I will not even say that when I
have sat beside her, heard her low soft voice, and watched the tremor of
that lovely mouth vibrating with wit, or tremulous with feeling, I have
been all indifference; but this I will say, she shall not number _me_
amongst the victims of her fascinations; and when she counts the trinkets
on her wrist that record the hearts she has broken--a pastime I once
witnessed--not one of them shall record the initial of Dick Kearney.'

[Illustration: Kate, still dressed, had thrown herself on the bed, and was
sound asleep]

With these brave words he mounted the narrow stair and knocked at his
sister's door. No answer coming, he knocked again, and after waiting a few
seconds, he slowly opened the door and saw that Kate, still dressed, had
thrown herself on her bed, and was sound asleep. The table was covered with
account-books and papers; tax-receipts, law-notices, and tenants' letters
lay littered about, showing what had been the task she was last engaged on;
and her heavy breathing told the exhaustion which it had left behind it.

'I wish I could help her with her work,' muttered he to himself, as a pang
of self-reproach shot through him. This certainly should have been his own
task rather than hers; the question was, however, Could he have done it?
And this doubt increased as he looked over the long column of tenants'
names, whose holdings varied in every imaginable quantity of acres,
roods, and perches. Besides these there were innumerable small details of
allowances for this and compensation for that. This one had given so many
days' horse-and-car hire at the bog; that other had got advances 'in
seed-potatoes'; such a one had a claim for reduced rent, because the
mill-race had overflowed and deluged his wheat crop; such another had fed
two pigs of 'the lord's' and fattened them, while himself and his own were
nigh starving.

Through an entire column there was not one case without its complication,
either in the shape of argument for increased liability or claim for
compensation. It was makeshift everywhere, and Dick could not but ask
himself whether any tenant on the estate really knew how far he was
hopelessly in debt or a solvent man? It only needed Peter Gill's peculiar
mode of collecting the moneys due, and recording the payment by the notched
stick, to make the complication perfect; and there, indeed, upon the table,
amid accounts and bills and sale warrants, lay the memorable bits of wo