And is that the case? I'm grieved to hear it!" Father
David pressed the stout cob nearer to Joker, and murmured very
confidentially. "I've known you since your boyhood I may say, Mr.
Coppinger, and you will not consider me impertinent speaking to you.
But could you tell me is it a fact what I'm 'hearing about the good
Major--you, no doubt, have prior information--"

"I think that's very unlikely," said Larry, sulkily, flushing as he
spoke.

Father David eyed Larry cautiously, and began to wonder if something
he had been told not long since were true.

In Ireland, it may confidently be said, all things are known to the
poor people, and a brief consideration of this position will show,
that this being so, there is but little that is unknown to the Church.

"Well, Mr. Coppinger," Father Hogan resumed, "I'm told--only told,
mind you--that the Major had Mount Music and the demesne advertised on
the English papers--"

"Good God!" exclaimed Larry, startled out of his sulk; "to sell?"

Father David, like other gentlemen of his age and cloth, had the
Baboo's predilection for a well-worn quotation. "As to that I cannot
say," he said portentously. "''Tis whispered in Heaven, 'tis muttered
in Hell' that the encumbrances are very heavy--mortgages and
debts--. The good Major had a long family, Mr. Coppinger; fine,
dashing young min they are too, but we all know that expenses do not
tend to diminish as families grow up! Children may be a heritage that
comes from the Lord, but unless other heritages accompany them--!"
Father David put his head on one side, and, beaming at Larry, laid his
little professional joke, so to speak, at his feet.

"Well, well," he resumed, "'What business is it of yours?' says you!"

"Not at all, Father," said Larry, still shaken by what he had heard.
"Thank you for speaking to me--it's the first I've heard of it."

The procession of the hunt halted, the hounds left the road by the
direct method of a high stone "gap," and Father David and the bay cob
melted away to betake themselves to those secret equivalent routes
known to those who have come to years of discretion in the
hunting-field.

The second draw seemed at first as if it were to be no more fortunate
than its predecessor. The covert was a patch of scrubby woodland at a
little distance below the road, at the head of one of the long deep
glens that were the terrors of the Broadwater country. The wind blew
from the west, across the wide cleft