of the Kennels with him on quite a
number of journeys from Victoria railway station. Tara heard much
talk of Sussex Downs, and when she came to scamper over them, found
herself in thorough agreement with every sort of joyous encomium
she heard passed upon them. Then there came a day of extraordinary
confusion at the little flat, when men with aprons stamped about
and turned furniture upside down, and made foolish remarks about
Tara, as she sat beside the writing-table gravely watching them.
That night Tara slept in a loose box in the stable of a country
inn, and in the early morning went out for a glorious run on the
Downs with the Master, who seemed to have grown younger since they
left London.

Within a very few days from this time, Tara and her friends had
settled down comfortably in a new home. An oddly-shaped little
house it was, full of unexpected angles and doors, and having a
garden and orchard which straggled up the lower slope of one of the
Downs. It had a stable, too, of a modest sort, and rather poky, but
the coach-house was admirable, light, airy, facing south-east, and
having a new concrete floor, which the Master helped to lay with
his own hands. The back half of this coach-house consisted of a
slightly raised wooden dais; a very pleasant place for a Wolfhound
to lie, when spring sunshine was flooding the coach-house. But Tara
did not spend much of her time there, for between the stabling and
the house there was a big wooden structure with a tiled roof, large
as a good-sized barn, but with an entrance like an ordinary
house-door, and comfortably matchboarded inside, like a wooden house.
A pleasant old villager who was doing some work in the garden
referred to this place as "th'old parish room," but the Master
made it his own den, lined one of its sides with books, and
pictures of dogs and men, and fields and kennels. He had his big
writing-table established there, with a sufficiency of chairs, a
few rugs upon the forty-feet length of floor, and an old couch upon
one side, manufactured by himself with the aid of an ancient spring
mattress, a few blocks of wood, a big 'possum-skin rug which some
friend had sent him from Australia, and a variety of cushions. The
actual house, for all its rambling shape, was small, and possibly
this was why the Master chose to utilize this outside place as his
den, and to fix a big stove in it for heating. Here, too, at one
end, and just beyond the big writing-table, was a