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200 the Sullivans in their time. They get you flogged, and flogged, and flogged, till all the work’s flogged out of you: then they get you six months in the crawlers, and like as not that’s the end of you.”

“Why doesn’t somebody put a bullet through them both?”

“Because the coves have got the pluck. That’s their secret. They don’t know what fear is. So there’s seventy strong men up there, and over a hundred in harvest-time, and the whole boiling afraid of them two!”

Tom said no more, neither did he have much to say to Mr. Nat next day in their saddles; neither did Mr. Nat have anything at all to say to him before nightfall, so severe had been his latest “touch of the sun.” But towards evening they left the road; and as the moon was rising in a velvet sky, lights also broke upon them through some trees. Dogs innumerable began to bark. And as young Sullivan stooped to open a gate, he pointed across it to the lights, and said that there was Castle Sullivan at last.

“And hark you here,” he added, savagely, seizing Tom’s bridle on the other side, as though every redeeming trait was now left behind upon the neutral ground that they had traversed together; “hark you to this, and recollect it well! You’ve been right enough on the way, and you’ve the makings of a decent groom. But you won’t find me as easy up here as I could afford to be down the road; and one word about that sunstroke—”

He glared at Erichsen, then let the bridle go without finishing his threat; and without another syllable they rode through the trees towards the lights.