348 GARRYOWEN 



drank whisky enough to shock the modem tea- 

 and-toast and barley-water man, he was a Christian 

 when it came to practice, and a friend whom no 

 disaster could ahenate. 



I cannot help lingering over him, for he belongs 

 to a race of men who are growing fewer in an age 

 when coldness and correctness of character veil, 

 without in the least diminishing, the essential 

 brutality and savagery of man. 



Miss Grimshaw, left to herself, made a tour of 

 the rooms, set Effie some sums to keep her quiet, 

 and then retired into the sitting-room and shut 

 the door. 



It was now that the really desperate condition 

 of things that underlay the comedy of Garryowen 

 appeared before her unveiled. 



" If the horse does not win? " 



The ruin that those six words have so often 

 postulated, rank raw, cold and brutal, rose before 

 her. Horses, cards, dice, wine — one's disHke of 

 the Pipers who cry these down is accentuated by 

 the truth that underHes their piping. 



They are the prophets of the awful telegram 

 which heralds the misery, the pinching and the 

 poverty that will grip you and your wife and your 

 children till you are in your coffins. They are 

 the prophets of the white dawn that shines into 

 your rooms at Oxford when the men are gone, 

 shines on the card-strewn floor where, like a 

 fallen house of cards, hes the once fair future of a 

 man. They are the physicians who prognose 



