sin Dick's, by the fire.
(But Christian was not there. He resigned himself.) There was no want
of warmth in the Big Doctor's reception. He was quite aware of this
himself, and was artist enough to know how useful an asset was the
fact that he was genuinely fond of Larry. He had indeed proposed to
exhibit his affection in pleasing contrast to the coolness of Larry's
Protestant relatives, and that the Major had forgotten the role
assigned to him, was a little disappointing. "But wait awhile!"
thought the Big Doctor, who, among his other elephantine qualities,
possessed that of patience.

The Major seated himself in front of the fire, and Larry pulled up a
chair, wondering in his heart what these old boys wanted with a fire
this lovely afternoon, and delivered himself to the old boys and to
conversation. This, naturally, set with a single movement towards the
event of the morning. "A real likely little mare, and shaping well,
I'm told," says Dick, "and by the bye, Larry, that's a dev'lish nice
horse of yours that Christian came back on. Where did you get him?"

These hunting men were incorrigible, the Doctor thought, seeing the
Carmody question in danger of being side-tracked.

"Things have come to a funny way in this country," he observed, "when
a fellow will deliberately chance killing a young lady, rather than
let her ride over his land--and she having a right to ride over it
into the bargain!"

It needed but little to start Major Talbot-Lowry again on the topic
that had occupied him unceasingly since Christian's return that
morning. Beginning with the burning of the Derrylugga gorse covert,
and moving on through threatening letters, and rents deliberately
withheld, he lashed himself into one of the quick furies that Larry
remembered well. What Larry was less prepared for than was his friend,
Dr. Mangan, was the sudden turn that the storm took in his direction.

"The blackguards think they can frighten me into selling on their own
terms!" shouted Dick, "and that damned priest of theirs--I beg your
pardon, Mangan, but the fellow doesn't behave like a clergyman, and
it's impossible to think of him as one--is backing them up, and I may
say"--here it was that the heart of the storm was revealed--"I may say
that I'm very little obliged to your son, or to his principal here,
for the part they have played in the affair! That was the beginning of
the whole thing!" He turned fiercely upon Larry, his tenor voice
pitched on