind that's blowing to-day, he'd have been drowned to a certainty?"

"Oh," said Mr. Willoughby, "you wanted to save him from drowning."

"Him and his friend."

"But, as well as I could make out, you flung him into the sea."

"Quite so," said Meldon. "There wasn't anything else to do. Was there, Father Mulcrone?"

"There was not," said the priest. "The man was dancing on my knuckles and trying to kick my face."

"I suppose he must have very much wanted to be drowned," said Mr. Willoughby.

"Well, I wouldn't go as far as that," said Meldon. "But there's no use taking up these speculative questions. Where's Higginbotham?"

"He must be asleep still," said Mr. Willoughby.

"Dear me," said Meldon; "that's a pity now. Higginbotham is just the man who might have helped to clear things up."

"I don't know if it interests any of you"—it was Sir Giles Buckley who spoke—"but you're listening to a pack of damned lies."

"I wish," said Meldon, "that you'd try and break yourself of that habit of swearing, Sir Giles. I think I've mentioned it to you before."

"Of course," said Mr. Willoughby, "it's no business of mine. Still, I should like very much to understand what all this fuss has been about. Perhaps, Father Mulcrone, you may be able to throw a little light on it."

"Not a bit," said the priest. "All I know is that the gentleman there who seems to be catching his death of cold——"

"So am I, for that matter," said Mr. Willoughby.

"I see," said the priest, "that the men have come up from your boat, Mr. Meldon. They seem rather angry about something. Old Thomas O'Flaherty is talking to them hot and strong and he's pointing this way. Perhaps we'd better go somewhere else before entering on an explanation."

"Right," said Meldon. "Higginbotham's tin house is handy. Let's go there. It would do Higginbotham good to be made to get out of bed."

"I should prefer the Granuaile myself," said Mr. Willoughby. "I'd like to get into a suit of clothes."

"Right," said Meldon. "It's all the same to me. In fact, of the two I rather prefer the Granuaile. I don't expect Higginbotham could rise to much in the way of breakfast for this party. We'd better take Sir Giles and Langton with us. Those fellows at the other end of the pier are looking rather nasty, and I happen to know that I'm not the man they want to kill."

"It can't be me," said Mr. Willoughby.

"It is not you," said Meldon. "Nor it's not Father Mulcrone. It's Sir Giles. That's the reason I said we ought to take him with us. But before we start I think you should make the men a speech, Mr. Willoughby. It might quiet them down."

"A speech! Good gracious! What about?"

"Oh, anything. The University question, or the intentions of the Government about the land, or Devolution. Yes, Devolution would be the proper thing. It would turn their minds away from Sir Giles and Langton. Try them with Devolution."

"Get into the boat," said Mr. Willoughby. "I can't stand on this pier and make a speech in my pyjamas."

"No? Perhaps not. Well, you have a go at them, Father Mulcrone. You won't? I suppose we'd better not turn on Sir Giles. He might make them more irritable. I'll have to do it myself, though I must say it's rather hard on me. I'm the one of the party who has worked hardest during the night. I can't tell you how trying it is to have to roll about in the dark with your hands and feet tied."

The Chief Secretary and Father Mulcrone remonstrated with him vigorously. He yielded to them so far as to forbear making a speech, but he insisted on having a word in private with Mary Kate.

Taking the child out of earshot, he said to her—

"Mary Kate, go you to your grandda and tell him this from me: If there's anything that belongs to him in that yacht let him get it out of her and away with it before we come on shore again. Do you understand me now?"

Mary Kate nodded, grinning. Meldon joined Mr. Willoughby and Father Mulcrone in the Granuaile's boat. Sir Giles and Langton eyed the men who were standing in a group at the far end of the pier and then followed Meldon.

"You're right to come with us," said Meldon. "Old Thomas O'Flaherty is looking uncommon wicked, and you can't altogether blame him. He's working the rest of them up. I don't think that Inishgowlan will be exactly a safe island for you to picnic on, Sir Giles; not for a few weeks anyhow."

