choes, as the
people called it, which grew on a spit of solid land that reached out
into the bog. Those echoes were difficult to explain. Why should a
little wood of slender trees within a low wall catch and fling back
human voices?

The echo repeating that mocking laughter, out there in the bog, was a
new element of terror to Patsy. He had better be getting away from
this queer unlucky place before the riders were out of hearing. The
little old grandfather, with his blazing eyes of wrath and the stick
concealed somewhere behind his coat-tails, his most familiar aspect to
Patsy, was better than this solitude, with that old Echo across the bog
there cackling in that unchancy way. Soon, very soon, the lower road,
overhung with trees, pitch-black, where one had to pass by old
Hercules' tomb, just above the fall of the river over its weir, would
swallow Mr. Terence, while Sir Shawn's way would wind upwards towards
the mountains. Unless indeed Sir Shawn was to go home to Inch with Mr.
Terence, seeing he was riding Spitfire and so many perils to be passed,
and him not too steady by the look of him.

Patsy trotted along in the wake of the riders, his bare feet making a
soft padding noise in the dust of the road. His way was Sir Shawn's
way. The wealth of the world would not have induced Patsy to go down
under the black shade of the trees into the assemblage of all the
ghosts.

The little goat followed with docility at his heels, uttering now and
again a plaintive bleat of protest at the pace.

Suddenly there came a sound which, filling Patsy's heart with a
concrete terror, banished all the shadowy terrors. It was the sharp
slash of a whip, followed by the sound of a horse in mad flight.

"It's Spitfire, it's Spitfire!" cried Patsy to the moon and the stars.
"She'll kill Mr. Terence. The world knows she'd never take the whip."

It seemed to him as though there were two horses in the headlong
flight, but he could not be sure. He stumbled along, sobbing in his
haste and calling out inarticulate appeals to Heaven, to Sir Shawn, to
save Mr. Terence, while the clatter of the horses' feet died in the
distance. He even forgot his terror of the dark road which closed
about him as he followed on Spitfire's track. It might be that Sir
Shawn was catching up with the runaway horse, ready to snatch at the
bridle if only he could be in time.

Suddenly Patsy, sobbing and shaking, cannoned into some one, something,
in the