ome from
Doyle of Bally-brack."

"Don't you grow any horse food on the estate?"

"We don't grow no corn, sor."

"Well, hay and straw?"

"You can't get straw, sor, widout you grow corn."

"I know that--but how about hay--surely you grow lots of grass?"

"We graze the grass, sor."

"Do you let the grazing?"

"Well, sor, it's this way; the masther was never very shtrict about the
grazin'; we puts some of the horses out to grass, ourselves, and we lets
poor folk have a bit of grazin' now and then for their cattle, though
master was never after makin' money from the estate--"

"Just so. Have you the receipted bills for the fodder during the last six
months?"

"Yes, sor. The master always sent me wid the money to pay the bills."

"You have got the receipts?"

"The which, sor?"

"The bills receipted."

"Bills, sure, what's the good of keepin' bills, sor, when the money's
paid. I b'lave they're somewhere in an ould crock in the stable, at laste
that's where I saw thim last."

"Well," said Pinckney, "you can fetch them for me to-morrow morning, and
now let's talk about the garden."

Rafferty, not knowing what Pinckney might discover and so being unable to
lie with confidence, had a very bad quarter of an hour over the garden.

Pinckney was not a man to press another unduly, nor was he a man to haggle
about halfpence or worry servants over small peccadillos. He knew quite
well that grooms are grooms, and will be so as long as men are men. He
would never have bothered about little details had Rafferty been an
ordinary servant. He recognised in Rafferty, not a servant to be dismissed
or corrected, but an antagonist to be fought. It was the case of the dog
and badger. Rafferty was Graft and all it implies, Pinckney was Straight
Dealing. And Straight Dealing knew quite well that the only way to get
Graft by the throat is to ferret out details, no matter how small.

So Rafferty was taken over details. He had to admit that he had "given
away" some of the stuff from the garden and sold "a bit," sending it up to
Dublin for that purpose; but he was not to be caught.

"And the profits," said Pinckney. "I suppose you handed them over to Mr.
Berknowles?"

"No, sor; the master always tould me to keep any bit of money I might draa
from anything I planted extra for me perkisites, that was the
understandin' I had with him."

"And over the farmyard, I suppose anything you could make by selling any
extra animals you pla