mething more than other people. There is that Lord Ardrahan--"

"A very good fellow too. Don't you be an ass. Lord Ardrahan has
offered to take three more."

"I knew it," said Tom.

"It's not as though any favour were offered or received. Though the
horses are your own property, they are kept for the services of the
hunt. We all understand very well how things are circumstanced at
present."

"How do you think I am to feed my hounds if you take away the horses
which they would eat?" said Daly, with an attempt at a grim joke.
But after the joke Tom became sad again, almost to tears, and he
allowed his friend to make almost what arrangements he pleased for
distributing both hounds and horses among the gentry of the hunt.
"And when they are gone," said he, "I am to sit here alone with
nothing on earth to do. What on earth is to become of me when I have
not a hound left to give a dose of physic to?"

"We'll not leave you in such a sad strait as that," said Mr. Persse.

"It will be sad enough. If you had had a pack of hounds to look after
for thirty summers, you wouldn't like to get rid of them in a hurry.
I'm like an old nurse who is sending her babies out, or some mother,
rather, who is putting her children into the workhouse because she
cannot feed them herself. It is sad, though you don't see it in that
light."

Frank Jones got home to Castle Morony that night full of sorrow and
trouble. The cattle had been got off to Dublin in their starved
condition, but he, as he had come back, had been boycotted every yard
of the way. He could get in no car, nor yet in all Tuam could he
secure the services of a boy to carry his bag for him. He learned in
the town that the girls had sent over to purchase a joint of meat,
but had been refused at every shop. "Is trade so plentiful?" asked
Frank, "that you can afford to do without it?"

"We can't afford to do with it," said the butcher, "if it's to come
from Morony Castle."

CHAPTER XXIV.

"FROM THE FULL HEART THE MOUTH SPEAKS."

Ada was making the beds upstairs, and Edith was churning the butter
down below in the dairy, when a little bare-footed boy came in with a
letter.

"Please, miss, it's from the Captain, and he says I'm not to stir out
of this till I come back with an answer."

The letter was delivered to Edith at the dairy door, and she saw that
it was addressed to herself. She had never before seen the Captain's
handwriting, and she looked at it somewhat