crowning this
already over-loaded moment, there arose a series of yells from Miss
McEvoy as blood-curdling as they were excusable, yet, as even in my
maniac flight to the kitchen I recognised, something muffled by Marie
biscuit.

It seems to me that the next incident was the composite and shattering
collision of Robert, Julia and myself in the scullery doorway, followed
by the swift closing of the scullery-door upon us by Julia; then the
voice of the Dean of Glengad, demanding from the house at large an
explanation, in a voice of cathedral severity. Miss McEvoy's reply was
to us about as coherent as the shrieks of a parrot, but we plainly heard
Julia murmur in the kitchen:--

"May the devil choke ye!"

Then again the Dean, this time near the kitchen door. "Julia! Where is
the man who was secreted under the dinner-table?"

I gripped Robert's arm. The issues of life and death were now in Julia's
hands.

"Is it who was in the dining-room, your Reverence?" asked Julia, in
tones of respectful honey; "sure that was the carpenter's boy, that came
to quinch a rat-hole. Sure we're destroyed with rats."

"But," pursued the Dean, raising his voice to overcome Miss McEvoy's
continuous screams of explanation to Mrs. Doherty, "I understand that he
left the room on his hands and knees. He must have been drunk!"

"Ah, not at all, your Reverence," replied Julia, with almost
compassionate superiority, "sure that poor boy is the gentlest crayture
ever came into a house. I suppose 'tis what it was he was ashamed like
when Miss McEvoy comminced to screech, and faith he never stopped nor
stayed till he ran out of the house like a wild goose!"

We heard the Dean reascend the kitchen steps, and make a statement of
which the words "drink" and "Dora" alone reached us. The drawing-room
door closed, and in the release from tension I sank heavily down upon a
heap of potatoes. The wolf of laughter that had been gnawing at my
vitals broke loose.

"Why did you go out of the room on your hands and knees?" I moaned,
rolling in anguish on the potatoes.

"I got under the table when I heard the brute coming," said Robert,
with the crossness of reaction from terror, "then she settled down to
eat biscuits, and I thought I could crawl out without her seeing me"

"_Ye can come out_!" said Julia's mouth, appearing at a crack of the
scullery door, "I have as many lies told for ye--God forgive me!--as'd
bog a noddy!"

This mysterious contingency