with her hands, and turned and went up the stairs, leaving him master
of the field. The worse for him! The worse, the worse, the worse for
him!

CHAPTER XVIII

A COUNTERPLOT

Luke Asgill rode slowly from the gates, not without a backward glance
that raked the house. The McMurrough walked by his stirrup, talking
rapidly--he, too, with furtive backward glances. In five minutes he had
explained the situation and the Colonel's vantage ground. At the end of
those minutes, and when they were at some distance from the house, "I
see," Asgill said thoughtfully. "Easy to put him under the sod! But
you're thinking him worse dead than alive."

"Sorra a doubt of it!"

"Yet the bogs are deep," Asgill returned, his tone smacking faintly of
raillery. "You might deal with him first, and his heir when the time
came. Why not?"

"God knows!" James answered. "And I've no taste to make the trial." He
did not name the oath he had taken to attempt nothing against Colonel
John, nor to be a party to any attempt. He had slurred over that
episode. He had dwelt in preference on the fact of the will and the
dilemma in which it placed him.

Asgill looked for some moments between his horse's ears, flicking his
foot the while with his switch. When he spoke he proved in three or
four sentences that if his will was the stronger, his cunning was also
the more subtle. "A will is revocable," he said. "Eh?"

"It is."

"And the man that's made one may make another?"

"Who's doubting it?"

"But you're doubting," Asgill rejoined--and he laughed as he
spoke--"that it would not be in your favour, my lad."

"Devil a bit do I doubt it!" James said.

"No, but in a minute you will," Asgill answered. And stooping from his
saddle--after he had assured himself that his groom was out of
earshot--he talked for some minutes in a low tone. When he raised his
head again he clapped The McMurrough on the shoulder. "There!" he said,
"now won't that be doing the trick for you?"

"It's clever," James answered, with a cruel gleam in his eyes. "It is
d--d clever! The old devil himself couldn't be beating it by the length
of his hoof! But----"

"What's amiss with it?"

"A will's revocable," James said, with a cunning look. "And what he can
do once he can do twice."

"Sorrow a doubt of that, too, if you're innocent enough to let him make
one! But you're not, my lad. No; the will first, and then----" Luke
Asgill did not finish the sentence, but he grin