I thought by this time it was time to go, and saying good-day, went out. As I went out I heard the policeman say to Hughie, 'By the way, me boys, suppose ye let us see your license now.'
'License is it?' said Hughie; 'what wud I want wid a license? I haven't fired a shot the day. Shure, this is the masther's second gun I'm carryin',' and he came scuttling after me.
'Oh, but them polis is botheration,' he said, when he reached me; 'there's too many ov them in the counthry be half; ye cud feed the pigs aff ov them ahl winter an' not fin' the differ.'
From that point home was a straight walk in along a hard level road, and we swung briskly along in the frosty air.
'Not bad walking,' said I, as we entered the outskirts of the town, 'four miles in three-quarters of an hour.'
'Walkin', says you,' replied Hughie, with impartial justice, 'it's not us at ahl as did it; it's the putcheen. It's a powerful strong walker is putcheen. Thank ye kindly, Masther Harry,' and Hughie touched his cap, put his hand in his pocket, and walked away.
'THE FINAL FLICKER'
Charlie Vaughan sat playing chess with his sister, as they had played it every night these thirty years. They belonged to the yeomanry class, a class that is mostly English or Scotch by extraction, and has few Irish characteristics. In the narrow circle of their lives on the lonely farm there was not much room for variety; they did the same things at the same hour of the day from one year's end to another.
As bedtime drew near they began to quarrel. She said that he had taken his finger off a piece before altering his mind, and moving it back; he denied it, and they quarrelled. The same quarrel had occurred every night in all those years. They loved each other dearly, but the game wouldn't have been a game without its quarrel. She swept the pieces off the board in a passion, and he wandered gently off into the night to see that all the gates about the farm were locked and the house securely barred.