hat he was absolutely bound to go
into Cluhir. At this point he entered anew upon the subject of his
political future, and what it meant to him. Of the fun he would have
canvassing the electors. Christian would have to come round with him,
and in very obdurate cases there was always the classical method of
the Duchess of Devonshire to be resorted to! Already, he said, he was
frightfully interested in the whole show, and he meant--several pages
were devoted by Larry to his intentions.

Christian, far away in the County Limerick, received the letter with
her early cup of tea, and, as she read it, felt her soul disquieted
within her. The conjunction of the stars of Love and Politics
presaged, she felt, disaster--as if the question of religion had not
been complicating enough! Even had her gift of envisaging a situation
by the light of reason failed her, that spiritual aneroid, which,
sensitive to soul-pressure, warned her intuitively of coming joy or
sorrow, ill luck or good fortune, had fallen from set fair to stormy.
She had gone to sleep with sunshine in her heart; she awoke in clouds,
dark and threatening. She read Larry's letter, and knew that the
foreboding would come true.

It is probable that no human being was ever less the prey of
intuitions or presentiments than was young Mr. Coppinger, as he
bicycled lightly into Cluhir along the solitary steam-rolled road of
the district, a typical effort of Irish civilisation, initiated by Dr.
Mangan, that had proposed to link Cluhir with the outer world, but had
died, like a worn-out tramp, at the end of a few faltering miles, on
the steps of the work-house hospital at Riverstown. The road ran along
the bank of the great river, with nothing save a low fence and a
footpath between it and the water. The river was still and gleaming.
Masses of dove-coloured cloud, with touches of silver-saffron, where
their lining showed through, draped the wide sky, in over-lapping
folds. The planes of distance up the broad valley were graduated in
tone by a succession of screens of luminous vapour that parcelled out
the landscape, taking away all colour save that bestowed by the
transparent golden grey of the mist. The roofs of Cluhir made a dark
profile in the middle distance, the lower part of the houses hidden in
the steaming mist, and the beautiful outline of the twin crests of
Carrigaholt was like a golden shadow in the sky above them. The spire
and the tower of the two churches of Clu