"I'm becoming more and more curious," said Mr. Willoughby. "I want a key to the mysteries which surround me. I'm a little anxious, too. If ever we get back to civilisation we may find ourselves in a police-court. Don't mix me up in anything criminal if you can help it, Mr. Meldon. Consider my position as Chief Secretary."

"You're pledged," said Father Mulcrone with a grin, "to the preservation of law and order in Ireland."

"It's all right," said Meldon. "I'll keep your name out of the business as far as I can. Father Mulcrone and I will take whatever blame there is."

"I won't take any blame," said the priest. "I know nothing about what's going on, either good or bad."

"You'll have to," said Meldon, "whether you like it or not. It's your parish, so of course you're responsible if anything goes wrong."

CHAPTER XXI

"ICOULD do with a wash," said Meldon when the party reached the Granuaile.

"You shall have it," said Mr. Willoughby. "You shall have my bath."

"Oh, don't bother about a bath. There's no use running into extremes. I'm a moderate man in every way, politically and otherwise."

"Better have the bath."

"All right, then, I will. But if I do, somebody'll have to go over to the Spindrift and get me another suit of clothes. Father Mulcrone, perhaps you wouldn't mind "

"I'll send a boat," said Mr. Willoughby. "Father Mulcrone wants to dress like the rest of us."

"All right," said Meldon. "I don't care who goes. But I wouldn't like to get into these things again if once I took them off. By the way, have you any sticking-plaster?"

"I think I have a bit in my dressing-case," said Mr. Willoughby.

"I'll want a good bit—yards of it, I expect. I'm not sure till I get my clothes off, but I fancy there are very few parts of me just this minute with the skin on."

"I'll send you what I have. And now, Sir Giles, I must get a dry suit of clothes for you."

In about half an hour the party reassembled for breakfast. Mr. Willoughby made another appeal for an explanation of the morning's events.

"I told you my story," said Meldon, "and Sir Giles contradicted me flat—not that I mind being contradicted. I'm accustomed to it. But I think it's his turn to speak now. Anyway I want to eat my breakfast."

Sir Giles was hot eating heartily, but he seemed unwilling to speak.

"You hinted," said Mr. Willoughby to Sir Giles, "that the account which Mr. Meldon gave us of his actions was—er—perhaps exaggerated."

"'Damned lies' was his expression," said Meldon. "I don't know if that's your idea of a hint that I exaggerated."

"You appeared to think," said Mr. Willoughby, "that Mr. Meldon omitted from his statement some points of interest."

Meldon, whose mouth was full, got into difficulties in suppressing a laugh. Sir Giles stared sulkily at Mr. Willoughby.

"Come, now," said Father Mulcrone, "let's have your story. You'll feel easier when it's off your mind."

"I'm not in your confessional," said Sir Giles, "and I'm damned if I'll speak unless I choose."

"Come, gentlemen," said Mr. Willoughby, "we needn't any of us lose our tempers. I think, Sir Giles, that you are bound either to substantiate or withdraw the very offensive statement that you made on the pier this morning. You called Mr. Meldon a liar."

"So far as I'm concerned," said Meldon, "I don't mind that in the least. I'm quite accustomed to it. There's hardly a man on this island who hasn't called me a liar. I quite recognise that Sir Giles's temper wasn't altogether under control when he spoke. He has a hot temper. I've had to speak to him about it before."

"I suppose that you think it good fun," said Sir Giles, "to sit there bating me and setting that cursed curate on to sling insults at me. But I've stood all I'm going to stand of it. I'll stay here no longer. Come, Langton."

The whole party, with the exception of Meldon, stood up.

"Don't go away like this," said Mr. Willoughby to Sir Giles. "Sit down again and talk things over. I am sure we can come to some understanding if we can only find out what all this trouble is about."

"Make your mind easy," said Meldon, "he can't go just yet."

"Can't go!" said Sir Giles furiously. "Why not? Who's going to stop me? So far as I know, nobody has a warrant out for my arrest."

