orld still colourless and
mysterious, the house a long black bulk against a slowly lightening
sky. Only the earliest sparrows were twittering; in the trees only the
most wakeful rooks were uttering tentative caws. The outburst of joy
and life and music which would attend the sun's rising was not yet.

Colonel John paused on the doorstep to draw on his boots, then he
picked his way delicately to the leather-hung wicket that broke the
hedge which served for a fence to the garden. On the right of the
wicket a row of tall Florence yews, set within the hedge, screened the
pleasaunce, such as it was, from the house. Under the lee of these he
found Uncle Ulick striding to and fro and biting his finger-nails in
his impatience.

He wrung the Colonel's hand and looked into his face. "You'll do me the
justice, John Sullivan," he said, with a touch of passion, "that never
in my life have I been overhasty? Eh? Will you do me that?"

"Certainly, Ulick," Colonel John answered, wondering much what was
coming.

"And that I'm no coward, where it's not a question of trouble?"

"I'll do you that justice, too," the Colonel answered. He smiled at the
reservation.

The big man did not smile. "Then you'll take my word for it," he
replied, "that I'm not speaking idly when I say you must go."

Colonel John lifted his eyebrows. "Go?" he answered. "Do you mean now?"

"Ay, now, or before noon!" Uncle Ulick retorted. "More by token," he
continued with bitterness, "it's not that you might go on the instant
that I've brought you out of our own house as if we were a couple of
rapparees or horse-thieves, but that you might hear it from me who wish
you well, and would warn you not to say nay--instead of from those who
may be 'll not put it so kindly, nor be so wishful for you to be taking
the warning they give."

"Is it Flavia you're meaning?"

"No; and don't you be thinking it," Uncle Ulick replied with a touch of
heat. "Nor the least bit of it, John Sullivan! The girl, God bless her,
is as honest as the day, if----"

"If she's not very wise!" Colonel John said, smiling.

"You may put it that way if you please. For the matter of that, you'll
be thinking she's not the only fool at Morristown, nor the oldest, nor
the biggest. And you'll be right, more shame to me that I didn't use
the prudent tongue to them always, and they young! But the blood must
run slow, and the breast be cold, that sees the way the Saxons are
mocking us, and locks the