"It's fifteen miles from here to Cloyne, miss, and fifteen from Cloyne to Drumgool."
"Oh, good heavens!" said Miss Grimshaw, "thirty miles from here?"
"There or thereabouts, miss; we'll have to get a new horse at Cloyne; the ould mare is nearly done, and she'd be finished entirely, only I gave her a two hours' rest before I take you up at the station."
"Look!" groaned the girl.
Far away behind them on the moonlit road a figure had appeared; it was running and shouting and waving its arms.
"That's him," said Moriarty. "Faith, he looks as if he had seen the Banshee! Look, miss, there's his hat tumbled off."
Running was evidently not the bailiff's forte, but he continued the exercise manfully for a quarter of a mile or so, hat in hand, before giving up. When he disappeared from view Miss Grimshaw felt what we may suppose the more tender-hearted of Alexander Selkirk's marooners felt when Tristan d'Acunha sank from sight beyond the horizon.
"What will he do with himself?" asked she, her own grievance forgotten for a moment, veiled by the woes of the other one.
"Faith, I don't know, miss," replied Moriarty; "he can do what he plazes, for what I care. But there's one thing he won't do, and that's lay finger on the horses; and it's sorry I am, miss, to have dhriven you out of your way. But, sure, wouldn't you have done it yourself if I'd been you and you'd been me, and that black baste of a chap puttin' his ugly foot in the master's business?"
Miss Grimshaw laughed in a rather dreary manner.