"You can't go yet," said Meldon, "because you've got on the Chief Secretary's Sunday clothes."

Father Mulcrone burst into a loud laugh.

"That's easily remedied," said Sir Giles. "I'll change."

"Please don't worry about the clothes," said Mr. Willoughby. "You're welcome to them. I wouldn't like you to put on your own things yet. They can't be dry."

"Lend him your pink pyjamas," said Meldon.

For a moment it seemed likely that Sir Giles would make a violent assault on Meldon. His hands twitched. His face was deeply flushed. But he restrained himself and went into the cabin where his own clothes lay.

"This is an extraordinary business," said Mr. Willoughby. "Surely, Mr. Meldon, you'll tell me what it all means."

"He can't go far," said Meldon. "I'm prepared to bet my best hat that there's a hole in the bottom of the Aureole and the Major won't take him in the Spindrift."

"I don't like it at all," said Mr. Willoughby plaintively. "I hate being kept in the dark."

He took Father Mulcrone aside and spoke to him.

"What do you advise?" he said. "What do you think of all this?"

"I think," said the priest, "that you and I had better go ashore with Sir Giles and the other man. I expect the people on the island know the ins and outs of the whole story by this time, and I'll be able to get it from some of them. There's been some rough work during the night. You saw the state Mr. Meldon was in when he came on board. I expect that Sir Giles, whoever he may be, has been up to some mischief. I don't like that man."

"Still, it's an awkward affair. It seems to me that we're aiding and abetting Mr. Meldon in robbery and something like an attempt at murder. He threw Sir Giles into the sea, you know."

"I expect Mr. Meldon's all right. But we can't say anything till we get on shore and hear the whole story."

Mr. Willoughby turned to Meldon.

"Father Mulcrone and I," he said, "have decided to go—— Dear me, he's fast asleep!"

Meldon had fallen forward. His head lay among the crumbs beside his plate on the breakfast-table. His arms sprawled among the cups and dishes. A half-smoked cigar burned a hole in the tablecloth. Meldon slumbered profoundly.

"He's done up," said Father Mulcrone. "Let the poor fellow have his sleep out."

"We'll make him more comfortable anyhow."

Meldon lay like a log while they lifted him, laid him down, and put a cushion under his head. Sir Giles Buckley and Langton entered the cabin.

"Hush!" said Father Mulcrone, pointing to Meldon. "Don't wake him."

Sir Giles spoke in a tone likely to waken any sleeper.

"Let me have a boat at once. I demand to be put on shore."

"Will you whisht?" said the priest. "Can't you see the man's asleep?"

"I warn you that if you attempt to detain me I shall take an action against you for illegal imprisonment."

"Nobody has the least intention of detaining you," said Mr. Willoughby. "The boat which brought us on board is still alongside."

He led the way on deck, and the four men got into the boat.

"You're not bringing the curate with you, then?" said Sir Giles.

"Mr. Meldon," said the Chief Secretary, "is asleep, as you saw for yourselves."

"It's a good job he doesn't talk in his sleep. He never stops when he's awake."

"He gave you credit for a hot temper," said Father Mulcrone. "I should call it a sulky temper if I was giving my opinion."

Mr. Willoughby interfered as peacemaker. The priest did not like Sir Giles, and was at no pains to conceal his feelings. Without the good offices of Mr. Willoughby Sir Giles might easily have come to dislike Father Mulcrone as heartily as he did Meldon.

CHAPTER XXII

TWO hours later Mr. Willoughby and Father Mulcrone returned to the Granuaile. The Chief Secretary's face wore an expression of delight, tempered by anxiety. Father Mulcrone was jubilant and triumphant. They descended at once to the cabin where Meldon still slept on the sofa. Father Mulcrone shook him vigorously.

"Mr. Meldon, wake up; wake up at once."

Meldon opened his eyes, and saw the Chief Secretary and the priest standing over him.

"Hullo!" he said. "I believe I must have had a nap. Breakfast has been cleared away, I see. I wonder what they did with my cigar. I had a cigar, I know, and I don't believe I finished it."

