nerous curves, away to the far range of the Mweelin
Mountains, that brooded, in colour a deep and sullen sapphire, on the
horizon. The town of Cluhir, a little puff of smoke, cut in two by the
wide river, lay below. The spires of the two churches rose above the
smoke, one on either side of the bridge that spanned the river. The
sound of bells, faintly rising from one of them, summoned the faithful
to the mid-day Mass in honour of St. Stephen.

Larry, pushing Tommy along at a dogged canter, lifted his bowler hat
as he heard the bells, and Christian and Judith looked at each other.
The tradition of the Protestant, "No demonstrations!" with its
singular suspicion and distrust of manifestations of reverence or
poetry, had been early implanted in them, and Judith murmured to
Christian: "How on earth does he remember?"

"I know I couldn't," admitted Christian; yet some feeling that, though
crushed, had survived the heavy feet of Lady Isabel's trusted manuals,
stirred in her in accord with the faint clash of the chapel bells,
making her envy Larry his accredited salutation, making her feel
something of the beauty, if not of holiness, of, at least, the
recognition that there were holy things in the world.

On the nearer head of Carrigaholt the check, predicted by Bill Kirby,
came. A narrow and level plateau ran between the twin crests; above it
on both sides, rose successive shelves of cliff, with swathes of
russet bracken muffling their fierce outline. Flung about on the
shelves, looking like tumbled piles of giant books in a neglected
library, were immense rectangular rocks; one would say that only the
grey and knotted cords of the ivy that had crept over them, held them
in their place upon those rugged shelves. At one end of the level
place the ground fell steeply to a wild stream, the Feorish, from
whose farther bank another hill, but little less formidable than
Carrigaholt, rose like an enemy tower, threatening its defences. The
hounds swarmed like bees among the rocks, jumping or falling from
shelf to shelf, burrowing and thrusting through the bracken, their
heads appearing suddenly in quite improbable places, with glowing eyes
and glistening pink tongues, demanding from their huntsman the
information that no one but themselves could give.

It was a place in which not one, but a hundred places of safety
presented themselves to a fox, but this good fox had despised them
all, and, of all the hounds, it was Amazon, Chris