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With a chirrup and a blow the horse started forward, and the mud-bespattered vehicle was rapidly moving down the road ere Helen had recovered her surprise at recognizing Mark Ray, who shook the raindrops from his hair, and offering her his hand said in reply to her involuntary exclamation: "I thought it was Katy."

He lacked and regretted the fatigue, the furious hurry, the suspense, the fires, the midnight coffee, the rude and mud-bespattered poetry of the first toilful weeks. In the quietness of his new surroundings, a voice summoned him from this exorbital part of life, and about the middle of October he threw up his situation and bade farewell to the camp of tents and the shoulder of Bald Mountain.

And ever as the countless German batteries fell silent, their troops in dense grey waves hurled themselves upon shattered British trench and dugout, and found there wild men in tunics torn and bloody and mud-bespattered, who, shouting in fierce joy, leapt to meet them bayonet to bayonet.

The record of his studies for many years would vanish like the wind-blown candle-flame. Yet after some hours of wakefulness he slept, as tranquilly as a child. A red-headed youth in the dress of a clerk, who was to have met Tomaso on the morrow, waited for him in vain. On the second day he started in search of his old friend, and weary and mud-bespattered, came at last to Temple Assheton.

Six, eight, ten, or twelve large yellow, black, and red dogs, with a long following of smaller and quite small ones, so bitten and mud-bespattered that one could scarcely see what they were made of, but yet very courageous, tails in the air and panting with ardour, although they stood no chance at all, except of getting mauled again and rolled in the mud.

It was nearly seven o'clock when, tired and mud-bespattered, he reached Lisnahoe; but the warmth of his reception there went far to banish all recollection of the discomforts of his solitary tramp. Then came introductions to the rest of the family. Mr. Connolly, stout and white-haired, bade him welcome in a voice which owned more than a touch of Tipperary brogue. Mrs.

Oh, there is Uncle Geoffrey come in," he exclaimed, as he heard the front door open. "And I must go and dress," said Beatrice, seized with a sudden haste, which did not speak well for the state of her conscience. Uncle Geoffrey was in the hall, taking off his mud-bespattered gaiters. "So you are entered with the vermin, Fred," called he, as the two came out of the drawing-room.

There were also hundreds of rain-soaked, mud-bespattered tents, sheds and awnings; wind-sails, which fell, funnel-like, from a kind of gallows into the shafts they ventilated; flags fluttering on high posts in front of stores. The many human figures that went to and fro were hardly to be distinguished from the ground they trod. They were coated with earth, clay-clad in ochre and gamboge.

When, a mud-bespattered tramp, I came down the road by the winding Lot, and saw the pale golden light rising upon the walls of churches and towers high above me, I could not but think of some of the terrible scenes which, in the course of 2,000 years, were witnessed by the inhabitants of Cahors. In the fast-falling twilight I saw the ghosts of the Vandals and Visigoths who helped to destroy the works of the Caesars, and passed onward to the unknown; of the Franks who burnt Cahors in the sixth century; of the Arab hordes, dabbled with blood, who afterwards came up from the South slaying, violating, plundering; of the English troops under Henry II. besieging and taking the town, accompanied by the Chancellor, Thomas-

It was about five o'clock, and he was crossing the Rue Royale like one walking in his sleep, at the risk of being run over, his clothes in rags and mud-bespattered up to his neck, when a brougham suddenly drew up. 'Claude, eh? Claude! is that how you pass your friends? It was Irma Becot who spoke, Irma in a charming grey silk dress, covered with Chantilly lace.