"Here's the box," said Mr. Willoughby, "take another."

"Thanks, I will. Where are Sir Giles and Langton? They were here at breakfast, weren't they?"

"They're on shore," said Mr. Willoughby.

"Oh, are they? They haven't gone off in the Aureole by any chance?"

The priest smiled. "They have not," he said.

"I told you they wouldn't—couldn't, in fact. Nobody but me knows how rotten that boat is and what a little bump would knock a hole in her."

"We've been on shore," said Mr. Willoughby.

"Have you? Pleasant spot that island. I wonder more people don't come here in the summer."

"We heard the whole story," said Mr. Willoughby, "and we both want to congratulate you on the way you behaved."

"Now, who did you hear it from?"

"Well, partly from Thomas O'Flaherty and——"

"I didn't think the old boy was such a fool."

"And partly," went on Mr. Willoughby, "from a little girl."

"Mary Kate O'Flaherty," said the priest.

"I thought better of Mary Kate," said Meldon. "She ought to have had a keener eye to her own interest than to tell that story. I suppose you've grabbed the treasure in the name of the Government."

"He has not, then," said Father Mulcrone grinning.

"No," said Mr. Willoughby. "There was no treasure to grab. At least we couldn't find any. To put the matter plainly, the Aureole has been looted."

"That's all right," said Meldon. "I wouldn't have liked to see poor old Thomas O'Flaherty Pat robbed by the Government any more than by Sir Giles. But how did you get the story? As far as I know Thomas O'Flaherty he's not the sort of man to talk more than he need, and I never got more than half a dozen words and a grin out of Mary Kate at one time."

"The way of it was this," said Father Mulcrone. "No sooner did Sir Giles and Langton leave us to go down to the Aureole than all the children on the island, seven or eight of them, began to boo at them and throw stones. Mary Kate O'Flaherty was at the head of the crowd."

"She would," said Meldon. "I always said she was a high-spirited little thing besides being intelligent. I expect, now, she hit them with as many as three out of every four stones she threw."

"I shouldn't wonder," said the priest. "Anyhow, Sir Giles lost his temper."

"He's always doing that. I hope he didn't hurt Mary Kate in any way or use language that a little girl oughtn't to listen to."

"The language," said Mr. Willoughby, "so far as I could hear it—I was some way off—was pretty bad. But he didn't do the children any bodily harm."

"It wasn't for want of wishing to if he didn't," said the priest. "He looked as if he'd have been glad to skin the lot of them alive and pickle them afterwards."

"They ran for their lives, I suppose?"

"No, then, they did not. But the fathers and the mothers of them came at Sir Giles with scythes and pitchforks and hayrakes and all sorts. It was then we thought we'd better interfere. Well, I'm not a coward exactly. You'll give me credit for that. But I give you my word I didn't fancy running into that crowd at all. I could have faced the men right enough, but the women——! Did ever you notice, Mr. Meldon, that a woman when she gets her blood up is twice as reckless as any man? She doesn't care who she hits or where she hits him. I tell you I thought twice about facing the women. But the Chief Secretary is a hero, a regular hero."

"It was nothing," said Mr. Willoughby modestly. "I'm accustomed to women. A Cabinet Minister must be nowadays. If he didn't get hardened to it he would be dead in a year."

"Anyway you went for them like an hero," said Father Mulcrone. "I never admired a man more."

"I'll tell you what it is," said Meldon to the priest, "you ought to let him off those seed potatoes as a token of your respect and esteem."

"I will," said the priest. "I'll do that. I wish you'd seen young Mrs. O'Flaherty brandishing a flail and looking as if she'd skelp an archbishop if he came her way."

"Had she Michael Pat with her?"

"She had not."

"Well, if nobody was left at home to mind Michael Pat I expect the old woman's dead by now. But that can't be helped. Go on with the story."

"We got them quietened down after a bit," said Father Mulcrone, "and then Mr. Willoughby made them a short speech."

"Was it Devolution, land, or universities?" asked Meldon.

