r cloud upon his brow.

"Burgo, you had better eat your breakfast," said Sir Cosmo.

"I don't want any breakfast." He took, however, a bit of toast, and
crumbling it up in his hand as he put a morsel into his mouth, went
away to the sideboard and filled for himself a glass of cherry
brandy.

"If you don't eat any breakfast the less of that you take the
better," said Sir Cosmo.

"I'm all right now," said he, and coming back to the table, went
through some form of making a meal with a roll and a cup of tea.

They who were then present used afterwards to say that they should
never forget that breakfast. There had been something, they declared,
in the tone of Burgo's voice when he uttered his curse against Mr
Palliser, which had struck them all with dread. There had, too, they
said, been a blackness in his face, so terrible to be seen, that it
had taken from them all the power of conversation. Sir Cosmo, when he
had broken the ominous silence, had done so with a manifest struggle.
The loud clatter of glasses with which Burgo had swallowed his dram,
as though resolved to show that he was regardless who might know that
he was drinking, added to the feeling. It may easily be understood
that there was no further word spoken at that breakfast-table about
Planty Pall or his wife.

On that day Burgo Fitzgerald startled all those who saw him by the
mad way in which he rode. Early in the day there was no excuse for
any such rashness. The hounds went from wood to wood, and men went in
troops along the forest sides as they do on such occasions. But Burgo
was seen to cram his horse at impracticable places, and to ride at
gates and rails as though resolved to do himself and his uncle's
steed a mischief. This was so apparent that some friend spoke to Sir
Cosmo Monk about it. "I can do nothing," said Sir Cosmo. "He is a
man whom no one's words will control. Something has ruffled him this
morning, and he must run his chance till he becomes quiet." In the
afternoon there was a good run, and Burgo again rode as hard as he
could make his horse carry him;--but then there was the usual excuse
for hard riding; and such riding in a straight run is not dangerous,
as it is when the circumstances of the occasion do not warrant it,
But, be that as it may, Burgo went on to the end of the day without
accident, and as he went home, assured Sir Cosmo, in a voice which
was almost cheery, that his mare Spinster was by far the best thing
in the Monk