darkness of the trees. A man's voice cursed him low and
deep,--no ghostly voice, nor that of the countryside, an unfamiliar
voice and speech to Patsy. His slender little body was caught in a
fierce grip. He was lifted and dashed on to the road. If it had been
a stony road, instead of the yielding bog, there would have been an end
of Patsy's story. As it was he lay very quietly, while the little goat
went home without him.

CHAPTER I

O'GARAS OF CASTLE TALBOT

Patsy Kenny, stud-groom to Sir Shawn O'Gara, a quiet man, devoted to
his horses and having a wonderful way with them, sometimes allowed his
mind to wander back to the night Mr. Terence Comerford was killed and
the days that followed.

He could recall the inquest on poor Mr. Terence, himself, with a
bandaged head, keeping the one eye he had available fixed on the
gentleman who asked him questions. He knew that Sir Shawn O'Gara was
present, his face marble pale and his eyes full of a strange anguish.
Well, that was not to be wondered at. The gentleman who asked the
questions made sympathetic references to the unusual friendship between
Sir Shawn and Mr. Comerford. Patsy had been aware of the nervous
tension in Sir Shawn's face, the occasional quiver of a nostril, "Like
as if he was a horse, a spirity one, aisy frightened, like Spitfire,"
Patsy had thought.

He remembered that tense anguish of Sir Shawn's face now, as he sat on
the trunk of a fallen tree in the paddock of the foals at Castle
Talbot. The foals were running with their mothers, exquisite
creatures, of the most delicate slenderness. The paddock was full of
the lush grass of June. The mares were contentedly grazing. Now and
again one lifted her head and sniffed the air with the wind in her
mane, as if at the lightest sound she would take fright.

Patsy had had a hard tussle that morning with an ill-tempered horse he
was breaking, and he felt tired out. He had no idea of compelling a
horse with a whip. Sir Shawn had bought this horse at a fair a short
time before. He was jet-black and they had called him Mustapha. That
was Master Terry's name for him, a queer heathenish name to Patsy's
mind, but all Master Terry did and all the mistress, Master Terry's
mother did, was right in Patsy's eyes, so Mustapha the horse was called.

He was certainly an ill-tempered brute, with a lot of the devil in him,
but Patsy Kenny was never angry with a horse; it was an invaluable
quality in a s