"I can't for the moment recollect which it was, but I know it was a soothing sort of speech," said Mr. Willoughby.

"I expect it was Devolution, then," said Meldon, "not that it matters, of course, so long as you pacified the people. But I'd like to know where Higginbotham was all the while. You don't mean to tell me he slept through a battle of that kind, and it raging in front of his hall door."

"I understand," said Mr. Willoughby, "that the people locked Mr. Higginbotham into his hut earlier in the day. He wasn't able to do anything except give us good advice through the window."

"The fact is," said Father Mulcrone, "that when they started to pillage your yacht——"

"I expect Thomas O'Flaherty Pat was in the thick of that work," said Meldon.

"He might," said the priest. "Anyhow, when they started at the yacht—that was while we were at breakfast on board here—Mr. Higginbotham came out of his hut and tried to stop them. Of course they weren't going to put up with any interference from him. They ran him back into the hut and locked him up."

"They didn't hurt him," said Mr. Willoughby. "They seem rather to like Higginbotham."

"Are you sure Mary Kate didn't fling a stone at him?" said Meldon.

"Not that I heard of."

"I shouldn't have wondered a bit if she had. She had a grudge against him on account of a misunderstanding about some sugar-candy, and she might have considered it a good opportunity of paying him out. However, you say she didn't, so I suppose that's all right. Go on with the story. You left off just where you had made a soothing speech."

"After that," said Mr. Willoughby, "everybody began to talk at once. I imagine that most of them spoke in Irish. I couldn't understand a word anybody said. Fortunately, Father Mulcrone kept his head. He got old O'Flaherty away from the crowd and dragged the truth out of him somehow. Then he took the little girl and got the rest of the story out of her. There's just one thing we can't any of us understand, and that is how you managed to get down the hill from the old man's house to the place where the child found you."

"Oh, that was simple enough. I rolled."

"Rolled!"

"Yes. Rolled. That's the reason I asked you for sticking-plaster this morning. I haven't rolled as much for years and years, and it's a kind of exercise that requires preliminary training. But what have you done with Sir Giles and Langton? If you've left them unprotected on the island Mary Kate will have at them again and Michael Pat's mother will back her up. She has it in for Sir Giles ever since the day he wouldn't give the bottle to the old woman."

"What bottle?" asked Mr. Willoughby. "I heard nothing about a bottle. It seems to me that this affair is even more complicated than I thought. You alluded casually a moment ago to sugar-candy, and now you speak of a bottle."

"The sugar-candy and the bottle are side-issues. I strongly recommend you not to go into them at all. You'll gain nothing by it if you do, and you'll get yourself confused. But you haven't told me what you did with Sir Giles."

"He's quite safe. We locked him and Mr. Langton into Higginbotham's hut. It was Father Mulcrone's suggestion."

"I hope you let Higginbotham out first."

"Oh, yes. We let him out. In fact, we left him on guard outside the door."

"And did O'Flaherty get his treasure back safe?"

"I didn't get any very definite information about the treasure," said Mr. Willoughby.

"If you ask me," said Father Mulcrone, "I should say that every man on the island has his own whack of that treasure by this time. If half old O'Flaherty says is true, they have money enough among them now to buy out the island without asking a penny from the Board."

"Then poor Higginbotham will be out of his job. I'm sorry for Higginbotham. I intended to give him a trifle if I got the treasure, to make up for not taking him entirely into my confidence at the start, and on account of the tuberculosis business."

"That, I suppose, is another side-issue," said Mr. Willoughby, "and perhaps of a pragmatist kind."

"It is," said Meldon with a grin. "It's both. But I think you might stop rubbing that pragmatist philosophy into me now. It's not my philosophy, you know, any more than it's yours. I'm not continually throwing it in your teeth that you're a politician, although you are. Why can't you let the dead past bury its dead? It's not good form to be for ever dragging skeletons out of cupboards. I see that I've forgotten to wind up my watch and it's stopped. Would you mind telling me what time it is?"

