Croppy measured me with his eye, grinned bashfully, and said:—­

“Sure it’s the Dane’s breechin’ we have, Miss!  I daresay he’d hardly get home at all if we took any more from him!”

The Dean’s breeching!  For an instant a wild confusion of ideas deprived me of the power of speech.  I could only hope that Croppy had left him his gaiters!  Then I pulled myself together.

“Croppy,” I said in consternation, “how did you get it?  Did you borrow it from the coachman?”

“Is it the coachman!” said Croppy tranquilly.  “I did not, Miss.  Sure he was asleep in the snug.”

“But can they get home without it?”

A sudden alarm chilled me to the marrow.

“Arrah, why not, Miss?  That black horse of the Dane’s wouldn’t care if there was nothing at all on him!”

I heard Robert reeling in his line—­had he a fish?  Or, better still, had he made up his mind to go home?

As a matter of fact, neither was the case; Robert was merely fractious, and in that particular mood when he wished to have his mind imperceptibly made up for him, while prepared to combat any direct suggestion.  From what quarter the ignoble proposition that we should go home arose is immaterial.  It is enough to say that Robert believed it to be his own, and that, before he had time to reconsider the question, the tactful Croppy had crammed the old white horse into the shafts of the car.

It was by this time past five o’clock, and a threatening range of clouds was rising from seaward across the west.  Things had been against us from the first, and if the last stone in the sling of Fate was that we were to be wet through before we got home, it would be no more than I expected.  The old horse, however, addressed himself to the eight Irish miles that lay between him and home with unexpected vivacity.  We swung in the ruts, we shook like jellies on the merciless patches of broken stones, and Croppy stimulated the pace with weird whistlings through his teeth, and heavy prods with the butt of his whip in the region of the borrowed breeching.

Now that the expedition had been shaken off and cast behind us, the humbler possibilities of the day began to stretch out alluring hands.  There was the new box from the library; there was the afternoon post; there was a belated tea, with a peaceful fatigue to endear all.  We reached at last the welcome turn that brought us into the coast road.  We were but three miles now from that happy home from which we had been driven forth, years ago as it seemed, at such desperate hazard.  We drove pleasantly along the road at the top of the cliffs.  The wind was behind us; a rising tide plunged and splashed far below.  It was already raining a little, enough to justify our sagacity in leaving the river, enough to lend a touch of passion to the thought of home and Julia.

The grey horse began to lean back against the borrowed breeching, the chains of the traces clanked loosely.  We had begun the long zig-zag slant down to the village.  We swung gallantly round the sharp turn half-way down the hill.