sweetly--

"_Hark! hark! the lark at Heaven's Gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs--_"

"Fwhat yez know 'bout that?" Slavin forked viciously at the bacon he was
frying. "Blarney my sowl! an' him not up for 'Shtables' at all! . . ."

"_With ev'rything that pretty is:--
My lady sweet, arise! arise!
My lady sweet, arise!_"

"My lady shweet!"--Slavin snorted unutterable things.

Yawning, the object of his remarks sauntered into the kitchen just then,
and, deeming the occasion now to be a fitting one, the sergeant
introduced his two subordinates to each other.

Yorke, with a bleak nod and handshake, swept the junior constable with a
swiftly appraising glance. As frigidly was his salutation returned.
Redmond remarked the regular features, suggestive rather of the ancient
Norman type, the thin, curved, defiant nostrils and dark, arching
eyebrows. The face, with its indefinable stamp of birth and breeding was
handsome enough in its patrician mould, but marred somewhat by the lines
of cynicism, or dissipation, round the sombre, reckless eyes and
intolerant mouth. He had a cool, clear voice and a whimsical,
devil-may-care sort of manner that was apparently natural to him, as was
also a certain languid grace of movement. He possessed an irritating
mannerism of continually elevating his chin and dilating his curved
nostrils disdainfully in a sort of soundless sniff. Beyond a slight
flush he showed little trace of his previous night's dissipation.

"Where do you hail from?" he enquired of George with casual interest over
the mess-table later.

"Ontario," replied George laconically, "my people are farmers down there."

For a moment Yorke's arched brows lifted in puzzled surprise--came a
repetition of his offensive sniffing mannerism; and he stared pointedly
away again. It was difficult to be more insulting in dumb show.

George, mindful of his promise to Slavin, groaned inwardly. "I am going
to hate this fellow" he thought.

The sergeant, from the head of the table, kept a keen watch upon the pair.

"An' fwhat?" came his soft brogue, by way of diversion, "an' fwhat made
yu' take on th' Force?"

"Oh, I don't know!" Wearily, George shoved his hands deep into his
pockets and leant back in his chair. "Old man's pretty well fixed--now.
He's a member of the legislature for ---- County. I was at McGill for
some terms--medicine." A hopeless note crept into his to