THE SILVER FOX 117 



intercept — what? Could it be to foil the 

 insane impulse of a woman who had lost her 

 head in the terrible discovery that she had 

 a heart ? 



The miles fleeted past, until the engine 

 and its pent scream burst forth from the 

 clanging walls of a rock cutting, and skirt- 

 ing a lake, entered on the great brown plain 

 of Tully bog. A double line of drains, fed 

 by innumerable cuts, made a herring-bone 

 pattern on either side ; the spongy gravel 

 sprang beneath the strides of the engine ; 

 the water in the drains flapped and washed 

 in sympathy against its peat walls. It 

 seemed a singular audacity of engineering 

 to force a line of rails across such a morass. 

 Three miles away the heights of Cahirdreen 

 were dark in the evening sky ; recognizing 

 them, Slaney felt the influence of an evil 

 fate cross her keen excitement like a cold 

 streak — like a shiver across the heat of 

 fever. The driver looked at his watch, and, 

 with one hand on the brake, added the last 

 possible five miles an hour to the pace. 



