e newly-churned butter and home-made jam, which Hannah, in
her Ulster way, would call "Preserve." ...

He got up from the table and went into the hall.

"Will tea be long, Hannah?" he called down the stairs, leading to the
kitchens.

"Haven't I it near ready?" she answered.

He had gone up the staircase at a run, and had entered his father's
room, expecting to see him sitting up....

"Hilloa," he said, stopping sharply, "still asleep!" and he went out of
the room and called softly to Hannah, now coming up the stairs, to take
the tray to the library. "He's asleep, Hannah!" he said almost in a
whisper.

"He's never asleep at this hour," she answered.

And somehow, as she said that, he knew. He went back into the room and
leant over his father, listening....

"Is he dead, Master Henry?" Hannah said, as she came into the room. She
had left the tray on a table on the landing.

Henry straightened himself and turned to her. "Yes, Hannah!" he said
quietly.

The old woman threw her apron over her head and let a great cry out of
her. "Och, ochanee!" she moaned, "Och, och, ochanee!..."

4

He had none of the terror he had had when Mrs. Clutters lay dead in the
Bloomsbury house. He went into the room and stood beside his father's
body. The finely moulded face had a proud look and a great look of
peace. "I don't feel that he's dead," Henry murmured to himself. "I
shall never feel that he's dead!"

"I wasn't with him enough," he went on. "I left him alone too often...."

Extraordinarily, they had loved each other. Underneath all that
roughness of speech and violence of statement, there was great
tenderness and understanding. He spoke his mind, and more than his mind,
but he was generous and quick to retract and quicker to console. "I'm an
Ulsterman," he said once. "Ulster to the marrow, an' begod I'm proud of
it!"

"But I'm Irish too," he added, turning to John Marsh as he said it,
fearful lest he should have hurt John's feelings. "Begod, it's gran' to
be Irish. I pity the poor devils that aren't!..."

He was a great lover of life, exulting in his strength and vigour,
shouting sometimes for the joy of hearing himself shout. "And shy, too,"
Henry murmured to himself, "shy as a wren about intimate things!"

The sight of his father's placid face comforted him. One might cry over
other people, but not over _him_. Henry felt that if he were to weep for
his father, and the old man, regaining life for a moment were t