"It's half-past twelve."

"I dare say you'll be lunching early to-day. I may as well stay where I am till after that. Then I'll ask you to have me rowed across to the Spindrift. The Major will be getting anxious about me if I stay away too long. In fact, I expect he's rather worried now. I wonder if you'd mind going over to him, Father Mulcrone, and reassuring him a bit. He'll be delighted to see you. You'll get sardines and biscuits for lunch. He hadn't any bread when I left him, and I don't see how he can have got any since."

"Take a loaf with you if you go," said Mr. Willoughby, "and the remains of the ham we had at breakfast"

"Are you sure we can spare the ham?" said Meldon. "It was a very good ham."

"There's another on board," said Mr. Willoughby.

"Very well, then, Father Mulcrone, take the loaf and the ham and give them to him with the Chief Secretary's compliments. That will reassure him. As you will be spending some time with him, you may as well tell him the whole story. It'll give you something to talk about. If you don't tell him I shall have to, and I hate telling stories to the Major."

"Isn't he interested in stories?" said Mr. Willoughby.

"He's too interested," said Meldon. "He keeps on asking questions, questions about details; and any one who has ever told a story knows that the details won't always bear working out. It's awfully good of you, Father Mulcrone, going like this just to oblige me. You're sure you don't mind?"

"Not a bit," said the priest. "I shall enjoy telling the story, as much as I know of it."

"You're doing a kind act," said Meldon. "The Major's a lonely man at the best of times, and he's been shut up on the Spindrift ever since the Granuaile came into the bay."

"Mr. Meldon," said the Chief Secretary after the priest had left them, "I should like to say that I think you behaved uncommonly——"

"Oh, don't start that," said Meldon. "You wouldn't expect me to join in robbing old Thomas O'Flaherty Pat, would you? Besides, if I'd wanted to itself I couldn't have done it. They didn't give me a chance. Sir Giles knocked me on the head without any preliminary negotiations."

"It isn't simply about last night's work that I wanted to speak. The fact is that I've got something rather important to say to you, and I'm very glad of this opportunity of speaking privately."

"Is it the geological survey again?"

"No, no, not that"

"It can't be the tuberculosis business, or the national school. Surely to goodness old O'Flaherty hasn't raked up the Athalonia miserabilis?"

"It's nothing of that sort. It's something quite different. Just before I left Dublin I had a letter from my friend Lord Cumberley."

"I don't know him," said Meldon. "Is he an Irish peer?"

"No. He's an Englishman."

"That wouldn't prevent his being an Irish peer."

"Do listen to me," said Mr. Willoughby. "What I have to say is really rather important, and I can't get on with it if you keep interrupting me."

"Go ahead," said Meldon. "I won't open my lips till you give me leave."

"Lord Cumberley is a man with a large property in Nottinghamshire and he is the patron of several livings there. One of them is now vacant, and he writes to me to know if I can recommend a man to him whom he might nominate. He wants an Irishman because he thinks that only the Irish Church now produces genuine evangelicals." Mr. Willoughby paused.

"Am I to say anything yet?" asked Meldon.

"Perhaps not yet. Let me tell you a little more. The value of this particular living has been largely increased lately by the opening of a coal mine. It used to be a quiet country parish. Now it's becoming a small town, a town inhabited by colliers. I understand that from an ecclesiastical point of view colliers are not pleasant parishioners. Lord Cumberley writes that he wants an energetic man, not thin-skinned, resourceful, determined, and capable of making some impression on a rather rough class of people. From what I've seen of you since I came to Inishgowlan I think you'd suit the work very well. By the way, are you married?"

"Not at present, but I have a little girl—Gladys Muriel is her name—who is engaged to be married to me. I have her photograph in my coat pocket. I'll just get it. Where is my coat?"

"Don't trouble to get it. Lord Cumberley is anxious to get a married man; but the lady's personal appearance is not of any importance."

"It is to me," said Meldon, "and I think you'd like to see the photo."

"I should. But not just now. Would you mind telling me, are you an evangelical?"

