de out three figures
standing together at the further end of the forge, in one of whom,
though he tried to conceal himself, he instantly recognized his
visitor of the previous evening.

"You here, my man?" he said. "You left my house two hours ago. Why are
you not on your way home?"

Sylvester, seeing he was discovered, turned his face full round, and
in a voice quietly insolent, replied, "I fell in with some friends of
mine on the road. We had a little business together, and it is good
luck that has brought your honor to us while we are talking, for the
jintlemen here have a word or two they would like to be saying to ye,
colonel, before ye leave them."

"To me!" said Goring, turning from Sylvester to the two figures, whose
faces were still covered by their cloaks. "If these gentlemen are what
I suppose them to be, I am glad to meet them, and will hear willingly
what they may have to say."

"Perhaps less willingly than you think, Colonel Goring," said the
taller of the two, who rose and stepped behind him to the door, which
he closed and barred. Goring, looking at him with some surprise, saw
that he was the person whom he had met on the mountains, and had
afterwards seen at the funeral at Derreen. The third man rose from a
bench on which he had been leaning, lifted his cap, and said:--

"There is an old proverb, sir, that short accounts make long friends.
There can be no friendship between you and me, but the account between
us is of very old standing. I have returned to Ireland, only for a
short stay; I am about to leave it, never to come back. A gentleman
and a soldier, like yourself, cannot wish that I should go while that
account is still unsettled. Our fortunate meeting here this morning
provides us with an opportunity."

It was Morty's voice that he heard, and Morty's face that he saw as he
became accustomed to the gloom. He looked again at the pretended
messenger from the carded curate, and he then remembered the old
Sylvester who had brought the note from Lord Fitzmaurice to the agent
from Kenmare. In an instant the meaning of the whole situation flashed
across him. It was no casual re-encounter. He had been enticed into
the place where he found himself, with some sinister and perhaps
deadly purpose. A strange fatality had forced him again and again into
collision with the man of whose ancestral lands he had come into
possession. Once more, by a deliberate and treacherous contrivance, he
and the chief o