THE PHEASANT 
wattles badly torn ; and Miss Houlahan's bird 
never came back at all. There was a feud in 
the hamlet. Miss Houlahan accused Mrs. 
O'Grady's cock of the murder, and Mrs. 
O'Grady accused Mrs. Kegan ; but even after 
the rival birds were shut up, the trouble con- 
tinued. Hens wandered far from home, and 
the fox took them. The Poultry claims of 
the Carkenny Hunt had never been so large. 
But what made the chickens stray ? It was 
mid-October before the mystery was solved. 
One forenoon, Bridget Sullivan of Dromore 
heard a commotion in the rick-yard, and 
found the Dromore cock a big pied bird 
with the legs of an emu lying wheezing on 
his side with the breath knocked out of his 
body. His assailant had evidently made off 
at her approach ; but the ground was starred 
all over with three-rayed prints, and a long 
bronze feather lay draggled on the mud. That 
feather was the key to the perpetrator of this 
and the other outrages, and Creaban was 
hunted more than ever. 
It was this persecution which drove him 
back to Tonsella. The Yellow Pullet, scratch- 
ing in the straw heap under the eye of the 
tyrant Cock one dull October day, heard his 
voice up in the wood, and the Cock heard it 
also. She could not know that it was the 
191 