"Now, that," said Meldon, "is a difficult question. I may say at once that I'm not a ritualist; but it doesn't quite follow that I'm what your friend would call an evangelical. Some time ago there was rather a row about a sermon I preached."

"I can quite understand that there might be. In fact, I'm surprised if there's only been one row."

"A dear old sheep went bleating to the bishop—"

"Had you been preaching in its field?"

"I was speaking figuratively," said Meldon severely. "When I said a sheep I meant an elderly country gentleman. You know what they are, Mr. Willoughby. Excellent old fellows, every one of them, with a kind of Mrs. Hemans' way of looking at things."

"I've come across them at times," said Mr. Willoughby. "They form an interesting class. But why do you speak of them as sheep? Is it the prevailing type of countenance which suggests the comparison?"

"Partly, and partly their habit of following each other through gaps. Also they're all so respectable, and they let themselves be driven in flocks by people who bark at them. But I needn't go on working out the idea. If your friend, Lord Cumberley, is the kind of man who expects a parson always, to say precisely the usual thing he'd better not get me into one of his parishes."

"I respect your wish to make your position clear," said Mr. Willoughby. "How did the—the bleat to the bishop end?"

"The bishop was asked to excommunicate me, or haul me up before all the rest of the bishops, or something, that's all."

"But what happened?"

"Nothing happened. Father Mulcrone may say what he likes about bishops, but they aren't absolute fools."

"If nothing happened, I suppose we may take it that the incident is of no real importance?"

"Not the least bit in the world. Only, if Lord Cumberley happens, as I said before, to be that kind of man, there might be unpleasantness—unpleasantness for him, I mean. I shan't mind."

"I think we may risk it," said Mr. Willoughby. "He never goes near the parish himself. He lives miles away and detests the place."

"Goodbye," said Meldon. "I think I must be getting back to the Spindrift at once."

"But you said you would stay for luncheon."

"Can't possibly. If we're to get home to-night we must start at once."

"But need you get home to-night?"

"Of course I must. I have to telegraph to my little girl to tell her to get ready to be married at once. If Lord Cumberley insists on a married man there's no time to be lost."

"But I'm sure Lord Cumberley wouldn't wish to hurry Miss—Miss Gladys Muriel in any way."

"Oh, she won't mind. She's just as keen on getting married as I am. By the way, now that the Aureole's wrecked, what's going to happen to Sir Giles and Euseby Langton? You can't leave them here marooned on the island. It would be rough on Higginbotham."

"I can't well take them in the Granuaile," said the Chief Secretary. "I wonder if Father Mulcrone would keep them on Inishmore till I send off a hooker for them from the mainland?"

"I should think not. They wouldn't get on with him a bit, and I don't think he likes them. If you've no other plans for disposing of them I'll persuade Major Kent to bring them back in the Spindrift."

"But won't that be rather unpleasant for you and Major Kent?"

"It will. But I'd put up with more than that to do you a good turn. I owe it to you on account of the parish. And you are in rather a hole about those two thieves, aren't you?"

"I suppose I am, though I confess the difficulty hadn't occurred to me till you suggested it. I'm greatly obliged to you for helping me out."

"Don't mention it. Apart altogether from my feelings of gratitude to you personally, I enjoy helping people out of difficulties. If ever you find yourself in any kind of fix——"

"I'm never out of a fix," said Mr. Willoughby. "The position of Chief Secretary for Ireland is one which involves a man in a continual series of fixes."

"Well," said Meldon, "you've nothing to do when you're stuck but wire to me. I'll go to you at once. But I haven't time to go into any more of your difficulties just now. I must be off at once."

"I'm inclined to think," said Mr. Willoughby meditatively, "that you ought to be Chief Secretary and let me go to Lord Cumberley's parish. You would get on admirably."

"I'm sure I should. But how would you suit the parish?"

"I'm afraid I should be a failure."

"That's it. We can't risk that. A man at your time of life, with a reputation to keep up, can't run the risk of coming a bad cropper. It will be better to leave things as they are. You stick to Ireland. I'll go and hammer the fear of God into those colliers."

