"I'm all right," she whispered to her sister. "The only thing is that I have broken the medicine glass. Well, I can easily guess the drops—sixteen. You get off to the house, Henny, or you'll be caught."
Henny scampered away, her heart palpitating with uneasiness. She saw a light under the drawing-room door as she sped by. The family had evidently not yet gone to bed. The Rector was reading some lovely poetry aloud, and Dominic and Maureen were listening. The Rector could read poetry like no man in the county. He was now delighting his young listeners with the "Prisoner of Chillon." His voice rose and swelled. Dominic stood up in a sort of rapture. As the pathos grew Maureen hid her little pale face against her uncle's sleeve. Whatever happened, she could not cry a second time that evening.
Meanwhile Daisy settled herself as comfortably as she could in the darkest corner of the stable. There was Fly-away's loose box close to her and a great bundle of hay for him to eat if he felt hungry. But he was a horse of perfectly regulated habits, and he invariably waited for his hot mash at ten o'clock.
The stable clock struck the hour, solemnly in great strokes. Fly-away pricked up his small ears. There came a sound outside—a man's step on the cobble-stones, then Garry entered with the mash, hot and delicious. He placed it just before the animal, stroked him affectionately on his black head and silky, satin-like sides, and said: "Good-night to ye, Fly-away. Slape well, my blessing." And then he left the stable, locking the door behind him.
Garry had intended to go into the kitchen for a bit, to have a chat with Pegeen and Burke, with both of whom he was a prime favourite, but something prompted him not to do it that night. He could not quite tell why. He said to himself afterwards that "he was sort of onaisy in his mind." He went up therefore at once to his bedroom and was preparing to go to rest when he saw something very peculiar and uncanny. It was no less than a streak of light, thin and like a shaft, which penetrated up through the beams of the roof of the stable and entered his room.
"May the Almighty presarve us," muttered the man. "Is it the pixies are about or what?"
He had not begun to undress. In a moment he had rushed down his step-ladder, and, going to the stable-door, unlocked it. Yes, he was in time—but only just in time. He saw a sight which he never forgot as long as he lived. He saw a girl with flaxen hair lit up to a very pale gold by means of the lantern. She was hastily uncorking a bottle of laudanum. She was so absorbed in her task, so much afraid of being interrupted and of not getting the deed done before Fly-away had finished his mash that a reckless spirit came over her.
She could not possibly wait to drop the laudanum into the mash, for the horse was eating rapidly and hungrily. Laying her dark lantern on the ground, she rushed into the loose box and dashed what she considered would be sixteen drops but what was in reality much more like three times that number, into the mash. Then with her dainty finger she stirred it round and round.
The horse, interrupted in his feed for the moment, was beginning to resume it when, like a flash, Garry took the basin that contained the hot mash, and put it outside on the cobble-stones, taking care, however, not to spill its contents. He then secured the girl's hand, the bottle of laudanum, which was really almost empty, and the dark lantern, and saying: "You come along o' me this minute!" he dragged the reluctant, terrified Daisy out of the place.
"I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it!" she began to sob. "I was only going to give him a few drops. I wouldn't kill him for the world, nor would Henny. I wouldn't indeed! Oh, please, please, Garry, let me off; he hasn't touched one drop."