CHAPTER XXIII

TWO years later Major Kent took another cruise in the Spindrift, this time with a hired man to assist him in managing the boat. He anchored for an hour in the bay at Inishgowlan, and then, not feeling inclined to go ashore alone, sailed on to Inishmore. He found Father Mulcrone in the presbytery and invited him to spend the evening in the cabin of the Spindrift. There had been a change of government some months before, and Mr. Willoughby had left Ireland. The priest lamented his loss.

"The new man's not his equal," he said. "I don't say but what he means well. Only it's my belief that he'll never understand this country. I met him when he was round seeing the West. I told him the way the treasure was found on Inishgowlan, and what do you think he said to me?"

"I don't know," said the Major. "What was it?"

"He said, 'That's a good story, Father Mulcrone.' Now that was as much as to tell me to my face that the story wasn't one an honest man would take his oath to in a court of justice. There's unbelief for you! A fellow that starts off by thinking himself clever enough to know what's true and what isn't will do no good in Ireland. A simple-hearted, innocent kind of a man has a better chance."

"One like Higginbotham?" said the Major.

"I hear he's high up now, earning a good salary. He deserves it. How's Mr. Meldon getting along with his parish?"

"I was over there last summer," said the Major. "I was standing godfather to the baby. She had another godfather, too, which is unusual with a girl. It was Mr. Willoughby stood along with me."

"And what did they call her?"

"Cecily May was the name the mother chose."

"But what about the parish? I heard the men in it were a rough lot and disrespectful to their clergy."

"They're cured of that now. There was a man there, a sort of leader among the colliers, who set up to be an agnostic or something of that kind, and was for ever talking to the rest of them about the folly of believing what the clergy said."

"A fellow like that would turn the milk with his blasphemies. I've heard of such."

"Well, the Rev. J. J. used to go to that man's house two evenings in the week and argue with him. The rest of the people took to coming to listen until they had to move into the schoolroom to accommodate the congregation. By the time I got over there that agnostic was singing in the choir with a surplice on him."

"He was convinced in the end, then?"

"I'm not sure that he was convinced. I was talking to him one day and he told me, privately, that he wasn't any more persuaded than ever he was. He said he'd lost his taste for arguing. My own belief is that the man was cowed, and that if J. J. had wanted him to swear publicly to the truth of all the confessions of faith of all the Churches in Christendom he'd have done it for fear of having to argue any more. And he wasn't the only man in the place that changed his way of living. There was more than one that gave up beating his wife on account of the amount of talk he got from J. J. whenever he was caught at it. The very worst of them mended their language. You'd see a man looking round him and up and down the road before he'd venture on a simple 'damn.' I needn't tell you, Father Mulcrone, that the necessity for that sort of precaution takes all the pleasure out of a swear. And as for drink——"

"What did he do about the drink? I've had my own trouble over that. Since ever the people of Inishgowlan got the gold out of the yacht I've been administering the temperance pledge to them in batches of half a dozen at a time, and often to the same lot twice in six months. I'd like to hear what Mr. Meldon did about the drink."

"I don't quite know how he did it," said the Major, "but I'm told that whenever a man in that parish feels that he must have a burst he goes off somewhere else and doesn't come back till there isn't a sign left on him of what he's been doing. And even so he's generally made to feel sorry for himself."

"I'd like to have a talk with Mr. Meldon about the way he manages."

"He's coming over to Dublin next Christmas," said the Major, "and I mean to get him down to spend a few days with me. If you'll come, too, I'll give you a room in my house with pleasure. J. J. is going to take out his M.A. degree. He thinks it's time for him to be wearing a blue silk hood in church. I had a letter from him just before I left home. He says he's going to make his old rabbit-skin hood into a cot quilt for Mary Kate."

"For Mary Kate, is it?"

"That's the baby. They christened her Cecily May to please the mother, but I never heard J. J. speak of her by any other name except Mary Kate."

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